The authors assert that in order for multimedia applications to be useful as effective teaching agents, they must be structured to take advantage of the ways in which natural human learning takes place characterized by 4 key factors: learning is goal-oriented, failure-driven, case-based and most effectively gained by doing. Examples are given of what it means to use each of these fundamentals as the basis for creating digital education resources. The authors also advocate moving away from software development "tools", which are broadly applicable, towards software development "factories", which are specialized and would only turn out educational applications which are based educational theory.
