audio-video material. Great ingenuity and specialist expertise were used in developing the
instructional material in print for effective teaching learning in microbiology (Coomaraswamy,
1999).
When developing the self-learning computer mediated teaching package at OUSL, the
emphasis was placed on the instructional design, interface design in particular in order to help
the learners to achieve meaningful learning experience. Interface designing is crucial, to
produce an effective IMM, because the appearance of all display elements on the screen will
affect how the learners will interact with the program. Therefore, careful attention has to be
made, in designing educational software packages that will take the advantage of multimedia
capabilities, without loosing the focus of the learner’s attention or the content being presented.
The purpose of this research paper is to explore the learner perceptions of the design features
of the IMM, which visualizes the complex, microbial processes that occur within bacterial cells,
in developing a more user friendly, authentic instructional package. In order to address this,
the study examined the following aspects: a) How useful were the user interface in helping
students learn? b) How effective is the navigational design?