Workshop Summary
Boost engagement in your courses with this hands-on workshop! Explore Adobe Express, Microsoft Copilot, and ThingLink to create 360° visuals, interactive activities, and creative templates. Build foundational skills to design Scenario-Based Learning, virtual tours, and more while fostering accessible and inclusive learning experiences. Perfect for educators ready to transform teaching!
The following is a recording of the workshop that took place on January 23, 2025 via Zoom (webinar).
Read the video transcript
0:00
All right, so as I said, there’s a, there’s quite a bit I want to get through today.
0:05
We’re going to be talking about 3 different tools, which is quite a lot.
0:08
And hopefully, fingers crossed all of them decide to work as intended today ’cause when we’re dealing with technology, you never know what’s going to happen.
0:17
So yeah.
0:18
But that said, thank you all for joining us at our our Play Shop today on foundations for interactive content creation, generating graphics and images.
0:27
For those who I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, my name is Jessica Henderson.
0:31
I’m a senior instructional designer in the EHE office of Distance Education and Learning Design.
0:38
I joined this particular office in October, but I came over from Arts and Sciences where I worked for about 3 1/2 years on a range of courses in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences.
0:50
As I mentioned to a few of you earlier though, my particular personal background is in the second language instruction and acquisition.
0:57
So I taught Italian courses at Ohio State for about 6 years and supported several cultural studies courses.
1:04
My focus in particular was Medieval and Renaissance literature and and film studies, but in my current role my interests are particularly designing and utilizing approaches that really impact student motivation and engagement.
1:17
So I work a lot with scenario based learning style approaches.
1:21
I’m very interested in gameful learning and some gamification, particularly in relationship to digital educational escape rooms, which I’ve started to experiment with quite a bit more recently.
1:33
With that said, that’s a little intro to who I am just a little bit about sort of what we have planned for today.
1:42
Our goals for the workshop are really just to help you gain some familiarity with specific image related functions of a few of the tools.
1:50
So all of these tools have multiple capabilities, but we’re really just going to focus on the the image components of them today.
1:57
You’ll learn some tips and tricks for quickly creating background graphics and images, reusable templates that you can use later to create interactive content.
2:09
In terms of the the actual interactivity, we’ll focus more on just sort of a broad understanding of how these images can be used for interactivity.
2:16
But it’s really going to be helping you learn how to gather these these resources and create these resources that you can later do what you will with, whether it be virtual tours or escape rooms or other interactivity of of your choice, specific objectives.
2:33
You’ll be able to leverage graphic templates and generative AI tools, particularly to create not just 2D graphics, but also 360 images for more immersive experiences.
2:44
You will be able to draft some visual templates that you could ultimately share with your students and then they could customize for creative assignments.
2:52
And then you’ll also utilize images, be able to utilize images to create, you know, foundations for your own interactive content.
2:58
Like I mentioned in terms of our agenda, in terms of our agenda for the day, before we dive into this sort of hands on piece, I just want to briefly touch on, right, why do images even matter?
3:12
How are they important to the learning environment and the learning experience?
3:16
And then the bulk of our workshop will of course be hands on divided into sort of two different chunks.
3:21
The first being more working with those generative AI capabilities, the second being working with existing templates and graphics that we can sort of use to, to customize to, to our own needs.
3:34
And then hopefully we will have enough time at the end to sort of go through a few use cases and an interactive examples that you can see to sort of spark some ideas for after the workshop.
3:47
So as I mentioned, I’m kind of, I want to kind of start with this question of why do images matter, right?
3:54
Why, why should we care about incorporating images when we’re designing learning content, especially online?
4:01
And a few things to highlight here is that the research shows that images can can really support learning in a variety of ways, right?
4:09
It can, they can help us to organize information and make processing of new information a bit easier to turn into sort of our working memory and to retain for later.
4:18
They can also impact motivation and engagement in different ways, which we will touch on in a moment.
4:25
And then as I’ve said multiple times already, they can really serve as these sorts of backgrounds and and foundational supports for other types of interactive active learning strategies such as scenario based learning, virtual tours, all of those things to start with sort of this, this processing of information idea, right?
4:45
I want to point out, if you’re not aware of Richard Mayer and his 12 principles of, of multimedia learning, he conducted this research back in, in 2009, but he talked specifically about how you know, in, in terms of processing information, we have these two core channels that we that we utilize to process information, our visual through the eyes.
5:07
So taking in things like written words and pictures.
5:10
And then the second being our verbal channel, which is through the ears or the type of spoken word that we might hear.
5:17
And one of the things he talks about is this idea that we have these two channels, but each one has a certain limit, right?
5:24
Or a certain point at which if we go over our limit or over that capacity, we’re unable to process additional information.
5:32
And so when we’re designing content, utilizing images, utilizing text, our goal is really to sort of balance these channels and ensure that, you know, we’re not reaching past a certain point.
5:43
And I list here 2 specific types of cognitive overload, one being intrinsic, which is related to the topic itself.
5:53
You know, I’m not going to teach my second year old, my second grade daughter, cognitive learning theory, right?
5:59
The, the topic itself is going to be too much for her to handle.
6:03
She doesn’t have that type of background knowledge to be able to process that information.
6:07
So that’s sort of our intrinsic cognitive overload.
6:10
Extrinsic cognitive overload is related to the presentation and delivery of information.
6:17
And I highlighted that one here because in terms of utilizing images and other multimedia, that’s that’s the type of cognitive overload that we can really kind of control and balance based on the design choices that that we’re making, you know, use using images to help us organize information, right?
6:35
We can use images to to have signaling cues where it sort of prompts students to the type of task they’re meant to perform, whether it be watching a video, doing a reading, all of those those kinds of things.
6:48
I apologize if you hear my dog snoring.
6:52
OK, good.
6:56
The other thing I wanted to mention too is how images can also impact our affective dimension, right.
7:01
So the the sort of emotions and and desire that we experience while learning.
7:05
And I particularly highlight the, this concept of a positive versus negative affect here, where positive affect or those emotions, right, where that arouse curiosity and, and creativity and a sense of value versus negative affect.
7:19
That’s been sort of defined as this depth, depth first thinking, right, where, where we’re focusing more on problems and issues.
7:26
And it creates the sense of distractors where we can’t focus on the task at hand.
7:32
And when we’re thinking about design, especially in, in, in Carmen or Scarlett or whatever sort of learning platform we’re using, I like to bring up the examples of just websites that we’ve experienced in our daily lives, right?
7:43
We’ve all sort of, I’m sure, experience some sort of website, probably a government website also, right, where we just can’t find the information that we need, right?
7:52
The links aren’t obvious or there’s so much text that we can’t comb through the materials to, to find that key information.
7:59
And those types of experiences can lead to a sense of, of frustration that sort of forced us to, to just want to sort of give up and leave and ultimately be demotivating.
8:10
So images can really impact that piece of things both positively and negatively, right?
8:16
But there can be so many images, especially now if you go to to read an article on, you know, the New York Times or something, and you’re bombarded with all of these advertisements and images that become sort of sensory overload that that too can become a frustrating experience.
8:30
So again, we have to sort of find this balance between the images that we’re using, making sure that that they have a purpose, right, that they’re connected to the content and things like that.
8:45
The other way images can can sort of impact learning is by, as I mentioned earlier, supporting active learning, right?
8:50
So where the student is actively engaged and participating in the learning.
8:56
Again, as a with a sort of foreign language background, we always refer to sort of input and output tasks.
9:02
So I like to think about passive learning as being more of the the input, right?
9:06
The student is just receiving input but not really doing anything physical with it.
9:11
Versus active learning where it’s sort of, it’s more of a combination of input and output.
9:16
They’re receiving information, but they’re also producing things, they’re doing things with it.
9:20
They’re thinking critically, they’re thinking about what they’re doing and those kinds of tasks.
9:27
And so I put this framework here just as as reference.
9:30
This is something that I refer to quite a bit when I’m designing courses online.
9:34
It’s called the PICRAT framework, and it’s really meant to support thinking about the integration of technology into learning.
9:43
On the bottom, it shows how technology is used in different ways from the teacher’s perspective.
9:49
So either using technology to replace traditional forms of learning or all the way up to sort of transforming those forms.
9:57
And then on the vertical axis we have how that technology relates to the student experience.
10:02
So at the very bottom, they’re working with that technology in a passive way versus the top, the the hot, the more active there they are with that technology.
10:12
And so we tend to start when we’re using technology to begin with, in the sort of bottom left corner where we’re using technology to replace those traditional methods.
10:21
So think of examples like recorded video lectures or even PowerPoint slides, right?
10:26
Those are all examples that fall into this quadrant.
10:31
And the goal is ultimately to move to these higher quadrants of the grid where we’re getting students to do things more creative with with the technology.
10:40
And examples of that might be digital portfolios, it might be what I like to call sort of creative exhibits, maybe having them do sort of, you know, put together visual graphics that are connecting concepts and ideas that demonstrate their learning.
10:57
So that’s sort of the ultimate design goal.
10:59
And as you move to these creative pieces, the images, the multimedia become even more important.
11:04
So just another thing to consider there.
11:09
The last sort of piece of the intro that I wanted to point out for those who are familiar with universal design for learning.
11:16
They recently cast recently updated their principles in July.
11:20
So July 30th they came out with the three-point O guidelines and as part of their engagement guideline, they have now added a principle that refers to nurturing joy and play in learning, which I’m very excited to see.
11:35
As someone who who likes to, to do scenario based learning activities and, and educational escape rooms, I was excited to see this and their their research points a lot to how nurturing joy and play things like storytelling, using narratives, even sensory play or play with the arts can support learning at all ages, whether it be young or old.
11:55
And a lot of their research has also pointed to how this sense of joy and play in the learning experience can really benefit marginalized learners as well.
12:04
So if you haven’t seen the updates, I’m not going to get into it here.
12:07
I just wanted to to highlight that as a sort of recent update.
12:10
So I encourage you to explore that later.
12:16
With that said, that was a very sort of quick, short, but but quick rundown of just the multitude of ways the images can help us in the learning environment.
12:26
And so now I want to turn to to sort of our hands on piece and, and having just talked about this, this joy and play component, I thought it fitting to start with our 2D and and 360 visuals, particularly being able to generate some of these visuals, right.
12:42
And generating these visuals in particular can be very helpful when you’re you’re trying to incorporate the sense of storytelling or narratives when you want to sort of create backgrounds or settings that connect to the concepts and the content that you’re trying to convey to students.
13:00
It could be, you know, another example, if you’re working with literature in some way, right?
13:04
It could be bringing those characters to life and visual form and things like that.
13:09
But a lot of times, right, if we’re trying to create these sort of fantastical settings or a specific setting, it can either take a lot of time to try to comb through stock libraries and find the exact image that we need, or in some cases, those image images just may not exist.
13:25
And so these generative AI tools can really help us sort of accomplish some of those tasks.
13:32
So I have talked a lot already at this point, so want to give you all a chance to do some experimentation.
13:40
And I’ll put the link in the chat too, so you can get to it quickly.
13:43
But what I would like you all to do is go to your Microsoft 365 account, just log in as you normally would with your OSU credentials, and then I’m going to have you access Copilot.
13:58
And if everyone could just give me a thumbs up once they’ve gotten to that point, that would be great.
14:04
We’re going to go to Microsoft 365.
14:10
You should see Copilot appear in the little left hand navigation.
14:15
If you do not, you may have to go to the little grid icon up in the left and search through your apps to find Copilot.
14:29
I saw at least two thumbs up 3 four.
14:48
All right, I think everybody’s there great.
14:50
OK, so before we I have you experiment, I just want to walk you through a few of the key things features within copilot.
15:01
First is whenever you’re using copilot, so you all have access to copilot Ohio State, it’s always important to log in with Microsoft 365 because the university has data protection attached to that.
15:13
So anything you put in the chat will not go to those third party users and your information will stay internal.
15:20
So whenever you’re accessing Copilot, follow this this route to do so.
15:27
It’s a pretty simple thing to use, right?
15:28
There’s not too much to it.
15:30
You will put your prompts and things in the box, right, to generate tasks.
15:35
I did want to point out that you also have the option to add a file.
15:39
So if you have content that’s saved in APDF or a PowerPoint site or something like that, you can also upload your content in that way.
15:47
And you could even tell it to reference the document that you’re uploading in order to generate the thing that that you’re looking for.
15:54
Something that was slightly new, I think in the last few months is this view prompts feature, which is actually a gallery of existing prompts.
16:03
So if you’re not quite sure where to start in your prompting, you can come to this library and sort of search by the type of task that you’re looking to accomplish and use one of these as a starting point.
16:15
This gallery also contains this year Prompts section.
16:20
And this is where you can store any of your own prompts that you might want to use for future use.
16:25
And I’ll show you how to to save those in a second.
16:27
And then the other thing I wanted to point out is on the right hand side, you have access to all of your recent chats.
16:36
You’ll see I’ve been using this quite a bit lately for productivity purposes, but the nice thing is, is you can come back into those recent chats and actually see the full conversation, especially if you’re generating images and you’re like, oh, I remember this one that it generated and but I forgot to save it.
16:52
You can quickly jump back into your chats to to get access to that again.
16:58
So let’s just quickly I’ll just put a little test in here, right?
17:04
So let’s say that I want to create an image as a as a background for an interactive activity.
17:10
And maybe I’m just looking to create a sort of traditional classroom space that has, you know, student desks, paper and pencil chair, all the sort of the regular things we might find in the classroom, right?
17:21
I would type my prompt in and hit the send button.
17:25
It’s usually going to take a few minutes to prompt and it’s going to give you 4 different options to begin with.
17:31
So you’ll have four different sort of styles to choose from.
17:35
But the other nice thing is it will give you some additional suggestions, right?
17:38
It might say like, do you want to make it more colorful?
17:40
Do you want to add certain objects?
17:42
And so you can use those to help you really iterate and and accomplish the type of image that you’re looking for, right?
17:51
So I’ve got these four, if I click on one, I can kind of just scroll through each one to see them closer.
17:58
If I find one that I like, I can simply download it and save it to my desktop.
18:02
Or, you know, these may be a little bit too dull.
18:04
I can continue to iterate till I find what I need.
18:08
That’s pretty much all that’s to it.
18:12
But what I would like for you all to do now, just to get a a little sense of experimentation in here, is to think about, you know, a background or a setting that you could use in any of your courses in a particular lesson that you’re teaching.
18:27
Maybe, you know, if you’re teaching a course on AI, it might be like a futuristic classroom that you want to place your content in.
18:33
Why does that keep doing that?
18:34
OK, you know, if you’re teaching something on history, it could be a historical setting, any of those things.
18:39
So think about a background or a setting and then use the chat box in Copilot to describe that setting.
18:47
But you’ll also want to describe the types of objects.
18:49
If you in order to really get a detailed background, you need to include the types of objects that you’d like to see in that setting as well as if there’s a particular style, right?
18:58
If you want it to be very futuristic looking, you might state that.
19:02
If you wanted to be more retro, you might say that.
19:06
So go ahead and experiment a little bit with that.
19:10
Review the outputs, iterate as much as you need to.
19:12
And then I would love if you would just save one to your device if you’re able, because we may share them a little bit later.
19:21
So let’s take a couple minutes, maybe like four or five minutes for that and then we’ll we’ll come back and move on to the next step.
19:29
You probably didn’t hear my oh wow, but that’s really cool.
19:35
It can get a lot very fun to play with.
19:39
I will also mention the other tools you’ll see a little bit with thing link.
19:43
Adobe Express also has an image generator.
19:45
I decided to focus on Copilot just because I think Copilot, their outputs are a bit better.
19:51
They’re, they’re more realistic.
19:53
I think Express right now is still kind of, I don’t know, comic Y in a way, especially if you need to do like people like characters and things like that.
20:02
Copilot is much, much better.
20:04
You’ll get some really weird, weird characters in Express.
20:08
Maybe take about two more minutes and if you feel like it, let us know what kind of.
20:14
What kind of settings you you decided to play with?
20:16
I’d love to know, like was it a classroom?
20:18
Was it a what other imaginative background did you explore?
20:23
I’ve got an interesting situation where I’m asking it to create like a medieval fantasy world for a course I teach.
20:29
And I’m putting their prompts in like their suggestions, you know, add enchanted creatures.
20:38
But then it says my prompt includes wording that may be in violation of the designer code of contact.
20:44
That happens sometimes, I’ve noticed if you like, if you include specific words.
20:48
I did this the other day.
20:49
I was trying to experiment with like Dante’s Inferno.
20:52
It did not like the word inferno or things like death.
20:55
Like it does not like those sorts of, I guess, trigger types of words.
20:59
So you just have to find, you know, a few different ways to to communicate that sometimes I don’t know what was triggering it.
21:07
I asked for women because they gave me all male presenting characters.
21:12
Interesting.
21:15
It’s like, oh, yeah, yeah.
21:17
Murders.
21:18
And yeah, I probably would not like the word murders either.
21:20
Chanel Yeah, yeah.
21:25
Which I suppose you know, it, it’s a good thing.
21:27
It shows there’s some sort of limitations to what it will do.
21:37
Yeah, it’s pretty funny if you just, I’m just putting in their suggestions.
21:42
I’m not Even so I’m using the words that they’re suggesting and then they’re they’re saying they can’t do it.
21:47
But I’ve never, I wonder, I, I wonder if that might be a recent thing because some words like I’ve, I know I’ve used in the past and it hasn’t triggered them.
21:55
And so I wonder if maybe there have been updates since, but they haven’t updated like their suggestion side of things.
22:02
That could be the case.
22:03
I’ve noticed that recently too.
22:05
And I could not figure out what was the offensive word only recently, like within the last week or so.
22:13
Interesting.
22:15
That’ll be something for me to to experiment with more closely.
22:21
All right, for the sake of time, because we have a lot of other fun things to experiment.
22:25
We’re going to we’re going to move on from copilot.
22:28
But before I do that, I did want to show you just a few examples that I generated.
22:33
This was not used in the class.
22:35
But again, my medieval background.
22:36
I’m thinking, you know, if I were ever to teach a course on Boccaccio’s Decameron.
22:39
If those, those of you who don’t know the Decameron, it’s a short story, 10 days where they’re, they leave Florence from the plague and they’re trying to entertain themselves.
22:49
I tried to just generate a sort of background space of a, a Tuscan villa.
22:54
The first one is sort of very distant.
22:56
So you can see my iterations where I’m like, no, I want there to be people.
22:59
And then, you know, there needs to be a garden.
23:00
I need to have a fountain because at a certain point they’re taught telling stories around the fountain and things like that.
23:05
So those are my iterations.
23:08
But then I, I wanted to show you more importantly what this then looks, might look like in practice.
23:15
So let me grab this real quick.
23:18
I think this is yeah.
23:20
So if I were doing this in, in an actual course, right, what this might look like in practice is maybe I’m giving them a summary of the 10 days of storytelling.
23:30
I want them to know what the themes of each day are, what kinds of stories are being told within that day.
23:34
It’s also important to know which character is sort of the the lead storyteller of the day.
23:39
And so instead of, you know, a long list of like day one, day 2, day three, where they’re scrolling vertically and sort of endlessly through this page, I can now use this image as a sort of container to, to chunk these into smaller pieces and to frame them within the sort of visual context that that we’re working with.
23:59
So the visual that you see here is thing link, which we’re going to get into next.
24:03
But this is the copilot image that I generated and uploaded into thing link.
24:08
And then from there I can sort of layer, right different forms of information.
24:12
I can incorporate text descriptions, I can have sort of text next to images just sort of further that that processing component.
24:23
I could have, you know, videos, all sorts of different styles of, of content in here.
24:28
Again, this is just a really quick example.
24:32
I could also, you know, if I’m using this in an asynchronous course, I’ve already completed the survey.
24:37
But if I hadn’t completed the survey, right, this would just be a poll that the students could go and answer, right?
24:42
Which of the 10 days are they most interested in?
24:44
And then maybe from those results, I can use that to sort of lead my discussion in a certain week or something along those lines, right?
24:52
Or I can insert quick multiple choice questions just to make sure, like did you actually pay attention to the different themes?
25:00
Did you notice which one was most prevalent?
25:02
Because that may be important later.
25:04
So a way to highlight some of that key information and we’ll see a few more examples like this towards the end.
25:14
But now since I just showed you Thing Link, I do want to turn to Thing Link because while Copilot does 2D image generations, Thing Link actually has an integration built in that will allow you to generate 360 degree images, which are very helpful if you’re trying to to get more immersive, especially if you don’t have access to a 360 camera and you can’t capture particular spaces.
25:38
We can now generate these 360 degree images to allow us to do these types of, you know, virtual tours or escape rooms or things that are, you know, a bit more immersive in nature.
25:49
So now you should hopefully all now have a thing like account.
25:54
I think we tried to verify that yesterday.
25:56
But the best way to get to thing like is to open Carmen and go to a course in which you are an instructor.
26:03
So you’ll log into Carmen as you normally would.
26:13
And again, you can find any course in which your instructor as long as it’s within the the College of Education sub account.
26:21
It’s very important that it’s part of our sub account because not all colleges are using thing link.
26:25
And so you have to make sure that it’s within ours or you may not have access to it.
26:31
Once you’re in your course, if thing link is already enabled, you’ll see it in the course navigation menu and you can just click that and it will take you right to your link to your thing like dashboard.
26:42
If it’s not in here, you’ll need to go to your course settings and navigation right and then enable thing like so that it will show up.
26:54
So once everybody has sort of gotten to their thing like dashboard again, if I could just get some thumbs up.
27:01
So I know we’re all on the same page, almost there.
27:23
All right.
27:23
And if anybody runs into issues too, Chanel’s helping me monitor the chat.
27:28
So just let us know.
27:32
The other thing I would like you to do once you’re in, just to make sure, if you could go up to your profile icon in the top right.
27:39
Mine says admin, yours will hopefully at least reference.
27:43
I think it should say teacher role.
27:45
Does it specify that for you?
27:49
It doesn’t say teacher.
27:50
OK there’s another way we can tell.
27:53
The other way we can tell then is if you go to media and you click on create and then select 360, you should see this ability to generate with AI.
28:12
So again, click on media that blue create button and then 360 image.
28:20
If anybody doesn’t see that again, please let Chanel know and she can just double check if anything weird has happened with your account.
28:27
But we just have to make sure that you’re a teacher role cuz all of the AI features and thing like have been turned off for students.
28:33
So only instructors have access to them.
28:35
So just note that.
28:39
And now if you want, you can go ahead.
28:40
And if you click on generate with AI, it’s actually going to be even probably simplified from from what you saw in Copilot.
28:48
It’s going to be very much the same thing where you enter the sort of prompt and being as descriptive as you possibly can.
28:55
The biggest difference here is that you have this little drop down that basically allows you to select different styles.
29:07
And I’ll show you some examples later, but I created a an educational escape room for a, a course on Frankenstein like monsters.
29:14
So Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde and we did some one of the themes was like detective fiction.
29:20
And so we had it like in the room of Sherlock Holmes.
29:23
So I think those deep Reds and like, you know, dark colors.
29:27
So I chose to use Dutch masters because I’m thinking about all of the Dutch painters and the vibrant like Reds and, and deep Blues that they’re using.
29:35
So you can kind of experiment with the different styles to, to kind of get what you want.
29:39
Some of them are very interesting in what they will populate for you.
29:43
So it’s kind of fun to play around.
29:46
The other thing I would just notice is I always keep this enhanced prompt on what it will do is take your original prompt and we’ll just add even more sort of descriptors and adjectives to it, which usually help.
29:59
And then you should all have 3000 generations.
30:04
So what that means is anytime you click generate, it’s going to use one of those.
30:08
So just keep that in mind.
30:11
I have used this a ton and you’ll see that I’m still at like 20, almost 2800.
30:15
So it’ll take you quite a while to get through those.
30:19
But the same kind of thing.
30:20
I, if you want to just take a few minutes and kind of play with it again, maybe think about it, the example that I gave you before.
30:27
If you’re doing like a virtual tour of something or you’re, you want to do a, again, an escape room where you have students in this sort of environment that they can explore and, and look around.
30:38
What might that setting look like?
30:39
What might it entail?
30:42
Yeah.
30:42
And be as descriptive as possible.
30:43
So again, let’s take maybe like 5:00-ish minutes or so to play, especially with those different styles.
30:51
And that’s very cool.
30:56
I have a lot of fun with this, as you will see in some of my examples.
31:03
If you happen to have any Photoshop experience, it can be even better because then you can really manipulate them and, you know, add in like additional images and things.
31:12
You’ll see a few examples of mine where I’ve done some of that later.
31:16
But I’m, I’m just curious, have you noticed bias in terms of asking for things and having racial stereotypes come up?
31:30
I mean, I haven’t noticed that as much because I’ve mostly been using it to create like like landscapes, right?
31:36
And like sort of fantastical things.
31:38
So there’s not as much I don’t know.
31:41
I haven’t noticed it in particular.
31:43
I with Express, I have when I’ve tried to generate people, there have definitely been some very interesting outputs, especially I think I took a the description of Frankenstein when I was working on that course.
31:55
I was trying to experiment with like creating a visual of, of a Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde or one of those things.
32:00
And it was giving me very bizarre like outputs that didn’t look anything like Frankenstein.
32:05
So.
32:07
But I haven’t yeah, in, in terms of like more of the, the landscape types of things, I haven’t noticed as much.
32:16
Yeah.
32:16
I was actually just expecting it to come up, but so I asked for a juvenile court room environment with a child abuse case.
32:26
It, it just gave me a blank, an empty room.
32:28
So that’s, that’s good.
32:31
But yeah, yeah.
32:39
I would be curious if as you all are experimenting, if you find anything like that do let me know because again, I’ve been mostly restricted to more of those literary types of types of settings.
33:01
Maybe take like one or two more minutes to play.
33:05
That sounds good then we’ll come back.
33:21
Is there a way to iterate with it the same way?
33:26
I I got got ad tags setting done and continue, but I don’t know what to pick.
33:35
It doesn’t give you those prompts like copilot does.
33:38
But what you can do is keep adjusting the prompt that’s already inserted in your text box.
33:43
So instead of hitting, if you hit continue, that’s gonna add it as like an actual scene that you can then edit and add information to.
33:51
If you’re not quite ready to do that, you’ll wanna play with with the prompt and just keep generating until you you get one that you want.
34:02
And I think the like that enhanced prompt will continue to update in different ways depending on what editions you add to add to your prompt.
34:36
All right, hopefully everybody’s at least had a little bit of time to to play and experiment with that.
34:43
I’m going to move on.
34:44
And again, before moving on, I want to show you what sort of a practical example of this might look like down the road.
34:53
This is as I mentioned, I created those escape rooms for a course on, on monsters.
34:59
This was a scene from the one that we were doing on Frankenstein where we were the, the whole point of it was to try to get students to, to pay attention to the author’s background.
35:10
So Mary Shelley, who is at the time, was trapped in this villa for like months after some volcanic eruption basically disrupt, disrupted all of, of society.
35:21
So she was trapped in a villa, which made perfect sense context wise that we’re going to put students and you know, this escape room that they also have to try to get out of.
35:30
But we used Mary Shelley’s villa as the sort of background setting for this.
35:34
So being in the 19th century, right, We wanted it to again be these somewhat subdued colors, right?
35:41
Have some antique furniture.
35:44
In thinking about the types of of clues I was going to have in my room, I wanted to make sure I had a piano in there because in in the instructor’s lecture video, she talks a lot about gothic and romantic styles and Beethoven comes into play.
35:58
So I should treat strategically place different items throughout the room.
36:05
So this is a 360 image, but when you when you actually download and save a 360 image, it’s just going to look like a really crazy panoramic image.
36:13
Once it’s in thing link however, it will this.
36:19
I don’t know if you can hear the background music, but we have background music playing.
36:24
And so again, just sort of creating that immersive sort of space so that they they get a sense of being in this room and turn the sound off for now.
36:34
But like here’s an example where I used Photoshop to, to input a painting of like one of the specific characters of the time that the instructor talks about.
36:43
One of the other rooms I actually inserted the instructor’s image to, to reference like her lecture videos.
36:50
So there’s a lot of fun things you can do with it if you just play around for a while.
36:55
But again, here, you know, we’ve got a variety of these are all just different clues around the room.
37:03
I link to a an Excel document.
37:05
Actually that’s their sort of full puzzle.
37:08
So they, they download this Excel document and then they have to read different clues and it’ll tell them like, you know, it’s the person who’s described in the dialogue by the piano or something very vague where they can’t go and just like search for the answer on Google or whatever.
37:25
They have to actually refer to her lecture videos to know who specifically we’re talking about.
37:31
And so it’s used in a, in a variety of ways.
37:34
Some of these actually, we’ll see some of this, some of these images in here like I’ve used a variety of the tools that we’re talking about today to create some of the, the clues ’cause I needed something like very specific, I need to hide A specific word, things like that.
37:51
Other puzzles, right?
37:52
We can, we can link to Word documents.
37:54
You can, you can link to just about anything and thing link, which is why I love it.
37:58
It’s just the starting point are these background images that we need so that we can then layer things on top of them.
38:05
I don’t even remember what else in here.
38:08
I think our instructor actually created this one maybe with Express or Canva or something like that.
38:13
But yeah, anyway, so you get a little sense of kind of just what one room of of this looks like.
38:24
The other thing before I, I turn away from Thing Link, as I wanted to point out along with that generative AI component that you just experimented with, Thing Link also has a 360 library of images that they have already stored that you are free to use.
38:40
So if you are in thing Link on the left hand side near the bottom, you can have direct access to the library.
38:49
And I think now it’s a combination of photos that have actually been taken by either people that work for thing Link or people that are associated with them, as well as some of these AI generated ones that have been created using that that skybox integration that you just played with.
39:05
So you can kind of, you know, explore different settings.
39:09
There’s healthcare settings.
39:10
I saw primary school settings in here.
39:14
There’s a variety of like world capitals and things like that.
39:18
So something else fun to to explore if you’re looking for a specific space or a specific situation.
39:26
And then it they also have this Pano to 360 converter.
39:33
So if you don’t have access to a 360 camera, but you have an iPhone, you have another type of phone that can take a panoramic image.
39:41
You can use your phone to take a panoramic image, upload it into the converter and it will convert it into a 360 image for you.
39:49
So it’s sort of the same thing.
39:51
If you go to that Create button 360 image, instead of selecting Generate with AI, you’re gonna select this Pano to 360 option.
40:00
And it will just give you an upload space and it’ll take a few minutes to process.
40:05
This is sort of, I would say like a last option because it is a panoramic image.
40:09
It’s going to have some weird like stitching things involved.
40:13
So it doesn’t look as clean and as nice as some of the other ones, especially because the tops and bottoms will be sort of cut off in that that panoramic image.
40:22
But, but if that’s not that important, right, that you have this really clean image, it it’s another option that you could, that you could use.
40:31
All right, OK, so we’re going to turn away from the generative AI stuff now to to talk more about just sort of static infographics and, and templates.
40:45
And these I particularly wanted to to mention because they can be very helpful for more simple types of interactive content presentations like the ones I mentioned earlier.
40:55
You may use images as a background just just to contain and to scaffold some of your content, right?
41:01
Rather than having that long list of of terms and definitions.
41:05
Or if you’ve got, you know, 5-5 minute videos and you don’t want to have to have five separate pages in your module, you could use an image container to sort of chunk and organize these things in a unique interactive way.
41:21
So to create some of these simplified background images.
41:26
And when I say background images here, I’m talking more about like think like presentation style backgrounds, right?
41:32
When you’ve got a slide, you tend to have maybe you have a grid layout on your slide or something like that.
41:38
Those are the kinds of of templates I’m talking about here.
41:42
And so for this, we’re going to turn to Adobe Express and particularly get familiar with the sort of existing templates and how we can customize those templates for things that that we may need specifically.
41:57
So again, if you can all log into Adobe Express and I will put this link in the chat, I have it here.
42:09
OK.
42:15
So you should be able to log in via that link.
42:18
This will take you to the the Office of Technology page where you can just click it and log in through your credentials.
42:29
Really dingling kind of question but I have managed.
42:34
Notifications just appeared over my chat and I don’t know how to make it go away.
42:38
Has anyone ever had that?
42:41
Chanel is probably laughing because I’m the least techie person on this training.
42:47
I do not know.
42:49
So weird.
42:50
It’s like, is it Zoom notifications or it’s Outlook?
42:55
And when I click on chat, it doesn’t and highlight.
43:00
That’s so weird.
43:01
I think I might come out and come back in.
43:07
OK, Is everybody else in Express?
43:15
All right?
43:16
And again, as a reminder, so you all, as well as students have access to Adobe Express and so you all have the same features and can do basically the same things in this.
43:27
There’s a lot of stuff happening on the dashboard page, but honestly, just don’t pay attention to it.
43:32
The only things you really need to know about are this plus button, which is where everything is going to basically happen and the your stuff folder.
43:42
Those are the two like core things that I go to on a daily basis.
43:47
If you hit the plus button, this is where you’ll sort of get a bunch of like sort of template options to work with.
43:54
I’m almost always just starting with a blank canvas essentially.
44:01
That is a good question.
44:02
Does students know if they have access to these resources?
44:07
Technically the workshop Chanel connect me if I’m wrong, but the workshops will be posted on the website.
44:11
So they could technically have access, but no, communication with students is not a it’s not a strong suit at the university unfortunately and it’s something that we gotta hopefully work on.
44:23
But we do have, I have actually created a few tutorials in the past with Express and we’re actually working on putting those tutorials on our website so that instructors can link to them in their courses.
44:35
And I’m also planning to put some preformatted like Carmen pages in Commons that’s that instructors can upload into their courses as well.
44:44
That way if students are being asked to use Express and they need some additional support, they can quickly sort of review these these video tutorials that we’ve put together.
44:52
So that’s a good question.
44:55
I was trying to type this but this is it’ll be faster if I just say it.
45:00
The thing links are connected to courses so it is controlled by the instructor.
45:05
Students will only know they have access to it if it is part of a course.
45:09
They cannot just go to thing link and log into the website and and work on it and create their own through the OSU organization.
45:20
Yes, thing link has to be turned on in a course.
45:23
Express on the other hand, does not currently have a Carmen integration link.
45:27
And so unless you point to the the link that I just gave to you, all students won’t even know where to go.
45:35
So yeah, unfortunately depending on the tool, like there’s they’re just different access points, which is a bit of a challenge, but hopefully by providing some of these, these tutorials that will help navigate some of that.
45:48
And the building press is linked on the supported tools list.
45:53
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:56
OK.
45:56
We can come back to some of those questions later.
45:59
So yeah, so once you’re in that plus button, you’ve got sort of a range of options.
46:03
As I said, when I’m working on just sort of a general graphic, I’m usually just picking one of these top blank ones to start with.
46:10
But before we do that, I did just want to point out a few other things that you may not be aware of.
46:17
Along with graphics where you can, you can do videos and express, which we had a whole different workshop on.
46:22
You can also create very simple and like neatly designed web pages to share information.
46:29
So that’s something that you may want to explore later as well.
46:33
It may be something that students could use if you’re looking for a simple sort of web page generator that they can use this as an option.
46:42
If you click on your quick actions, you’ll find a bunch of other tools, simple things like turning a link into AQR code.
46:50
If you’ve got an image, but you don’t want the background on that image, there’s a quick like background remover feature that that you can use.
46:57
There is also something that I’ve started playing with a bit more this animate characters option where you can record your own voice overs and and have a character sort of speaking with with your voice.
47:08
The only thing I’ll point out is the characters are a little bit a little bit odd and could use some work, But especially if you’re creating more of these, like, you know, escape room style things or things that are a bit more gamified, right?
47:21
They can be, they can be fun and useful for those types of, of environments.
47:27
And then as I mentioned, you’ll also find in here some generative AI capabilities.
47:32
So within Express, you can actually have AI generate an entire template for you.
47:38
I haven’t played with that one as much and when I did, I didn’t love the outcome.
47:41
So I’m going to show you a different option, but it is there if you want to experiment.
47:46
You can also generate images with AI similar to copilot, similar to thing Link, but they’ll they’ll be 2D images.
47:54
The one additional benefit I will say in terms of generating images with Express is that there’s an option to generate like individual objects on top of an image.
48:05
So for example, I was creating a clue that had there was like a picture clue that was a side by side like medicine cabinet.
48:12
And they had to find the object that was different within those two pictures.
48:18
And I needed to have this like medical syringe appear in one place and not the other.
48:23
So I used generative AI to have it populate just in one side of the of the picture.
48:30
So it can be useful for that kind of thing too.
48:32
But for now, we’re going to focus on just sort of creating templates.
48:36
So again, normally I will just come in here and I will often just start with a landscape view because normally I’m, you know, I’m using it more of like a slide type of presentation.
48:48
So if you want to go ahead and do that and just get yourself set up for a blank space, I’m going to walk you through a few key features before I kind of let you play in an experiment with some of them.
49:01
The three biggest things that you’ll need once you have your canvas set up right, obviously there’s text.
49:07
You’re going to likely be adding some text somewhere that’s pretty basic and self-explanatory.
49:15
You also have access to media, which for image purposes, the only thing that’s really going to matter here are the photos.
49:21
But you will also have access to that generate image within this photo option as well.
49:27
So if you can’t find an image that you need, you have a QikLink to, to experiment and generate something else and add it to your, your canvas.
49:37
The biggest thing that I honestly will work with when I’m creating images is this elements component.
49:44
So in the elements you’ll find a whole range of things.
49:47
You’ll find like different design assets, which are sort of, you know, they’re not full photos, but they may be like realistic images of a particular object.
49:57
You also have different backgrounds that you can add to your side, whether it be abstract images or, or other media files, things like that.
50:07
This is also where you’ll find different shapes, circles, squares, stars, all of those things are in here.
50:14
And then there’s a whole icon library that you can explore.
50:17
So to me the sort of elements piece is the the bulk of where a lot of things will happen.
50:26
And then from there, the other big thing that we want to point out today are the templates.
50:32
So what we’re going to be working with are the templates.
50:35
They’re pre made that there are thousands of templates that you can search from.
50:40
I don’t know if yours would do this.
50:41
If it, if it automatically takes you to a YouTube video, you can just hit the back button ’cause we don’t, we don’t want to create a YouTube video template.
50:48
We just want to create an image template.
50:50
So click on templates and then you can just use the search feature to sort of find what you need.
50:54
So a lot of times I’m looking for like a grid layout or something, right?
50:59
And then I can search different types of of grid layouts that have previously been populated.
51:05
Or maybe I want to search for, I don’t know, I want to create like a concept map of some sort so that I don’t have to start from scratch.
51:14
I can find one where maybe there are elements that I like, but instead of having to put them all together from scratch, I can just start with that and change the colors or change a few of the the elements to to really fit the needs that that I’m looking for.
51:29
And I’m actually going to turn to one that I’ve sort of already played with.
51:38
OK, so this is a template that I just happened to find in the templates library.
51:45
So say I’m, you know, as we talked about before, I’m trying to use this as a container for some of my lesson materials.
51:51
Maybe I’ve got like multiple videos in a reading and like a quick knowledge check activity that are all connected.
52:01
But I don’t want to have to have multiple pages in my module or don’t want to have to have one page in my module that is an endless scroll of, of information and materials.
52:10
I might use something like this grid to maybe have a little bucket for my videos, a bucket for my readings or something like that, so that they’re all sort of contained in this concise space.
52:23
So that’s why I sort of chose this one.
52:26
Once you have your template selected, you can sort of manipulate it in whatever ways you want, right?
52:32
Maybe I don’t like these little grid lines that are appearing here.
52:36
I can just get rid of them by clicking them and deleting them, right?
52:40
I think they’re kind of distracting.
52:44
I can obviously update my text.
52:46
This is less than one.
52:48
Whatever, add my title in.
52:50
Maybe these are gonna be my videos.
52:52
Here is my like readings on the topic.
52:56
And then I have some sort of, I don’t know, activity or something like that, like example.
53:03
So you can simply just click on the text and change it to be whatever you need.
53:08
There’s obviously if you click on a specific text, there’s all sorts of styles you can change them to and you can experiment and play around with the the different text settings.
53:18
Then the other kind of tool I want to point out too, that’s very helpful, especially for images.
53:23
If you’ve got images in here, but you want to maintain the sort of shape and the size of it, if you click on it, you can use this little replace option.
53:34
So if I click replace, let’s say I’m going to look for some sort of like video icon that’s more connected to my material.
53:42
I’ll click that and you’ll see it will maintain that sort of circular shape that was there before and keep it within that size, right?
53:50
If I didn’t hit replace and I just selected that object, it would just put it in there as a regular square image.
53:56
So, and I can do the same thing here, right?
54:00
Like if I want to add a reading icon, I’ll come over, I hit replace, I come over here and type in reading icon, maybe a book of some sort, kind of scroll through that library.
54:12
Alright, I want this book.
54:14
That wasn’t the best one to choose, but but you get the point.
54:18
So the replace option can be very helpful for that.
54:22
The other thing I wanted to point out, these colors, I don’t love these colors.
54:27
They’re very purple.
54:29
Maybe I want to make them more like, I don’t know, I want them to be darker or more vibrant.
54:35
You can quickly use this theme option at the top to change the sort of overall color style of your of your lesson.
54:46
And it’s not always perfect, but you know, maybe this is a bit more of the colors that I want to use.
54:52
Once you do that, if I click on an object and go to my little color fill, it will give me some other recommendations that sort of fit within that palette so that I can easily adjust my colors to sort of all match and things like that.
55:09
Is there anything else I wanted to point out in particular?
55:15
I think that’s mostly it.
55:17
The other, actually the other big helpful thing, if you are creating these templates, something that comes in handy a lot is right.
55:24
If I’m like just clicking on one object and moving it around, things can get out of place very easily.
55:31
If you’re trying to move objects together, you can click an object and hit shift and click on all of the other objects that you want to contain and then select group.
55:43
And now when I move them, they will all move together or if I resize them, they will resize together.
55:51
So that group functionality is very helpful for for some of that manipulation as well.
56:00
With that, I think I’m just going to now pause and give you guys a little bit more time to experiment with this.
56:07
Again, once you have that canvas set up, go ahead and search through the templates.
56:11
Maybe think about something that you might use, maybe it’s this sort of grid container to, to sort of organize your materials in your course or something else.
56:21
And then just kind of start playing, playing with that template, trying to change shapes or change icons and things like that, changing colors around and see what it can do.
56:29
Then when we come back, I’ll kind of show you what my, my final version of this looks like.
56:35
So we’ll take come back around like 12:10-ish I think.
57:04
As for the, I saw the question about the OSU branding, I’m going to show you something after we do all this because I I’ve actually added a lot of those in there for you and you should all be able to access them.
57:15
So we’ll come back to that after all right, let’s all play time there.
57:24
You guys can experiment some more on your own, but I want to especially since we had some of these questions in the chat, make sure that we have some time for this.
57:33
Somebody specifically asked about OSU branded colors Marketing has not added these, but I did find a way to create them so that I can actually share the colors with everybody.
57:44
I pulled the the color palettes and our fonts and everything from our brand guidelines and was able to create a library that can basically be shared with everyone else.
57:53
So you should be able to I’ll show you how to access this.
57:58
If you go to you want to navigate back to the main, your sort of main dashboard.
58:04
And you do that by clicking on the little Adobe Express icon in the top left.
58:09
So go back to your dashboard and then you’re going to click on brands on this left hand side here.
58:20
And then what you will do is click this, browse shared brands near the upper right corner and you should see, I think there’s a few different libraries that have been, of course, that’s going to happen, made it almost the entire way through without things happening technical wise.
58:39
Where?
58:44
Why is it not here?
58:49
OK, hold on.
58:58
That’s interesting.
58:59
It’s not here.
58:59
It should be here maybe because I’ve already added.
59:01
If you guys click on browse shared Brands, do you see Ohio State?
59:05
You do see it.
59:05
OK, Maybe it’s just because I’ve already added it.
59:07
This normally it still shows up in here.
59:10
So I’m very confused.
59:11
So yeah, you should see one that’s called Ohio State.
59:15
Once you go into that shared brands and then when you hover over it, you’ll see the little add button.
59:20
If you click add, it will add it to your brands.
59:26
The benefit of doing that now is anytime I go to create a new visual or a new project.
59:33
So if I go back just to show you here, we’ll go back and create a, a blank 1.
59:38
You do have access to brands in your little tool menu on the left.
59:43
And so I can quickly search for that Ohio State brand that I have added and quickly Add all of the colors and all of the assets that are part of this brand to my, to my actual project.
59:56
So now you should all have access to the Ohio State color should you wish to use them for anything.
1:00:03
And you can create that for other things too, right?
1:00:05
You could, if you have a, you know, you want to use a specific color palette for any of your courses, you could create a specific brand just for your course so that you kind of have the same consistent colors and, and images and things like that throughout.
1:00:18
You can see I’ve done that for, you know, a French course that I worked on in the past.
1:00:23
But yeah, that’s that’s how you can search for for other brands and you’ll see when you click on it, you can kind of see everything that I’ve added in there.
1:00:30
So I’ve got sort of our primary color palette and then just some of the secondary colors I’ve added that I’ve ensured have decent contrast right when you’ve got text and things over top of them.
1:00:43
And then it’s also got some of the, the university fonts and some of the images in terms of the, the templates that you asked about.
1:00:52
So you can also any projects that you create, you can share them as a template with others and other people can use those and customize them if you choose to share them.
1:01:04
The best way to do this, I have found is to use the library feature instead.
1:01:09
You can all, I mean, you can also do it in brands.
1:01:11
Brands and libraries are very similar where you can share different assets, different logos, different colors, different templates.
1:01:18
Libraries just let you incorporate more.
1:01:20
So maybe I’ve got a few different like brands and colors that I want to incorporate into one thing.
1:01:26
I would often do that in a library.
1:01:29
So if I go to, in this case, my stuff, right?
1:01:32
So your stuff, you’ll have access to projects, any projects that you’ve created, but you’ll also have access to libraries.
1:01:41
And so you can create a new library again, you can also browse any if if libraries have been shared with you, you can browse them that way.
1:01:50
And I can let me see if I find one here.
1:01:54
Actually, I created one for all of you that you can can access in a minute.
1:01:59
But a similar thing, I uploaded just some of the OSU colors, maybe just a few additional assets.
1:02:04
And then I have actually created a few templates that you can go into and then use.
1:02:10
So when you go into a library that’s been shared with you, if you click on the template, it will ask you if you want to create it as a new file.
1:02:17
So it’s not going to overwrite the one that’s already been created.
1:02:19
It will create a brand new file.
1:02:21
I can now take that and manipulate it and customize it however I need.
1:02:27
Let me before I forget to do that, it’s going to share this one with you.
1:02:34
It’s this very long link here.
1:02:38
I’ll put it in the in the chat real quick, just so you can kind of see how that that template feature works.
1:02:45
Because yes, this is something that you can set up for students and then share the library with them and let them use those templates.
1:02:52
And I’ve done this in a few cases.
1:02:55
We did a course on Arthurian legends and we wanted to sort of gamify a little bit because they were basically every week they were going through these different quests, but to introduce themselves, we had them creating their own sort of Shields.
1:03:09
So they were introducing themselves by creating their own shield with their own icons and objects.
1:03:14
But for students who may not be super design savvy, you know, we created a few templates to help them get get started with that.
1:03:23
I think I have AI have that example in here still, but that’s just one way you could use it, right.
1:03:30
So we created this little, I think we have two or three different templates that they could then choose from and and customize to their own or they if, you know, if they were design savvy, they could also just start from scratch.
1:03:41
But at least it’s it’s giving them those those options.
1:03:46
Were you all able to access that library link?
1:03:49
Yeah.
1:03:51
Great.
1:03:53
Yeah.
1:03:53
So if we have other questions about that, we can come back to that later.
1:03:56
But as we’re getting close to the end of time, I did want to at least provide a few additional use cases.
1:04:05
So again, our goal and like objectives today were to really focus on how we can actually curate these images that will become sort of that foundational piece for other interactive types of activities.
1:04:17
So we’re not getting into like how I’m creating, you know, escape rooms or how I’m creating all of the individual pieces of these other interactive elements.
1:04:24
It was more how can I get that sort of background media that I need as my starting point, right?
1:04:30
But I did want to at least show you a few examples and you’ll have, you’ll get this PowerPoint.
1:04:35
I’ll send this in the chat when we’re done, but you’ll also get a follow up e-mail so that you have the PowerPoint and you’ll be able to access all of these links and examples should they inspire you to do other things.
1:04:47
But just sort of a few use cases of how we can use these images, right?
1:04:51
Some of the things we’ve talked about already are presenting a variety of learning materials, right?
1:04:55
Whether it be a mix of videos and text, a way to sort of organize that.
1:05:01
Also using them for virtual tours and escape rooms.
1:05:04
What we just talked about creating these templates for our students that our students can use for a variety of projects, and also using them for these sorts of collaborative galleries.
1:05:14
And I’ll, I’ll show you an example of that in a minute.
1:05:18
For the lecture video one, I just wanted to show you this one example that the instructor of the Frankenstein course made speaking to the accessibility issue.
1:05:26
We can talk about that in a second, but this is at least an example of what sort of the container of that content might look like.
1:05:33
So she had a variety of videos, they were all dealing with this background information on Frankenstein.
1:05:40
And so rather than having, you know, five different pages, she created these little buckets.
1:05:45
And then she has her videos, her lecture videos embedded within, within the image here or she has an audio recording that’s embedded here as well.
1:05:56
The this is a good example for the accessibility issue because somebody asked earlier, when we’re creating this content, is it accessible?
1:06:04
And part of that is it, it depends on how you’re creating and how you’re using it, right?
1:06:09
Nothing is necessarily automatically accessible when we’re creating these sorts of images and, and designing these types of things.
1:06:15
So we do kind of need to think critically about the components we’re putting together.
1:06:21
This one in particular is not fully accessible because there’s a lot of text on the image, right?
1:06:27
So if you’re going to incorporate a lot of text on the image like this in order to make it accessible, one, we need to add alt text to our our scene, which I’m not going to get into that today because that that’s a whole different like workshop.
1:06:43
But we would add alt text or we would add an accessibility tag that basically serves as more in depth captions and alt text for what’s on the background essentially.
1:06:55
So just keep that in mind when you are creating these background images that you do have to be cognizant of the text because they’re they can’t be read because they’re part of an image.
1:07:05
So keep that in mind.
1:07:10
OK, so that was an example of the lecture videos, another example of presenting materials.
1:07:15
This is a yeah.
1:07:18
Thanks Janelle.
1:07:19
Chanel pointed out that accessibility is covered in our course design workshop that we have in May, so feel free to check that out as well.
1:07:28
This is an example of using an image again as sort of the have these long list of terms and definitions.
1:07:34
Rather than having that, again, really long page and Carmen, we’ve broken them up.
1:07:39
We’ve sort of included these little icons to try to separate them again to thinking about that sort of cognitive dimension piece and how we can process information.
1:07:50
There’s a few things I still probably would have done differently, like maybe even added another image or repeat the icon within this to have it side by side with the text.
1:07:59
But this is just again, another example of how you might use these these images to make them a bit more interactive and let students sort of explore, you know, which ones they want to to view in what order kind of thing.
1:08:15
If you want to get very creative and go more of a complex route, this is from again, the Arthurian Legends course that I mentioned earlier where we, you know, every week was basically designed as I’m doing some sort of quest.
1:08:30
And so we wanted to really make the structure and the design of the course connected to the content itself, right?
1:08:37
So we’re working within this world of Camelot and as somebody mentioned earlier, right, these enchanting figures and Dragons and all of these things.
1:08:44
And so we use the images as backgrounds to basically serve as the road map.
1:08:50
So instead of, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this unless you know exactly what you’re doing with some of the technology, but instead of using modules, we’re doing a combination of of Pebble pad and thing like here to sort of guide them through these quests so that it seems more game like versus our sort of standard structure.
1:09:12
But you can see within here, we’ve got like maps here are all the quests that you’re going to be experiencing.
1:09:18
We link to the course syllabus in the course.
1:09:21
We’ve got, you know, this is sort of their toolkit at the top, right?
1:09:24
We’ve got the sort of frequently asked questions where we’re providing those that key information from the syllabus that they may need linking to student resources.
1:09:34
And then each week, right.
1:09:36
So we give them a sort of introduction of how this is going to work, how they’re meant to walk through this.
1:09:42
And then each week they’re coming in here and literally they’re jumping right out to their Pebble Pad workbook where they’re completing, you know, they’re watching all of their lecture videos and doing all of their readings and all of those those types of things.
1:09:54
So it’s really meant to be like a digital workbook.
1:09:56
But yeah, in this case, it’s just meant to be sort of a road map for the class.
1:10:01
You don’t necessarily have to link it to something else, but it could be a fun way on your home page to provide sort of a quick access point to different modules and things like that.
1:10:11
Again, we we chunked it so that we’re moving to different spaces depending on what kind of content is being covered in those weeks too.
1:10:20
So that’s that one.
1:10:23
Let me skip ahead to you kind of saw the escape room 1 already, so I won’t go into that.
1:10:30
I also wanted to show how this could be used for various tours.
1:10:36
This one was not.
1:10:37
This one was we actually used a 360 camera because this is a real space on campus.
1:10:42
It’s the biology laboratory.
1:10:44
But in the past they had had a basically a safety protocol assignment at the very beginning of the semester so that you know, they they know the protocol, they can’t bring food into the laboratory.
1:10:56
They know what kind of, you know, dress they have to wear and all of that.
1:11:01
But it used to be delivered through just APDF document.
1:11:04
So instead of doing that, we’re now sort of letting them see the space and get into the space before they even come to campus.
1:11:12
So we can include things like right, I have little tags of like this is what the sign says above the door.
1:11:17
Don’t enter until you’ve, you know, put all of your food and your things outside in the cubbies.
1:11:24
We can add additional tags that I don’t even let them enter the room until they show me that they know that they’re not allowed to eat in the classroom, right?
1:11:31
So we can prevent them from moving forward on with these like conditional questions.
1:11:38
But really this is just an example of a virtual tour and how you can link these different images together to create these types of of experiences.
1:11:51
Yeah, on this one, this is an example of an interactive template.
1:11:54
We just did this for the History of AI course, where the the students are going to be creating a template and then putting their own information.
1:12:01
Rather than having them have to come up with sort of a design from scratch, we set up a little visual template for them that they can then use.
1:12:10
You can also add these templates into thing link and let them clone the thing link.
1:12:15
So in this case, I’ve set up blank tags for them and they’re just meant to come in and fill out the information based on the research they found, right?
1:12:25
That way, they’re not focusing so much on the, the design part of it, but they’re just focusing on getting the specific information that they need to present kind of thing.
1:12:36
And then I have an example in here you can look at later too, with the student roster and, and introductions.
1:12:42
And I also have this little shared gallery.
1:12:44
So all of those things that you did today, if you want to share any of of them just so people can kind of see what you played with and experimented with.
1:12:53
You can all add them to this little library if you wish to do so.
1:12:57
I’ve added some of mine already and just put my name next to them and what I used to generate them.
1:13:04
If you would like to do that.
1:13:06
If you go into thing link, hopefully this is already set up for you.
1:13:09
So I got to have, I have so many thing link windows now.
1:13:13
Second, OK, if you are in your thing link, I believe we added you all to the specific workshop group.
1:13:23
If you go into media, do you see a folder called Deled Workshops?
1:13:30
I see some nods.
1:13:33
OK, hopefully so.
1:13:34
If you see that and you enter that folder, there’s another little subfolder specifically for this workshop.
1:13:42
I’ve got some of the templates that you saw earlier today, just in case you want to play with them and experiment with them.
1:13:47
You’re you’re free to do so or you can at least take a look at them.
1:13:52
But within the shared image library folder is where this little library lives and you should all have access to edit this.
1:14:00
If you don’t let me know, but you should be able to.
1:14:03
When you click on it, you should see the edit button appear in the right corner.
1:14:09
So if you click on that, you can add tags to this space.
1:14:14
So I can hit add A tag and I would use the text and media tag so that I can upload my image.
1:14:21
And from here you can just upload any of the images that you’ve saved.
1:14:26
If you want, you can type in a little description and in the description line, you know, give it a title.
1:14:32
I don’t know if I have any images on my computer.
1:14:35
Here’s one, the shield one.
1:14:36
OK, you can play with changing the icons however you wish.
1:14:41
And then once you hit done, it will create this little tag and you can move it, you know, to one of the little spaces that I’ve set up.
1:14:50
So this is an example where I created a background grid with the intention of I wanted people to have a specific like little block where they can add their tag to that block.
1:15:01
So feel free to to play with that to add any of the things that you’ve generated or created.
1:15:07
You should all have access and just kind of use it as a fun little experimentation board and hopefully give you a sense of how you might maybe use this as a gallery in class for students to share their work with each other and things like that.
1:15:22
That is all I have for you guys unless there are other specific questions that you would like to ask me.
1:15:35
Anybody have any questions?
1:15:38
Thoughts.
1:15:40
Did did you say that there were tutorials?
1:15:43
So that if I wanted students to create or use thing link in a project, did you say that there were already tutorials that could be shared with students?
1:15:54
Yes, I, I do have some already that I’ve created for other courses.
1:15:58
So if you need something like that and you don’t see it on our website yet, feel free to reach out to us ’cause it’s something we can provide to you.
1:16:06
It is on my list of things to do to move those resources that I have onto our website so that you can just access them.
1:16:13
But it, it may just be a little bit more time before we get those up and published.
1:16:19
But yes, yeah, and Chanel pointed out too, we do have a thing like assignment in Commons.
1:16:26
Chanel, I don’t know that does that, does that have a tutorial specifically for students on how to use the tool?
1:16:31
I can’t remember what’s in that.
1:16:38
OK, perfect.
1:16:45
Other questions?
1:16:51
When Chanel’s referring to Carmen Commons, is that like something we have to import into a space that we’re working in?
1:16:59
So Carmen Commons, if you are in, Oh my gosh, I have so many pages open.
1:17:04
OK, if you’re in Carmen and you click on Commons on the left most navigation menu, that will take you to Carmen Commons or Canvas Commons as it might be called.
1:17:17
And then you can use the search bar and just search for DELD Delt, our office.
1:17:22
You’ll find a bunch of different templates in there.
1:17:25
One of them is a thing like assignment, but we also have what was the first one at the top.
1:17:31
Oh, it’s the first one.
1:17:33
Yep.
1:17:33
Oh yeah, it’s the first one.
1:17:34
Yep.
1:17:38
Yeah.
1:17:38
And I do plan to have, as I mentioned earlier, those tutorials we’re working on creating pages, page templates also for those, so that if you would rather pull the page into your course versus linking out to a website that students have to sort of navigate, you’ll be able to do that soon.
1:18:01
It is 12/31.
1:18:05
So I’m going to let everybody go.
1:18:06
I’m happy to stay on for a minute or two if anybody else has questions, but I want to be cognizant of time.
1:18:11
So thanks all.
1:18:13
Hopeful.
1:18:14
Hopefully you found it helpful.