Communicate clearly to achieve professional goals using visual and verbal modes to explain and persuade.
Artifact:
Reflection:
This artifact was the final product of the “Educational Multimedia Workshop” from EdTech561-Advanced Web-based Multimedia Development. This project began with content and audience considerations, progressed through planning, prototyping and testing, before arriving at the finished product shown above.
Communication is undoubtedly one of the most important skills we can have as designers of learning material. We must often translate complex, puzzling concepts into a simple, easily understandable format. The biggest challenge for this project, as well as just about all others is the ability to say more with fewer words. The ability to boil a complex topic down to a few paragraphs of plain English. Publishing this article in the Encyclopedia of Educational Technology (EET) is a great opportunity to show case our skills and understanding in such a visible forum and to contribute to such a valuable resource for the field of educational technology . Writing this article was also a great chance to practice writing writing clear, concise content items.
This artifact displays my ability to effectively design and deliver effective visual and written (verbal) communications.etc. This project illustrated a good feel for adapting a message appropriately for the given audience and the ability to effectively design that message using many different elements including visual design concepts.
The main thing that I learned from this project was how to take a potentially lengthy, complex topic such as this and boil it down to the essentials. Additionally, it reconfirmed my belief that what constitutes essential is determined by the characteristics of the target audience. One guiding principle I always strive to follow is to say more with fewer words. This is a very challenging goal but one that is extremely important when designing learning content. For example, when designing for general audiences one of the questions I ask myself is “Would my parents understand this?” If the answer is no, then I probably need to continue working until the answer to that question becomes yes.
Another important lesson I took away from this project was the importance of testing. Technical, usability, readability, and learnability testing. Sometimes ideas and concepts that seem simple, intuitive and clear to a designer immersed in a project are not perceived this way by those in the target audience.
