Overview - University of Wollongong Teaching & Learning Journal
Article Title
Using multimedia in teaching: CAL HIST 121
Abstract
CAL HIST 121: Dispossessed, Diggers and Democrats, Australia 1788- 1880s, is a CD unit that contains sixteen topics covering various aspects of the first century of European settlement in Australia. In 1997, it was released nationally by Allen and Unwin. When Jim Hagan and I began work on what came to be known as CAL HIST 121 in 1992, flexible delivery had not even entered the University's vocabulary. We set out to produce a computer assisted leaming (then current parlance) teaching aid. Indeed, the birth of the project was almost accidental. I had the misfortune to volunteer the information that I had just finished some elaborate statistical analyses of the social characteristics of men from North Eastern Victoria who had volunteered between 1914 and 1918 on a steam driven Commodore (remember them?) database when I arrived here in 1991. I was strongly encouraged (perhaps coerced) into applying for a National Priority Reserve Fund grant for the development of a computer assisted learning project for nineteenth century Australian history. It succeeded.