Asynchronous Collaboration around Multimedia and its Application to On-Demand Training

1 Current address: Computer Science Department, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 Abstract Multimedia content is a central component of ondemand training and education delivered over the World Wide Web. Supporting asynchronous collaboration around educational multimedia is a key requirement for making the online educational environment effective. A multimedia annotation system tightly integrated with email provides a powerful platform on which to base such functionality. Building on our earlier work with multimedia annotations [3], we present user interface and system extensions to support asynchronous collaboration for on-demand training. We report results from a study of the effectiveness of the system, including student experience, instructor experience, and user interface appropriateness. Overall, the student experience was positive: they appreciated the flexibility of on-demand delivery and benefited from the collaborative features.