Taxonomy of Multimedia Component Interactivity A Contribution to the Current Metadata Debate

Preliminary Remark Anyone dealing with the development of modular multimedia learning systems who has had frequent recourse to the metadata drafts of Ariadne (Alliance of Remote Instructional Authoring and Distribution Networks of Europe; http://ariadne.unil.ch), IEEE LOM (Learning Objects Metadata project group of IEEE; http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/ltsc/wg12), or other institutions, can't help being aggravated by the fact that these internationally discussed metadata concepts fail to define important categories like interactivity in multimedia applications and multimedia leaning systems in a form of any practical value for the construction and didactics of such learning systems. The Ariadne project, for example, defines interactivity in the form of a scale ranging from high to low (http://ariadne.unil.ch/Metadata/ariadne_metadata_v3final1.htm). Such a scale can only yield subjective entries from the developers of learning systems, since learning program designers would have to decide for themselves whether their programs require or provide a high, medium, or low form of interactivity. The Learning Objects Metadata (LOM) standard draft from the IEEE organisation, which is based on proposals by Dublin Core and Ariadne, contains the same formal definition of interactivity: