• Education and awareness
• Collaborative learning
• Decision-making and governance

Education and awareness

By multimedia we mean creative, highly interactive CD and Web-based media that maximise the potential for learning and engaging with the user. Especially with the advent of broadband, it has become much more feasible to deliver these systems over the internet. These systems complement traditional web content, which tends to be more text-oriented, and searchable by search engines such as Google. Highly interactive web content, built using specialised multimedia authoring techniques, is less friendly to search engines, but opens up new levels of multimedia communication. Thus CD and web-based multimedia are both heavily focused on the needs of education and awareness-raising.

KiwiGrow™ is concerned with management of complex systems. That is, systems that themselves consist of systems at different scales, and whose behaviour is inherently very difficult to predict. Understanding these systems requires presenting them in ways that can convey their hierarchical nature, and using interactive, dynamic tools that illustrate behaviour at different scales. Multimedia is ideally suited for this purpose. Especially when delivered over the internet, it is readily accessed and used for individual learning or by groups. Where internet speeds are slow, CD and DVD-based multimedia is preferable, providing the necessary quick response and interactivity.

Whether you are managing a natural ecosystem, a neighbourhood, a city, or a region, multimedia can therefore be of immense use in arousing interest, and communicating complex information in compelling ways.

Creative Decisions sees that engaging with and understanding complex systems is the first step in applying the NZ2100 model. Without this first step, no amount of visioning, goal-setting, or other planning will be of any use. Information gained from this process is best shared using multimedia, which can then be used to support subsequent steps of formulating visions, goals and so on.

Collaborative learning

What is learning? Here are two definitions that we like:

1. Learning is a relatively permanent change in cognition, resulting from experience and directly influencing behavior. www.neiu.edu/~dbehrlic/hrd408/glossary.htm
   
   
2. Learning is the process by which experience brings about a relatively permanent change in behavior.  www.socialpolicy.ca/l.htm

What then is collaborative learning? Here are two definitions:

1. Collaborative learning is learning through the exchange and sharing of information and opinions among a peer group. Computers excel in mediating collaborative learning for geographically dispersed groups.  www.conferzone.com/resource/glossarycd.html
   
   
2. Collaborative learning is an umbrella term for a variety of approaches in education that involve joint intellectual effort by students or students and teachers. Groups of students work together in searching for understanding, meaning or solutions or in creating a product.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_learning

Thus, collaborative learning is learning together, in such a way that we change our behaviour so that it is based on our new shared knowledge. And computers, especially the internet, have become acknowledged as excellent devices for facilitating collaborative learning for geographically dispersed groups.

Creative Decisions aims to facilitate this type of learning about the systems we are endeavouring to manage, especially through creative use of multimedia. We believe development of KiwiGrow™ should proceed by a process of collaborative learning, and our services include helping clients develop collaborative learning processes and Web 2.0 products that capture the essence of that new knowledge and make it accessible in a dynamic interesting way, to a wider audience.

Decision-making and governance

While NZ2100 provides a framework for decision-making and governance of complex systems, multimedia provides the mechanism for allowing groups, either co-located or geographically dispersed, to share the underpinning knowledge-base and explore consequences of alternatives.

Decision support tools are best embedded in information systems, to ensure decision-makers approach decisions with the full benefit of available information. In the absence of this information system context that is provided by multimedia, even the most cleverly designed decision support system is liable to yield unsustainable decisions, as decision-makers are then always liable to learn additional information after the opportunity for decision-making has passed, and may then withdraw commitment to provide crucial follow through support: decisions, of themselves, don't change anything - it is the commitment of the decision-makers to implement their decisions over sensible timeframes that produces change.

The fact that key decisions are made by groups, rather than individuals, is important. Exposure of the group to a lively, interactive multimedia information system can energise debate and improve the quality of decision-making, especially if the debate is led by someone who has the "big picture" and can stand in front of the group and make good use of the multimedia-based knowledge. Traditional text-and-picture web material is less suited for this purpose, and if web-based resources are to be used to support group decision-making, they should aim to make extensive use of interactive multimedia techniques.