Annie Potts is sprawled on her bed in an old trailer after some romantic dust-up with Mark Hamill. She is plainly inebriated, clutching a bottle of vodka in one hand and a bottle of orange juice in the other. Someone asks her what she is doing. She takes a swig from the left hand bottle and a swig from the right hand bottle before replying, “Makin’ screwdrivers.”

I don’t remember anything else about the movie Corvette Summer (1978) except that scene. I thought of the scene while drinking orange juice today, and it occurred to me this has application to multimedia in instructional design.

Anyone who ventures online much at all encounters a wide variety of multimedia, even with a cursory glance through your Facebook feed. Infographics, videos, animated GIFs have become commonplace. If you’re a content creator, you may have jumped on one bandwagon or another in an attempt to gain eyeballs on that content. I’ve done it more than a few times in my book marketing days.

Clearly Annie Potts’ method would get you drunk and keep you from scurvy. But the inventor of the screwdriver would probably not recommend it as a way to enjoy the drink. (Disclaimer: I’ve never drunk a screwdriver.) Throwing videos into a course, online or not, will not contribute appreciably to the learning of students. I’m grateful to be learning a more methodical approach to the use of multimedia in my IDTE 556 course. The purpose of each tool is important, as well as what it does and how to integrate the end product into a course.

Stay tuned to the journey.