About the Media Adviser Toolkit
     Copyright and usability
     How to download the Toolkit
     How to install the Toolkit
     Guide to using the Media Adviser Toolkit
     Example of using Media Adviser

About the Media Adviser Toolkit

Media Adviser is a set of software tools designed to help with the planning of well-balanced courses that involve a range of different types of learning technologies and media.

Copyright and usability

You can download and make use of the toolkit for your own personal use, but please observe the copyright as stated here.

Media Adviser is Copyright © Teaching and Learning Technology Centre, University of North London (now London Metropolitan University), 1999.
All rights of the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University), as the producer and owner of the recorded work, are reserved. Unauthorised public performance, broadcasting, copying and hiring of the work prohibited. The University of North London (now London Metropolitan University) has asserted ownership rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1999.

Media Adviser was developed in 1999 by Dr Beth Kewell, Stephen Hopkinson, DR Martin Oliver and DR Grainne Conole from the University of North London (now part of London Metropolitan University), with Dave Beaumont and Richard Standen from Connected Learning Ltd.

How to download the Toolkit

The Media Adviser Toolkit files have been zipped to minimise download time. File size is approximately 4 Mb.

Download by clicking on Media Advisor Download

How to install the Toolkit

1 Locate the media_adviser.zip file on your computer. Open the file, and unzip it using a program such as 'WinZip'. Depending on how your PC is configured, an unzip program may automatically launch and unzip the file for you.
2 When unzipped, you should have a folder called 'media_adviser'. Open the application file setup.exe to run the install programme which will install the necessary files on your hard disk.
3 Click 'OK' to install - you will then be guided through the rest of the process.
4 Start the Media Adviser programme.

Guide to using the Media Adviser Toolkit

The toolkit has 4 sections to help with the planning of well-balanced courses involving a range of different types of learning media, including ICT, and compiling a model of their usage.

Course Description enables you to add a brief description of your course. From the 'file' menu you can save all the data you enter for your course, for subsequent review or amendment.

Media Selector allows you to see and store information about different learning media, for example about how long they take and how much they cost to develop.

A total of 18 media types are included, e.g. lectures, online discussion, web pages. You can use the guidelines provided with the tool, or change any of them to your own specifications. You can also add new data sets for additional media types.

Media Rater lets you assess how well different learning media support different types of learning to help you design a well-balanced course.
From the list of learning media types entered into the Media Selector which appear in a menu at the bottom of the screen on the left, you select the ones you want to include in your course (by dragging and dropping them into the 'Medium' column, or by double clicking on the media type. You then rate each of them according to how well they support delivery, discussion, activity and feedback, from the menu on the bottom right of the screen. The Media Rater table is compiled as you make your selections, as shown in this example.

Course Modeller constructs a model of your course, showing the balance of the different types of learning media you have selected.

The final step is to enter how many hours you want to include of each learning media. The tool then creates a visual profile of the amount of delivery, discussion, activity and feedback which will be included in the course, based on the data you entered in the Media Rater tool.

Example of using Media Adviser

The following paper which can be downloaded, explains how the Media Adviser Toolkit can be used in general terms, and also for assessing and enhancing the quality of courses.

Martin Oliver and Grainne Conole, Assessing and enhancing quality using toolkits, 1999, EFFECTS Report No 14
View / download PDF file of paper

Last updated 21 May, 2004