ITEC 715, Spring 2012

Class Description

Foundations of Instructional Multimedia is designed for students who are interested in exploring the use of computer applications to create e-learning that incorporates diverse media, including text, graphics, sound, animation, and video, plus interactivity features such as links and buttons. This course will focus on creating the individual media components, and on marshaling these components into an instructionally sound, coherent e-learning project.

• Class syllabus

Contact Information

Replace "at" with @ in the email address below to send me mail.

• E-mail: rayc "at" sfsu.edu

Class Slides

• Week 1: Thursday, January 26, 2012—Intro to course, e-learning demos, e-learning production process overview, style and writing guidelines
  
  Week 1 Handouts:
  
  
  • Point of View
  • Describing Screen Elements
  • Bulleted Lists/Paragraph Styles
  • Less Is More
  • Avoid Passive Voice
  • ID Style and Writing Checklist
    
    
• Week 2: Thursday, February 2, 2012—Development process, e-learning roles and responsibilities, student topic pitches, intro to Photoshop, stock photography sources
  
  
• Week 3: Thursday, February 9, 2012—Instructional comics, Photoshop skills: changing resolution, resizing, selecting, cropping, layers, fills and strokes, text tool Week 3 Supplementary Material
  
  
  • In-Class Comic "How To": A "worked-example" showing how to do the tasks necessary to complete your comic, using the script and images from the in-class comic exercise. Also describes how to save your file and what formats to generate and to turn in next week.

    NOTE: You do not have to turn in this in-class comic. Due next week is a comic you create that is related to your final project topic. The in-class comic is just for you to practice your Photoshop skills before trying to create your own original comic.
    

  • Word Balloons, an alternate method
    
    
• Week 4: Thursday, February 16, 2012—Critiquing etiquette, class critique of student instructional comics, elements of good screen design, frames, navigation, buttons, themes, metaphors, more Photoshop
  
  Week 4 Supplementary Material
  
  
  • Assignment 2: Screen Mockups—This MS Word document gives details on the minimum set of elements you need to include when creating your three screen design mockups for next week. Note that you do not have to put any content in the middle of the screen (we'll deal with the content area later in the course). For now, just design the edges of the screen, making sure you have placed each of the required elements in your design.
    
    
  • Using Prebuilt Shapes in Photoshop—Some simple instructions for converting the "masked" shape layers you get when you use the prebuilt shapes in Photoshop into standard, non-masked layers.
    
    
  • Color Combos web site. Useful for choosing a set of colors that "go" together.
    
    
• Week 5: Thursday, February 23, 2012—In-class group critiques of student navigation/layout mockups, effective use of graphics
  
  Week 5 Supplementary Materials:
  
  
  • Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback: A Powerful New Design Methodology for All Designers—This is the presentation from Michael Allen I mentioned in class this week. About 37 minutes in, there is a terrific demo of an e-learning course for police officers who have to act as first responders on the scene of a possible terrorist incident. Although it uses only simple graphics and its interactivity is essentially just a series of multiple choice questions, it nevertheless is more immersive and has far better (more realistic) context than most e-learning courses I've seen.
  
  
  
• Week 6: Thursday, March 1, 2012—Interaction Design
  
  
• Week 7: Thursday, March 8, 2012—Course Design: design document, identifying source materials, stating learning objectives, content, assessment, keeping the learner engaged, knowledge checks and other activities, mapping content to interactions/page-types
  
  Week 7 Handouts:
  
  
  • E-Learning Design Document Template
    
    
  • Page Type Variety Spreadsheet Template—Use this tool to help you see at a glance if your use of page-types is suffiently varied. If not, consider modifying your design to break up large color blocks (especially large color blocks of non-interactive red). You will need to turn in a completed Page Type Variety Spreadsheet with your final project.
    
    
• Week 8: Thursday, March 15, 2012—Group critique of student design documents, scripting from your design documents, audio in instructional multimedia, microphone basics, digital audio basics, simple recording and editing with Audacity
  
  
• Week 9: Thursday, March 22, 2012—SPRING RECESS (NO CLASS)
  
  
• Week 10: Thursday, March 29, 2012—In-class critique of some student recordings, sound for your splash page, creating theme music with GarageBand, multitrack editing and mixing with Audacity, saving in mp3 format

  Week 10 Supplementary Materials:

  • Introducing GarageBand—A pretty good GarageBand tutorial from IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis)
    
    
• Week 11: Thursday, April 5, 2012—In-class critique of some student recordings, examples of video in instructional multimedia, producing and editing video, quick intro to iMovie

  Week 11 Supplementary Materials:

  • Video Editing with iMovie—A simple overview of iMovie from UC Berkeley
    
    
• Week 12: Thursday, April 12, 2012—In-class critique of some student videos, the page type variety spreadsheet
  
  

Week 12 Supplementary Materials:

• ID Style and Writing Checklist—Use this checklist (from Week 1) to help you make sure that your script is adhering to the appropriate class style guidelines. See the handouts from Week 1, above, for more details on specific style guidelines.
• Final Project Grading Guidelines—This documents the point-assignments for the various elements I'll be looking for in your final projects.
  
  
• Week 13: Thursday, April 19, 2012—Recent research on assessments; leveraging e-learning techniques back in the (non-virtual) world.

Week 13 Supplementary Materials:

• Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319, 966-968.—This is the research paper on testing vs. studying that we will review in class today.
• Performance Learning Filter: Are Your Learning Designs Increasing Organizational Performance?--An archive of a free webinar presented by Scott Colehour, Solutions Architect and Co-Founder of Allen Interactions. The webinar took place online at 11:00 AM Thursday, April 23rd, 2009. Check out the excellent demonstration of two different e-learning designs, both based on the exact same learning objectives. The first is like most e-learning that I see (boring and not terribly effective). The second shows how much more can be done when the instructional designer stops thinking his or her task is to present content, and starts thinking about how to get the learner to demonstrate the desired skills in an appropriate context.
• The Primary Components of Interactive Learning Experiences: Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback—Free archive of a webinar by Michael Allen given Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 10:00 AM. Contains a wonderful demo of an e-learning course that leads with a challenge and has more in common with a video game than with traditional (he might say "boring") e-learning.
• Michael Allen's Guide to E-Learning—My short review: The three books on e-learning that Michael Allen has written so far have been, by far, the most practical and interesting such books I have ever read. This one and his latest one (Designing Successful E-Learning) are particularly outstanding. These books will likely change your view about what good e-learning should strive to do and how it should go about accomplishing its goals. Allen's principles, like "Put the learner at risk" or "Don't start at the beginning" or "Test before telling" run counter to much ingrained practice in the industry. But radical though they are, the principles he lays out are, I think, exactly what is needed to shake e-learning out of its doledrums and take it to the next level where it can actually be of genuine value to the learner. Read these books and you'll never want to design e-learning the "old" way ever again.
• A New View of E-Learning Design: Stages of Change—A free, archived Webinar by Michael Allen.
• Simulations and the Future of Learning—An interesting talk by Clark Aldrich, author of Learning by Doing and Simulations and the Future of Learning
• Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED)—The site that contains the full-length videos of the talks by Evelyn Glennie and Eva Vertes that I excerpted in this week's presentation. Lots of other really interesting stuff on this site; check it out if you have a chance.
  
  
• Week 14: Thursday, April 26, 2012—Recent research on assessments; leveraging e-learning techniques back in the (non-virtual) world.
  
  
• Week 15: Thursday, May 3, 2012—Workshop Day 1: Internal script review.
  
  
• Week 16: Thursday, May 10, 2012—Workshop Day 2: Scripts are due
  
  
• Week 17: Thursday, May 17, 2012—Final Projects and Final Presentations are due