Multimedia Design

When I first looked into the courses that were available as part of the ETAD program, I was very excited by the multimedia and video courses. These are areas that I had dabbled in, but always wanted to learn more and feel more competent in. Due to the accelerated rate at which I completed my BEd., I had only taken one ETAD (then ECMM) courses during my undergraduate years. During this graduate degree, I learned a lot about designing multimedia all the way through, but became especially competent in the second half of my program with ETAD 803 and 879.

In ETAD 873, I learned a lot about research related to visual design. I learned about what makes "good design" and what should be avoided. I found the common debates about typefaces to be interesting and a bit humourous. I learned that there were things that I had been doing in my teaching in regards to visual that were not the best for student learning. For example, one of my goals when creating instructional materials was to save paper, but this causes issues for the users to be able to determine relevance due to lack of white space and simply too much content at one time. When creating materials, I would also use any variety of boldface, italics, and underlines (or all three) without really thinking about it! One piece of evidence of my learning is the instructional prototype (best viewed on a PC with Microsoft PowerPoint) that I developed--it took into account my learning related to visual design. Although, upon reflection two years later, I find that these slides are still quite crowded.

The principles learned in ETAD 873 were carried forward to my work in ETAD 874 on the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society (SHFS) website and slide collection. We were somewhat limited by the templates upon which the websites were built upon, but we worked hard to create a visual design based on our learning in ETAD 873 and the results of our usability testing.

Later in my program, in ETAD 803 and 879, I explored multimedia design head on. I developed a variety of pieces of evidence. One repository of these pieces is my website for ETAD 803. This site contains a variety of assignments that are created in a various media formats.

ETAD 803 Website

One of the highlights of this webpage is the images assignment. This assignment was an opportunity for me to explore taking high quality photographs to be used for instructional purposes. It was also an opportunity for me to think strategically about how to improve and edit the photographs using Adobe Photoshop. Before this class, I would have randomly played around with different features and options. One of my personal goals for this program was to become more proficient in programs like Photoshop. Evidence of this strategic thinking can be seen in my image edits document.

Photo from images assignment

Another highlight of this webpage is the audio lesson assignment. This was the first time I worked with Audacity or a similar digital audio editing program. I understood the basics of how to create an item such as this, but I never took the time to create anything. I loved how this class (and program) forced me to do these things!

My absolute favourite type of media to work with is video! I have loved making videos for as long as I can remember, but again it was something that was always a "nice to do" and not a "need to do". Therefore, it was something I had not really done in years. Throughout this program I ended up creating a lot of videos, including Niels Koehnecke Interview (A Flipped Teaching Approach to Case-Based Learning), Fred Phillips Interview (An Overview of Flipped Teaching), ETAD 879 Shot Selection, and all of the Smugmug training screencast videos.

The Niels Koehnecke and Fred Phillips interviews were the first times I had worked with B-roll. I found it awkward to ask my interviewees if I could record B-roll, but when editing and watching the videos it is clear that it is really beneficial. 

Another video project that is evidence of my growth is the Three Act Math videos project. For this project I worked on a team with Jennifer Brokofsky and we created a set of videos to be used by elementary school math teachers. I am proud of this work because we worked through multiple video ideas before deciding on these four, which were chosen due to their strong curricular connections:

• Bowl full of ice cream
• Sharing pizza
• Candy colours
• Movie line

This project pushed the boundaries of my experience by incorporating multiple cameras and camera angles. When bringing in multiple cameras it was really important to create a detailed script to ensure continuity and flow. Evidence of this continuity can be seen in the clip below.

My final project in ETAD 803 was a resource webpage for the Gwenna Moss Centre on Flipped Teaching. I am very pleased with this page and the attention it has received. It has been referred to and shared numerous times within my work, has received media attention, and it stands out as the most useful artifact of my educational experiences.

GMCTE Flipped Teaching webpage

As part of my daily work, I create instructional media. I have been responsible for developing and creating numerous video resources. I have also completed contract work in developing videos for others (eg. St. Anne Inquiry-Based Learning Community). I know that I have almost infinite room to grow in my multimedia creation skills, but I am really happy with my development of these skills throughout this program.