Can you say drivel?1 I totally didn’t say anything I meant here, but I had to fulfill the stupid requirements for the assignments. I really just didn’t care, so I spit out these generic, lame assignments and expect a mediocre grade.
Information Design—Week 6, Assignment 2
- Is this user-centered information design?
- Does the information design plan flow through the stages completely?
- Is the information design offering enough detail and clarity that another interactive professional could execute this project plan based only on this document?
Information design—Week 5, Assignment 3
…write four or five ABCD style project objectives for your own course information design project.
Information Design—Week 5, Assignment 2
…critique Information Design on the AiO online Classroom and write at least one page considering these issues:
- Navigation and interface design
- User centered design (from the viewpoint of the user - you, in this case)
- Use of interactive media for educational purposes in terms of rich media
- What type of learning styles is used here
- Identify the Global and local navigation
- Where are the features located
Although the classroom interface took a while to get used to, it’s organization does make sense to me. Listing weekly assignments and course lectures in one, consistent location from page to page makes it easy to know where to look for that information.
It would be convenient for users and less interruptive if there were other ways to move linearly from page to page—in-page links to the next and previous pages in a lecture, for instance.
Being enrolled in a course in AIO’s Interactive Media Design baccalaureate program, I was surprised and disappointed to see that the very classroom environment in which I am learning Web design best practices does not adhere to the generally accepted recommendations of the W3C. The classroom environment’s underlying HTML and Javascript code doesn’t even come close to validating. ( http://validator.w3.org/ )
The discussion questions’ navigation is awkward. I don’t like drop-down menus for navigational purposes; they should be used only for selecting a value when filling out a form. Moving from one discussion question page to the next should be as easy as clicking a link. The questions themselves should be displayed in the assignment outline at the top of the page; a user shouldn’t have to visit each question’s individual page to find out what the question is.
I like the threaded-discussion concept, but it is poorly implemented here. Expanding and collapsing each post is terribly tedious; that you can expand all posts at the top of the page is the only redeeming functionality, but it is pointless to have. That particular “feature” should go away—or at the very least default to expanded—as it interferes with use of the classroom.
Also, a full-text search on the comments and/or lectures/lessons would be a great addition to the environment. Often, I’ve needed to recall another student’s comment, but couldn’t remember which lesson or assignment it was on. In the case of the discussion questions, it was particularly troublesome to find them because of the awkward navigation between them.
I like the timelines and helpful graphics offered in the lecture, but this is nothing that can’t be done in a book. Occasionally, there is an interactive presentation which requires feedback from the user—inline quizzes or interesting presentations—which greatly add emphasis to the subject matter in a new and different way. These are good.
In my opinion, associating a face to the information I’m learning would be helpful; AIO should be utilizing video-recorded lectures. This would be a more full use of the interactive multimedia available on the Web.
I would appreciate more links to other good online resources within the lectures and lessons. It would be helpful if AIO would utilize some of the new link-sharing services available, such as http://del.icio.us , to share the links associated to a subject matter with their students.
While I’m on that subject of bookmarks… a method of internal bookmarking would be a handy, interactive alternative to note-taking. Image this: while reading a lecture online, a student reads a couple sentences which succinctly summarize the material. He wants to remember this information. Instead of copying and pasting these lines into a word processor as notes, why shouldn’t he be able to highlight the passage on the page, then click a button in a site-wide toolbar that sends the excerpted text, along with the lecture title, which page it was on, and other metadata, to a list of his in-course bookmarks? These could then be sorted by the time they were bookmarked, their location, alphabetically, or a number of other schemes that would help him to find the information he has saved in an efficient manner.
The AIO classroom utilizes mostly visual means of teaching. On occasion, there have been audio samples available, but they are few. Kinesthetic learners are, for now, out of luck in an online classroom environment, because their just isn’t currently a way to physically involve students with virtual topics in a virtual environment.
The global navigation is on top: Gradebook, Email, Chat, etcetera. The local navigation, which changes from course to course, depending on the material, is on the left in a hierarchical, collapsible list. Further, there are two more global navigation items at the bottom of every page for exiting a course or logging out of the system. These could be considered courtesy navigation items except that they don’t appear anywhere else in the UI.
Information Design—Week 5, Assignment 1
Examine how interactive games are used to educate: Are they effective? What is edutainment? Are interactive games catering towards one type of learner? If so, which one.
Interactive games are effective. Children and adults alike often enjoy being challenged mentally as much as they enjoy being entertained. The skill and knowledge necessary to excel in educational games is learned and honed in playing the game.
The Carmen Sandiego CD-ROM games were introduced in the 1980s. The computer games featured geography and history trivia, and players had to answer questions correctly (ie, learn the answers) in order to advance to the next round. The Oregon Trail is fondly remembered by many who played it as children, fording rivers, hunting wild game, and hoping no members of their entourage died of sickness. The game and its many derivatives taught players the perils of cross-country travel in the mid-1800s, from hostile natives to broken wagon wheels.
“Edutainment is a form of entertainment designed to educate as well as to amuse.” The Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego are examples of interactive edutainment—games that, in addition to entertaining players, teach. These types of interactive games cater best to auditory and visual learners. Kinesthetic learners are to some degree left out because there currently are few ways to physically interact with a computer—mostly just a keyboard and mouse.
Information Design—Week 5, Assignment 1
Discuss the three different learning styles that are important to be considered for planning effective instruction. Provide sufficient examples and situations that involve each type of learning style.
There are three ways in which people learn:
It is important to consider these learning styles in the information design process in order to best reach your intended audience.
Pictures, illustrations, graphs, charts, and diagrams will help visual learners to glean information from a project. An example of visual information design can be found at the Google Finance Web site, http://finance.google.com/finance. Users can easily see trends and analyze performance of individual stocks, options, bonds, and entire markets simply by viewing the graphs and charts. These visual aids supplement the raw data and make it easier to digest for the visual learner.
Auditory learners learn best through hearing information. They are keenly aware of sound around them: a vehicle passing on the street, a child laughing in an upstairs room, crickets in the evening darkness, water dripping from a leaky faucet. Often they cannot concentrate in noisy atmospheres. The auditory learner easily memorizes information when it is put to song; they are inadvertent suckers for advertising jingles. They will often get songs “stuck” in their heads.
A good example of an auditory learning interface is Apple’s iTunes music store. If an auditory learner knows who sings a song, he can browse that artist’s music, listening to song samples until the tune is played that he is looking for.
Kinesthetic learning is learning by “doing,” physically participating in an activity to learn about a subject matter. An example of this could be when an instructor shows her class how to create a certain effect in Photoshop. The class will need to follow along not only with verbal instructions, but by actually repeating the steps on his or her own terminal.
Information Design—Week 4, Assignment 2
…continue your proposed information project from the previous weeks, and add the following documents:
- Information Architecture Map
- Define the structure through mapping diagrams and symbols
- Label the type of branching used on this map (linear, radial, hierarchy or a mix) in each area it changes. You must use at least two different mapping strategies. In addition please write notation to why you chose this branching style.
- Sketch two possible layouts for the Main Page and two possible layouts for the Inner Wireframe layouts - in paper and pencil or through the computer software of your choice. You need to post your work as a jpeg, gif, Word .doc or PowerPoint file so your classmate can view your work.
- Give two options for the Main Global Interface by sketching in pencil and paper.
- Define the parameters that you will follow to develop an effective User Interface for the User group defined last week.
Continue compiling your information project elements developed weekly into a Power Point presentation.
The information design for this project utilizes hierarchical branching.
And to fulfill this requirement, here’s a linear approach:
Home page
Inside page
Home page
Inside page
This part of the assignment is redundant. See above.
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