The paper describes a collaborative research project between the University of Sussex, the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, the Zentrum fuer Graphische Datenverarbeitung in Darmstadt, and UCM Ltd. in Brighton. The aim of the project is to develop UCM's multimedia authoring environment, Media|Forum, for use in higher education institutions. Media|Forum is an integrated set of tools, running under MS Windows, for organising, cataloguing, and incorporating multimedia resources, created using industry standard packages, into multimedia presentations and interactive multimedia electronic hypertext books. The software allows users without programming knowledge to use and create multimedia packages within the same environment. Seven subject tutors from disciplines as diverse as sociology and biology will use a specially developed version of Media|Forum, running on the campus computer networks, to integrate multimedia resources into the normal university curriculum. The consortium is applying for funding under the European Union's Telematics Applications Programme, and intends eventually to market a complete multimedia environment to universities across the world.
Alan Cawson is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex, and Director of the Multimedia Research Centre. He has spent the last ten years researching in the field of electronics, information technology and multimedia, and has been involved in producing interactive learning materials for the social sciences. His most recent work is The Shape of Things to Consume: Delivering Information Technology into the Home, Cheltenham: Avebury, 1995.