MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGY offers both challenges and great promises for promoting the goals of higher education. The unique characteristics of integrated information formats available in an interactive and flexible application provide a means to research and teach subject matter from new perspectives. The challenge for faculty is to use the technology effectively to foster the goals of higher education. Multimedia applications can contribute to the goals of higher education, if they are designed to support course objectives, contain sufficient materials to study a topic in depth, and provide a means to engage students with the material, each other, and the instructor. These design criteria are implemented in an application using HyperCard to facilitate the teaching of Classical Greece, and they are explored more generally as development criteria for any use of multimedia in higher education. The authors discuss the origins and nature of multimedia and offer practical suggestions for faculty who are interested in applying this technology to their own classroom instruction.