By KarI Y. Snyder, MFA
The Digital Media 1350 course at the University of Houston was originally developed by other instructors. While the course has brought about successful results, I kept hearing comments from students and other frustrated instructors regarding poor course organization and lack of detailed instruction.
- Instructional Designer
- Project Manger
- Creative Director (all graphics)
- Lead Writer
Myself
- 4 months
- Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator)
- Blackboard
The former assignment instructions lacked:
The new assignment instructions:
For many assignments, I also redesigned the work to better utilize design skills rather than focusing only on technical skills.
Formerly, assignment eight had students select parts from other images to randomly stick into a final composite.
The reworked assignment utilizes design skills mixed with composite skills to create a holistic story-based image.
Project instructions and templates were another factor what was radically redesigned. The original instructions did not include a range of examples, and they lacked detailed instructions, along with any point of reference to real-world research skills. Students consistently missed critical technical, or design factors in their project work.
The redesigned project instructions offer numerous examples of quality student work; a project timeline for better time management; design objectives, technical objectives; project resources; and ways that a student could earn extra credit. Separately, the student was also required to develop a research document that noted their project’s target market; their competition, facts on why their chosen design is better than the competition, and a summary of analytical thinking that showcased how they leveraged their technical software skills.
Beyond the assignments, I redesigned the course schedule to be highly visual with lecture topics clearly separated from lab topics; and color based notations for project due dates. Finally, the Blackboard experience was changed to best present the most pertinent information to the students quickly and effectively on their home page; and to better navigate through materials within the course.
