A Didactic Framework for Audiovisual Design

In contrast with many other design tasks, the design of audiovisual sequences seems to depend highly on the designers’ particular talents, insights and creativity. Some customers experience the intangibility or rather the sheer impossibility of discussion on design decisions, due to the lack of an overall audiovisual design methodology. Especially at the microlevel, that is the level of concrete images and sounds, audiovisual programme development tends to be a matter of taste instead of well‐considered decisions. To provide a vocabulary for functional programme design, the present article introduces a didactic framework that serves as a classification scheme. It constitutes some 49 microlevel functional categories that support both the design and the analysis of audiovisual sequences. The structure and content of the framework are based on empirical evidence on learning and instruction. The present article describes and discusses all categories of the framework. Additional informationNotes on contributorsWim Westera Dr Wim Westera is a physicist and educational technologist at the Educational Technology Expertise Centre of the Open University in the Netherlands. He is involved in the research, design and development of media for distance education, including video, multimedia, telematics, electronic publishing and print. He is the author of an extended book on audiovisual design within an educational context (in Dutch) and is the originator and editor of the Dutch television series on science, ‘Kwintessens’.