A response-based pedagogy encourages the exploration of multiple perspectives regarding literary works and student construction of defensible interpretations of the same, with the quality of students' critical and creative thinking being the focus of assessment. The National Center for Research on Literature Teaching and Learning's ongoing "Multimedia and Literature Teaching and Learning" project explores the potential of multimedia to facilitate such response-based pedagogies. The project's first stage, detailed in this report, involved reviewing existing commercial applications from a response-based perspective. Seven evaluative categories were established through a series of focus group sessions and then divided into two groupings: multimedia issues and response-based issues. The first three categories--content clarity, technical quality, and use of technology--adopt the former perspective. Response-based issues include: what counts as knowledge, the role of the text, the role of the students, and the role of the teacher. The multimedia literature applications were evaluated by 25 graduate students of literature education and/or instructional technology. Findings reveal that while such programs are generally of high technical quality and linked to works commonly taught in schools, the pedagogical approaches taken are not response-based. Programs designed for elementary students equated literature education with reading instruction; programs designed for high school students generally adopted a traditional text-centered approach. Results also indicate that the applications currently available are technologically, and not pedagogically driven. (AEF)