Recent Work

I will use this space to upload any recent work from time to time.

In my discussions with colleagues and associates in other institutions, sometimes the topic comes up as to what I have been working on lately. The issue I face is that a lot of my work around design and creation digital learning resources or online and blended learning courses sit behind ‘walled-gardens’ i.e. on systems that reside behind the institutional firewall. This means that internal folk can access them easily, whilst people from other institutions can’t! However, on rare occasions I do use external systems due to the nature of the project or because a specific technical requirement, and below are some examples of some recent work that I have been working on which happen to be hosted externally, and so available to view below.

I will be blogging more detailed pieces soon about how to scope, design, create, deploy and promote digital learning resources such as video explainers, infographics, podcast, screencasts etc for learning for the benefit of readers to pick-up some tips and techniques, and also guides on how to create these quickly and effectively.

Do let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Video Explainers

Video Explainers are short multimedia videos that explain complex ideas clearly and succinctly in visual form. The first time, I came across one of these was way back in 2008 when I watch the renowned CommonCraft explainer videos.

Video explainers require a detailed scoping discussion with a Subject Matter Expert (SME), collation/creation of content, creation of script, storyboarding, voiceover recording, editing, creation of multimedia and attaching the audio voiceover.  Finally, there is a need of publishing the material appropriately, and communicating the resources to learners.

The Video Explainers below (I call them MicroExplainers, as they are under 5 minutes only) was created using Videoscribe, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Audtion, a quiet room for recording and a glass of water (to keep the voice chords moist for voiceover! 🙂 ).

Here’s my attempt:

Infographics

Infographics are very popular way of visually representing information, ideas and knowledge. Many a time, learners find having to read extra pages taxing, whereas content that is presented with graphics, charts, icons can enable learners to quickly grasp complex problems easily.

Here are some of my recent attempts:

Online Learning Resources

Bite-sized online learning courses designed, storyboarded and developed using industry-standard applications such as Adobe Creative Suite and Articulate 360.  Here are screenshots of some of the online learning resources.

Corporate Branding and Intranet Design & Development

A full corporate brand for a large essential department and website design, architecture and development using Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Sharepoint and PowerPoint.

Online learning design, project management, deployment and maintenance

The co-design, development, deployment and maintenance of the University-wide mandatory online training suite, which consists of HTML 5, mobile-friendly courses and assessments for the entire staff workforce and from all levels of hierarchy. Subjects included Equality & Diversity, Safeguarding, Safe & Supported (Prevent), Health & Safety, Students’ Consumer Rights, Data Protection (GDPR) and Information Security. My contribution was to source a vendor to take on development of the suite of courses, I contributed to the design of some of the products and project managed the overall project whilst collaborating with the external supplier. The final suite of products was a mixture of off-the-shelf, customised and bespoke courses. The courses were further integrated into Blackboard and other corporate reporting systems (BILP, Tableau) in order for relevant analytics and management reports to be produced for managers to monitor compliance in their areas on a monthly basis.