Multimedia and Contiguity Principles

In this week’s assignment, I created a short presentation that shows learners how to identify and read QR Codes. The reason why I have selected this topic is because in my institute, we are trying to get students to learn to scan useful educational resources through embedded the QR Codes in their notes and handouts.

The presentation is located here
https://docs.google.com/a/u.boisestate.edu/presentation/pub?id=13ENgqJHcNXTUngzIp-O9CO0U-Xvj9vKxv3OD1QKUY2E&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000#slide=id.p

I have included a screen capture of one of the slides for discussion in the post.

In this slide, there are actually animation which I will not be able to help you visualized unless you view the google docs presentation file. However, I wanted to just help you see how I apply the multmedia and contiguity principles.

First, I wanted to show a real example of a QR Code, therefore I insert an example of QR Code below the sub-title text.

Secondly, I animated the yellow box with the full meaning of QR Code to appear directly below the blue words QR.

Secondly, I wanted to help learners identify QR Codes by noticing a distinctive feature of the 3 squares located at the 3 corners of the code by using 3 red arrows and a corresponding text caption.

The above are just some examples in my set of slides. Do feel free to view the entire presentation and share with me your views.

Thanks!

 

Week 13 – Final Project Draft

This week, we begin to post the links of our final project drafts. The process of developing the final project is almost liken to constructing the scaffold for a building.

As I looked through the posts of my peers, I learnt from their work as such:

– Clean neat website with CSS, very mobile friendly website (Russell’s work)
– More details about the lesson accompany each instructional image (Tony, Barry’s work)
– Use of Hyperlink of an image to link from one lesson to another ( Kevin’s work)
– Use of Thumbnails to represent each lesson (Noah’s work)
– Placing information of instructional goal on the page with the instructional image (Sarah’s work)

Through looking at their work, it is almost of gaining new ideas on how to scaffold the construction of my own final project.  There is still some weeks left to final deadline, and I hope to make my site even better.

Currently, my final project draft (see screen capture below) has the basic html navigational structure up, with links to most of the images, and an avatar animated with my own voice. I see potentials to improve on using of thumbnails, and placing information of instructional goals on the pages with the images. I also wondering how to make the site even more mobile friendly. Now, got to spend more time chewing on what I have learnt from my peers and synthesis into new ideas for my site.

Credits:
image of Scaffold
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrbelex/454726783/

Color and Depth in Graphics

This week, I learn how to use colors and depth in graphics to enhance learning. One of the greatest personal gain in this week is to learn to use colors to represent quantity and measurement.

Besides learning from all the posts from my classmates, I was keen to find out more examples on the internet that applies the principles that I have learnt this week. So I looked around and managed to find some more examples:

Example (1) Map of Spread of SARS 

(click on image to go to source of image)
In this image, darker red colors represents areas that have a greater number of people infected with sars

 

 

 

 

 

Example (2) Flow System
(click on image to go to source of image)

In this image, colors are used to group regions together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Example (3) Tornado Cross Section

(Click on image to go to source)

In this image, texture is used on the tornado to create some form of realism for the learners. A mixture of different shades of grey, white, light blue were used on the tornado. The way the colors are integrated together create some sense of “texture”. Thus learners are able to image this as an three dimensional object, rather than two dimensional. The ground is also give a brown texture to represent a normal ground on earth.

I hope to come across more examples through my classmates work this week! And definitely looking forward to the next week’s lesson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CARP – learning to balance the action elements

This week, I learn to apply the CARP action elements into my design project. The elements are (contrast, alignment, repetition, proximity).

Personally, I realised that the contrast action element easiest to apply. While alignment and proximity element may come in conflict with each other sometimes. In some images, if I attempt to align all the instructional text together, I may not be able to place in the text in close proximity to the relevant graphic element within the image.

Secondly, while I agree that repetition provides some form of consistency for the learners, I asked myself whether too many repetition may cause the learners to be “bored”. To be able to answer this question, I guess its best to survey the learners themselves. So perhaps its a good idea to do some form of evaluation of the learning materials not only during the stage of designing the graphics, but even at the end when the learners have completed the learning of the subject content.

I also began to look around on the internet for more examples of how the principles are applied and came across the following:

CARP Design Principles (slideshare)
http://www.slideshare.net/jaeger33/carp-design-principles

I also realised that CARP can be applied in design web pages
http://cis2.cuyamaca.net/jreed/212/presentations/WebDesign.pdf

I think understanding and application of CARP is a good start in designing graphics for learning, and this same set of action elements can definitely be applied in a variety of setting – including designing website for learning.

ACE is good – but can be difficult to PACE

Into the 7th week of the EDTECH 506 module, I believe my peers felt the same way as I do – that it can take a lot of time just to design and develop an image for learning and teaching.

This week, I attempted to design an image to help learners understand the structure for my chosen unit of instruction. I took many hours to plan, create and revise the image.

In my view, ACE model (Lohr, 2008) is definitely useful for creating graphics for learning. But I also begin to see that the first 2 components of the model – Analyze and Create , can take up considerable amount of time compared to the 3th component of Evaluate. I took almost 5 hours on the Create component of the ACE model for this week’s assignment.

Here is the outcome of my work:

Reflecting on this week’s assignment experience, I began to ask myself “How much time can a teacher afford to do graphic design for learning on a daily basis?”. Planning curriculum normally takes up considerable amount of time, and on top of that – teachers have to juggle teaching and marking of students’ work. Should institutions employ Instructional Designers to do graphic design work? or Should institutions rethink the work scope of a teacher? If teachers need the time to do graphics development work, then institutions need to rethink how they could help teachers to allocate more time for it.

Therefore, while I fully agree ACE is a good model to be applied in designing graphics for learning – I believe we should learn to better support teachers in the pacing their development work of learning resources-> and seeing it as a means to enhance the learning process of our students.

References:

Lohr, L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: lessons in visual literacy. Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall.