MULTIMEDIA LEARNING
Last century is considered as the starting point of a series of advancements as regards teaching and learning methods; particularly, if we go back with our memory, we are astonished at how they have changed in a period which proves to be of a relatively small extent. During the XX century, in fact, teaching methods were first deeply influenced by the rise of the behaviorist belief assuming human behavior to work according to a stimulus-response principle; although the behaviorist paradigm was useful in many fields of application, yet it was not very convincing when applied to the human brain since it considered the learner as a sort of machine to be programmed according to a pattern of desired instructions. Soon the behaviorist theory was challenged by the cognitive scholars, who, instead of seeing the brain as a passive acquisition device, dedicated their attention to the various unobservable features which characterize the functioning of the human brain such as memory, motivation, reflection and so forth, and considered the learner as an active part in the learning process. Nowadays new paradigms are spreading – such as the constructivist one (which claims that the only reality is the one we build) –, also according to the new discoveries which are being made and to the new technological possibilities which are going to be available.