ITEC 715, Fall 2008
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.
Contact Information
Replace "at" with @ in the email address below to send me mail.
- E-mail: rayc "at" sfsu.edu
Class Slides
- Week 1: Wednesday, August 27,
2008—Intro to course, e-learning demos, e-learning production
process overview, style and writing guidelines
Week 1 Handouts:
- Week 2: Wednesday, September 3,
2008—Student topic pitches, intro to Photoshop, instructional
comics, stock photography sources
Week 2 Supplementary Material
- Week 3: Wednesday, September
10, 2008—Critiquing etiquette, class critique of student
instructional comics, elements of good screen design, frames,
navigation, buttons, themes, metaphors, more Photoshop
- Week 4: Wednesday, September 17,
2008—In-class group critiques of student navigation/layout
mockups, divide and conquer approach to e-learning production,
creating a prototype
- Week 5: Wednesday, September 24,
2008—Designing your course, design document, identifying source
materials, stating learning objectives, content, and assessment
questions, keeping the learner engaged, knowledge checks and other
activities, mapping content to page types
Week 5 Handouts:
- Week 6: Wednesday, October 1,
2008—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 7: Wednesday, October 8,
2008—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 7 Supplementary Materials:
- Introducing GarageBand—A pretty good GarageBand tutorial from IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis)
- Week 8: Wednesday, October 15,
2008—In-class critique of some student recordings, examples
of video in instructional multimedia, producing and editing video,
quick intro to iMovie
Week 8 Supplementary Materials:
- Week 9: Wednesday, October 22,
2008—In-class critique of some student videos, the page type
variety spreadsheet
Week 09 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.
- 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 10: Wednesday, October 29, 2008—Putting the elements together in Acrobat, creating a
PDF from your script, creating functional buttons and links, the
text touch-up tool, image selection tool, and other useful Acrobat
tools
Week 10 Supplementary Materials:
- 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 11: Wednesday, November 5,
2008—Implementing "Expert Answer" pages; the Acrobat "Touch-up Text Tool"; recent research on assessments
- Week 12: Wednesday, November 12,
2008—Worshop Day 1
- Week 13: Wednesday, November 19,
2008—Workshop Day 2
- Week 14: Wednesday, November 26,
2008—Fall Recess: No Class This Week
- Week 15: Wednesday, December 3,
2008—
First half of class final project presentations.
- Week 16: Wednesday, December 10,
2008—Second half of class final project presentations.
- Week 17: Wednesday, December 17,
2008—Final exam day, but no final in this class. Free day.