An effective multimedia work must have one clearly identifiable purpose.
A purpose is a general statement about what the multimedia tries to achieve.
For example: An educational multimedia work aimed at lower primary might have the purpose of teaching young children to read.
While purpose gives a general sense of direction for a multimedia work, it is also necessary that a multimedia work has clearly identifiable objectives associated with the purpose.
Objectives are SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE/OBSERVABLE statements about what needs to be achieved in order to fulfil the purpose. There are usually multiple objectives. For example, objectives for the multimedia work example above might be stated as:
- to teach children to recognise the full stop, comma and exclamation punctuation marks
- to help children understand how the full stop, comma and exclamation marks impact on expression while reading
Objectives are stated using "doing" words.