The effective use of technology is essential for students learning with the assistance of multimedia programs. I recently published an article on About.com about this topic. Here's a blurb:

"A growing number of Online Universities offer multimedia learning components such as chat rooms, collaborative projects, and web conferencing. These multimedia components can help online students effectively master the subject matter. But, multimedia learning also has a downside: inexperienced students can easily become distracted with the platform instead of the subject. It's easy to waste time chatting on course message boards or tuning out a podcast lecture."

To find out more about the effective use of multimedia learning check out: Multimedia Learning in Online Classes.