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The purpose of this paper is to report on an action research initiative designed to facilitate the creation of shareable multimedia learning objects at a UK higher education institution. The use of multimedia learning objects in educational settings has been the subject of much interest in recent years. However, it has been suggested that a significant barrier to the uptake and use of these resources has been the lack of technical ability and support available to teachers. The Faculty of Health at Birmingham City University (BCU) was committed to the use of learning objects in the university's learning environment. However, creating innovative and exciting resources had been out of the reach of most lecturing staff due to time, financial and technical barriers. The Centre for Enhancing Learning and Teaching (CELT) at BCU collaborated with the Department of Community Health and Social Work in the Faculty of Health to produce a number of shareable learning objects to be used for enquiry‐based learning.

The paper begins by discussing some theoretical background and existing studies before going on to outline the collaboration and the pedagogy that inspired the creation of the learning objects and the processes involved in creating the resources.

The paper discusses some preliminary research results and plans for future development.

The objective of this initiative was to explore ways in which we could overcome barriers to the creation of pedagogically sound learning objects.

Prior to 2020, the Czech higher education institutions (HEIs) did not have much experience with distance learning and blended learning. Experience with hybrid teaching was minimal. The Covid-19 pandemic therefore presented the management of public universities in the Czech Republic with a number of new tasks in resolving the crisis situation. It also made the possibilities of distance education and other flexible forms of education significantly more visible. In 2021, a total of 26 public universities joined together in a central development project, in order to discuss the most important issues of distance education and blended learning, the current background for the implementation of flexible forms of education, and also their future plans in this area. In this chapter, the authors present in detail the results of a study on the background of public universities for the implementation of distance education and blended learning, which have become the basis for creating the action plans of individual institutions. The results of the analysis showed, among other things online supported education is important, especially in emergency situations.

The article will propose strategic community management as a new management style and innovation technique for large, established companies, that is implemented through the creation of a variety of strategic business communities. The article will take up, as a new model case of the use of strategic community management in business, the expansion of Japan’s multimedia communication market achieved by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Inc. (hereafter, NTT), Japan’s largest telecommunications carrier, over roughly the past four years. The article will explain how NTT cultivated this new multimedia market, which was spawned from its creation of business communities (both internal and external, and including communities with customers) using strategic outsourcing and various strategic partnerships with businesses in other industries.

Presents a case study of how over the last six years a large, traditional corporation simultaneously created new service markets and established a dominant position in the competitive information and communication technology field in Japan. The corporation accepted a new organizational body that has an entrepreneurial spirit and consists of different types of personnel, then continuously promoted emergent strategies. At the same time, in an attempt to implement strategic innovation the company integrated the above strategies with deliberate strategies practised by the existing line organizational body. Through a case study, discusses the factors for success and the problems encountered in the course of achieving strategic innovation in the communications field, i.e. the creation of a new market through the creation of strategic communities based on cooperation between different organizations.

For the last few years, the videoconferencing system market represented by multimedia technology has enjoyed strong growth in Japan. Behind the recent upturn in this market was the strategic alliance of NTT, Japan’s largest telecommunications carrier, and PictureTel of the USA, followed by the birth of business communities centered around or outside NTT, thus intensively creating and boosting a new market referred to as video communication. This article reviews the challenges that faced NTT, one of the big businesses in Japan, followed by PictureTel and other players within and outside NTT, all of which were lined up to create various strategic business communities. The article gives careful consideration to the measures taken by these players who achieved success in such a way as to alter employee consciousness, vitalize organizational morale, entrench the new NTT “Phoenix” brand (videoconferencing system) in the Japanese market and create an emergent video network market.

Against the backdrop of recent developments in multimedia and information technology (IT), video‐based information networks being constructed on a platform chiefly composed of the two core technologies of video terminals and ISDN are gaining worldwide recognition through the deployment of videophones, videoconferencing systems, and digital network ISDN technology. New forms of virtual community based on interactive, virtual communication continue to be fashioned, particularly in relation to the promotion of IT in regions of Japan. This paper points out that in the future, video‐based information networks will be an important platform for creating new regional‐level virtual communities to further regional invigoration.

With the infusion of the multimedia technology into the education arena, traditional educational materials can be translated into interactive electronic form through the use of multimedia authoring tools. This has allowed teachers to design and incorporate multimedia elements into the content to convey the message in a multi‐sensory learning environment. The focus in education is thus moving towards using multimedia as the instructional media and a platform in teaching and learning. This paper focuses on using the multimedia design process to enable educators to re‐design their educational curricula into an interactive and media‐rich learning environment. This multimedia educational design process will reinforce and strengthen the traditional instructional communication process and foster a number of innovative methods to communicate knowledge to the learners. In this context, there is a need to adjust the educator's approach to teaching, preparing content and delivering learning materials.

This paper seeks to describe the process used to develop the multimedia design and planning pyramid (MUDPY) ontology, and the role played by the MUDPY ontology as a planning, design and development tool in multimedia projects.

The MUDPY model was implemented for the semantic web by developing an ontology for it. This ontology facilitates defining the concepts existing in that domain, their attributes and the relationships between them.

The MUDPY ontology can guide developers through the various phases of a multimedia project in a systematic fashion by allowing them to create a project proposal, specify the functional requirements, decide on the navigational structure and create a storyboard, and thus create high‐quality projects.

The current system is a prototype. This MUDPY ontology can be extended by adding more classes in order to increase its functionality; for example, one can develop special plug‐in widgets to generate project reports required during multimedia project planning and design.

By using the MUDPY ontology, developers can follow a systematic process for project development, and better manage the complexity of multimedia projects.

The paper introduces the MUDPY model and its ontology, and shows a multimedia author the pathway to manage a multitude of concepts and assets required in a multimedia project.

This paper presents a case study of how, over the last six years a large, a traditional corporation simultaneously created new service markets and established a dominant position in the competitive information and communication technology field in Japan. The corporation accepted a new organizational body that has an entrepreneurial spirit and consists of different types of personnel, then the company continuously promoted entrepreneurial strategies based on time pacing. At the same time, in an attempt to implement strategic innovation, the company integrated the above strategies with deliberate strategies based on event‐based pacing practiced by the existing line organizational body. Through a case study, this paper discusses the factors for success and the problems encountered in the course of achieving strategic innovation in the communications field, i.e. the creation of a new market, through intentionally and strategically having, and furthermore integrating, paradoxical organizations and strategies under a single corporate umbrella.

Outlines the establishment of a course in multimedia technology, which forms part of the curriculum for librarians at the Royal School of Librarianship in Copenhagen, Denmark. The course is organized by the cataloguing and classification department and is presented to final‐year students; it is based on the use of already known theories in classification and cataloguing for structuring multimedia applications. An important part of the course is the creation of a multimedia workstation allowing students to work with the hardware and software required.