In my 20 years in the teaching business, having produced some 75 interactive laserdisc and multimedia programs, I've found the most motivating medium I ever used was a print-based lesson. It was an interactive tool that included a captivating case study with complex consequential branching the likes of which I have never seen again outside of multimedia. And it was a very effective training tool. The Economics of Multimedia There is no mediated program that cannot be mediated by an alternate medium. Unfortunately, the battle between fashion and efficacy seems to have been won by fashion.
Fashion seems to have won out even over economics.
Clearly, there are applications for which multimedia has the most efficacy. But even in these cases, the advantages are economic. For example, it may be a lot less expensive to use a flight simulator than hands-on flight training for pilots. Conversely, I seriously question the use of multimedia to supplant hands-on classroom science experiments or simple dissections in the biology lab. A computer simulation is clearly neater, cleaner, and easier, but it is not an experience.