Evaluation

1.  Creating a Multimedia Enhanced Lesson (20%)
Due: Sunday of Week 9

Select a topic in your curriculum area and create a lesson that includes multimedia elements. Share your multimedia resources with your course colleagues. In a post or some other page that supports discussion you must also explain and discuss with others why the use of multimedia in the lesson represents a pedagogically sound approach.

The lesson should be completely deliverable online and address one discrete piece of content (ie. ‘types of owls’, ‘converting miles to kilometers’, ‘writing a topic sentence’). Your lesson may exist on one web page or several and while it may contain or link to media produced by others, it must include at least 3 instances of media across at least 2 genres (graphic, audio, video) that are produced by you.

Write a short (200 – 500 words) supporting blog post that explains how your media supports your lesson. Include your own rationale for the creation and placement of your media. Describe how your use of media in this lesson is supported by readings in the course (how does theory support your use of media?). In other words, this piece should include two assertions: ‘my media is pedagogically sound because…’ and ‘my media is informed by principles/theory/writings of…’.

Your lesson will be assessed for the following features:

1. Media is technically well produced (7)
   Media must play in:
   • Mac OS10 Firefox
   • Mac OS10 Safari
   • Windows Internet Explorer
   • Windows Firefox
2. Media is pedagogically sound and supported by course readings (8)
3. Lesson successfully integrates media (5)

2. Creating a Multimedia Enhanced Student Activity (20%)
Due: Sunday of Week 11

Develop a group activity that requires your students to create a multimedia product (two from: text, image, sound or video) that demonstrates their achievement of a learning objective. As a post on your blog present the activity as it would be encountered by your students. Include the objective or purpose of the activity, all instructions, links and supporting tutorials or content that your students would need to complete the activity.

In a comment attached to your post (or in a second post linked from the first) detail the learning outcome(s) met by your activity and the audience it was developed for. Explain why the use of multimedia in the activity represents a pedagogically sound approach. Do this by referring to theories of learning and/or principles you use to guide your teaching. Check the activities developed by your fellow students and comment on what you find.

	Not Yet	Meets Minimum Requirement	Fully Meets Requirement
Activity supports stated learning objective	Activity is only superficially related to the learning objective	Activity mostly supports the learning objective but a significant portion of it does not	All or almost all aspects of the activity support the learning objective
Instructions and supporting materials provide for student success	A significant portion of the target audience would not successfully complete the activity given the supporting instructions and materials	Student success is likely but one or two elements of the instructions or supporting materials are problematic	Supporting instructions and materials are complete and age appropriate
Activity page is designed in a way that promotes student learning	Layout of the activity page makes it significantly difficult for students to find or follow instructions or supporting materials	Activity page design makes navigation through the activity possible but one or two points of possible confusion exist	Activity page design makes entire activity process clear and accessible

3.  Media Exemplar Collection (45%)
Due: Friday of Week 13

The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate your proficiency in the design and production of educational media in three genres. You will produce an example of an educational graphic (or photo), an audio piece and a video. Each of these pieces of media will be embedded within a web page in such a way that its educational value to your students is enhanced.

These media pieces may be developments or refinements of pieces you did for an earlier activity in this course. The media pieces must consist wholly or significantly of original graphic, audio or video content produced by you. If you want to submit a piece that is a re-purposed and modified version of existing work then you should discuss this with the instructor. Your media pieces may be created as part of a larger website (ie. a unit or activity site) or they may be standalone pages on your blog or some other system. Either way, please create a blog post that links to each specific exemplar.

Your exemplars may be created early in the course as part of some of these activities and you are encouraged to solicit and use feedback from fellow students and the instructor in perfecting these exemplars before they are formally submitted for the assignment.

Following are some important considerations for each type of media.

Media Type	Elements to Consider
Graphic	simple design highlights important elements of graphic appropriate size appropriate alternate text is used in ‘alt’ and ‘title’ fields file type is appropriate to graphic (ie. gif or png for non-photo graphics) appropriate caption graphic content supports learning
Photo	cropped and scaled appropriately file type is appropriate to photo (ie. jpg or png) appropriate alternate text is used in ‘alt’ and ‘title’ fields appropriate size photo incorporates appropriate elements and excludes distractions appropriate caption photo content supports learning
Audio	audio file is easily understood audio file is embedded in a form that works across browsers (ie. Firefox, IE, Safari etc.) audio content supports learning download link is provided length is appropriate to purpose
Video	audio and graphical content of video supports learning graphical portion incorporates important elements and excludes distractions video file is in an appropriate file format(s) (ie. mp4, webm, ogg) video format is necessary (ie. how does this support learning better than a still image with audio?) video file is embedded in a form that works across browsers (ie. Firefox, IE, Safari etc.) download link is provided length is appropriate to purpose

The collection is due at the end of Friday of week 13.

4.  Online Discussion and Participation (15%)

You will be actively participating in the online discussion seminars throughout this course and completing activities designed to teach you the technical and pedagogical principles of digital media. Of the 15% assigned for this component of evaluation 10% will reflect the completion of activities and 5% will reflect commenting on the works of other students and engaging in discussion.

You are building your learning community by participating in online discussions, contributing to your blog and commenting on your fellow learners blogs, reading from sites  in the educational community and researching about current  and emerging issues in using multimedia in education. These interactions form the common communication in an online “learning community”. You may want to explore learning communities a bit further. A helpful place to learn more is Creating a Personal Learning Network with Web 2.0 Tools.