Multimedia Project Reflection
- ajbachert
- Oct 9, 2022
- 3 min read
This has been a most interesting and helpful course. The concepts and technological possibilities that I learned have definitely helped me to improve my media skills. I have been able to use what I’ve learned in my job already! For my final project, I created a website to help teachers learn how to use Schoology. This was an extension of a professional development lesson that I created for the Integrating Technology into the Classroom course. I planned a workshop for teachers during that course, and I started a very rudimentary website at that point. I never had time to go back and finish it, so this project gave me the motivation to do that. Because of all I learned, I ended up redesigning most of the website by the time I was done.
Design Components
I did utilize the design components that I learned during this course. The idea for the color scheme came from a Canva template. I liked it because blue is a calming color, and the accent colors complemented it well. It looked clean and crisp, and the colors didn’t distract.
To reduce cognitive load, I tried to create a coherent and consistent design by using the same color scheme on every page and on the graphics that I created. I also attempted to create white space and balanced pages with minimal text on each page. For long pages, I created a table of contents, so the reader would have an easier time finding the content they needed.
I used repetition of design elements throughout such as:
common color schemes on webpages and interactive graphics,
consistent fonts and sizes on headers and text, and
navigation hints at the bottom of each page.
Were you able to integrate all of the components you envisioned?
The only component that I didn’t integrate that I’d envisioned was including a link to a PDF with screenshot pictures and directions for each page. My intent in adding these was to provide the teachers with the ability to print a paper copy of the information if they would rather have the information that way. I ran out of time to create all of those, and their absence did not negatively affect the functioning of the website.
I was actually able to use more components than I had originally planned. When I created the story board, we had not yet learned about interactive images. When I learned about those, I immediately knew that it was a piece that I was missing in my design. A training website for the Schoology LMS could easily become very long and cumbersome. The interactive images/graphics helped to simplify several pages, and they allow for the user to find the information they need easily without having to wade through a ton of information.
Is the format of the product what you expected?
Yes, it ended up being what I expected for the most part. Though it is better in some regards than I originally anticipated at the beginning of the semester because I was able to add some new features and my video editing skills improved a little.
As I built the site, I did realize that one of my pages should be combined with another. The “Creating Announcements” topic is something you really have to know in order to use Schoology. It is just a nice perk if someone wanted to use it. In that regard, it fit better in the “Other Features” page rather than a stand-alone page. I put an “Add Materials” page in its place, which is something that you would need to know in order to be able to use Schoology.
What part did Mayer's Principles of Multimedia play during your design process?
I consistently thought of Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia as I worked on my project. As I built the website, I did my best to make it clean and free of extraneous information or images. I used headers, subheadings, and bolded text to highlight important information. I also signaled important information on graphics with animation or highlights. The images or videos and their descriptions were right next to each other in all areas. In the videos I made, I did my best to make sure the graphics and the words were synced well. The whole website was built based on segmenting principles. Teachers can easily find the information they need by going to the page dedicated to that topic. Even within several of the pages, content is segmented into sub-topics. Different modalities were used, and almost every page had spoken words to go along with the visual aids, and I personally narrated the videos that I created. I did not include my image on the screen when I was screen-casting.
Here is the link to the website I created
Comments