Methodology

The Metamedia project focuses on creating shareable multimedia archives for use in MIT humanities subjects, and, increasingly, in collaboration with outside arts and humanities organizations. Flexible learning tools allow teachers and students to use the archives to create customized teaching modules for use in the classroom.

Humanities subjects often rely on collections, and our approach allows for the creation of "mini-archives" which can be navigated, sorted, and annotated by students. The Metamedia model allows a wide variety of possible navigation interfaces for a given archive, as well as among archives, while maintaining a standardized backbone among all the projects. For this reason, our digital projects are not simply websites; they're flexible and highly interactive learning environment, adaptable
resources which teachers can use to build teaching modules according to their specific needs.