Producing Digital Content-Reflection

I must admit that in the beginning, this course seemed a bit daunting. When I first heard the name of the course, "Producing Digital Content" , I did not know what to expect. My first thoughts were that I would have to spend unpredictable and enormous amounts of time attempting to learn a new programming language and figuring out how to weave what I learned into elements that would make for a student-friendly course. That was not the case at all. It is true that in the beginning, I spent lots of time acclimating myself to the instructor side of the course management system, experimenting with learning how to navigate with the instructor tools, figuring out the difference between an "item" and a "module page", and when should each be used, but after putting in the extra time the first three weeks, I was able to read each course lesson along with supplementing materials and implement them into my course rather quickly. This was time well spent.

Other items that made building the couse more student-friendly were the step-by-step instructions of the instructor and the Blackboard video tutorials that suppplemented each of the course lessons. The videos were  immensely helpful because the visuals actually demonstrated how the tools could be used in building the course, giving credence to the cliche, " a picture is worth a thousand words".

The instructor was very helpful and the initial Collaborate (live) session put to rest most of the inhibitions I had about taking the course. One good thing is that the previous course, "Designing Online Courses", (difficult as it was) linked well and logically with this course and made it much easier to build the actual course. Additionally, the pace of the lessons was just about right; lessons were not so packed where I did not have time to complete the assigned tasks, especially when I experienced a few technical challenges along the way.

Writing for Print Media

The course that I built was a traditional journalism classroom course, "Writing for Print Media". I began by creating the above banner for the course and selecting a "look" for the course from available templates in Blackboard, the course management system. For the course menu, I selected the "button" look, rather than links because buttons stand out and make the course more visually appealing.  Course management buttons look similar to the blue buttons in the below picture:

Each subsequent lesson covered elements that were mapped out in the design phase of the previous course. In 'Producing Digital Content",  I attempted to build my course according to best practices of online teaching and learning using a quality matters rubric as a guide. Using the quality matters rubric is very important because it takes into account what a course should look like, to meet the needs and expectations of almost any type of student (i.e., those who have physical challenges, visual learners, auditory learners, etc.). Since I am still rather new at designing and building an actual course, I kept my course structure, digital content, and instructional modalities rather conservative, using basic multimedia such as videos, lesson recordings and Internet links. The good thing is that this course provided me with a comfort level and a foundation to couch in the more high level digital content at a later time or in another course.

It was a long journey but I learned a lot along the way.



Producing Digital Content

This course promises to be interesting as well as challenging. During the course of the online graduate certificate program, each course built on the one before it and each course provided a wealth of new information. I believe this course will be just as intense. This is where everything I learned to place in a blueprint and design comes together and is built.

My aspirations and expectations for this course are to carefully consider the design from the previous course (Designing Online Courses) and produce digital content that can support that design. I know  there is a wealth of technology available to support my design and because I know the nature of technology and how it changes at such a rapid pace, my challenge will be selecting the best tools/technology to use. My goal is to construct a course and keep it as simple as possible for students. I really want the course to be as user-friendly  as possible and easy to navigate for students.  While I will build the course the course from an instructor's vantage point, I want to keep the students' vantage point in mind to optimize their learning experience.

Another challenge will be creating the actual course elements described in the course design such as the syllabus, tests, and assignments using the the available tools in the learning management system. This is where my ability to think creatively and make good use of the tools will be challenged.

I know that we will be using the Blackboard user manual as a reference guide and I hope that the guide provides clear instructions on the tools that are available in the learning management system and rationale for how they can be employed in building a good course. With committment on my end to invest the time and energy into the course, I am up for the challenge!