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Katie Morgan

During the first term of the L3 Games Art & Animation course, I realised that some students had limited Adobe Photoshop skills and it would have been difficult to incorporate learning Photoshop into their already full schedule of skills learning and assignments.

 

I had wanted to create a short online course for a long time and had already completed some research about a range of online learning management systems but I found that they all cost quite a bit of money, so I thought it was worth testing out a pilot online course using Google Classroom due to the students being familiar and comfortable with this platform.

Start 27/09/17

Project aims:

Aims

What is the project?

L3 Course Leader of Games Art & Animation, Digital Champion & CCSkills Project Co-ordinator

Online course in Google Classroom 

This project is based around an introduction to Adobe Photoshop outside of the timetabled classroom.

 

Photoshop is an extensive software that is used throughout a range of creative courses such as Games Art & Design, Photography, Graphic Design and Art & Design.

When students start their courses, some have a small amount of knowledge of working with Adobe Photoshop and some have no knowledge whatsoever, so there is a big gap to fill in for students in their first year.

This project, which is based around a short online course, is aimed to even up the disparity in the students skills gap.

Start 27/09/17

See below some screenshots taken from the online course:

Start 27/09/17

Arc Observation Feedback

Example video tutorial - created with Screen-casting software

Digital Badge

The above video is an example of the video tutorials on the online course. The one above is the last topic that they were taught so the students already have an understanding about different types of selection tools and some image manipulation techniques.

As an added incentive I created a digital badge that was awarded to students who completed all elements of the course to a good level.

A digital badge contains data information that verifies the criteria achieved by the individual who it is issued to, and who has issued it.

The great thing about digital badges is that they can be embedded into the students social media, in particular - LinkedIn.

Digital badges are quite a new phenomenon and were first introduced in 2011. Here are some links to do further reading if you are interested:

Digital Badges: What are they and how are they used? 

Open Badges for Lifelong Learning

Feedback

Here are some reflections about the online course from some of the participating students, recorded in June 2018.

Quotes from Students

Was it a positive experience working with Google Classroom as an online course?

“I am used to using Google Classroom with my course, so it was easy to access and all the video tutorials and links helped me to have a better understanding of using Photoshop.”

 

Has it helped you with your coursework?

“It has helped me have confidence to use Photoshop for different parts of my coursework, such as doing a digital storyboard and creating background images.”

Was it difficult to fit this course into your learning schedule?

“Because I was interested in learning Photoshop, I made time to work on it, but I was glad that there was flexibility with the hand ins and it wasn't strictly one week for each topic because I think that could have been a struggle to do".  

Reflection from Katie Morgan

Creating the course took a lot longer than I had anticipated due to having to design and create all of the structure and content, but it was a great feeling when it all came together. It was something I had wanted to do for a long time and I am happy with the positive feedback from the students.

I can use this online course as part of blended learning next academic year and I am definitely going to create some more online courses over the Summer because the pilot has been successful.

I have taken on board the feedback from the students regarding the hand in deadlines and on reflection I could make the deadlines more flexible by making the course duration last for one term - this would enable students to be more flexible with allocating their time to an additional course. Another option would be to create an online course that covers some outcomes of a unit based assignment.

 

A future project that I am interested in developing would be to create a range of short online courses for CCI that could be part of a Full Cost Recovery range. 

This is a project that can be carried over into the 2018-19 academic year.

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