A multimedia authoring tool for language instruction

We describe a multimedia-based Russian-language course at Colgate and a multimedia authoring system that makes the creation of such courses technically feasible for language instructors. The system uses high-level visual tools to integrate the various media components of the educational unit and to establish links between them. Although designed with language instruction in mind, the system can be used for creating educational materials in any domain, as long as they consist of video/animation clips (or other linear sequences), accompanying texts, glossaries, and hypertext/hypermedia commentaries.