Photoshop Workshop, 2002
Photoshop Workshop, 2002 |
Throughout my career as a graduate student, I took advantage of many opportunities to share my knowledge with others and to shape my own learning. Included in this section are three such experiences involving teaching, training, and course planning.
Every successful teaching and training experience begins with defining learning objectives and then creating a lesson plan that meets those learning objectives. The experiences below demonstrate my abilities in designing and implementing two different training modules for two different contexts: workshops and independent study.
I planned and taught computer literacy workshops to several groups of graduate students using Adobe Photoshop. In the case of the Information Architecture Independent Study, I planned a course for myself and acheived my own learning objectives. I reflect on both experiences in the sections below.
During the 2002 Winter quarter, I was enrolled in an MLIS core course (LIS 560) on Instructional and Training Strategies for Information Professionals. I completed the term project, creating an Adobe Photoshop training module, which included background materials, a lesson plan, supplemental materials, and an in-class presentation. However, I wanted to extend my learning experience outside the classroom, so I teamed up with Dowell Eugenio, an iSchool staff member, to teach a series of introductory Photoshop workshops. Through the student chapter of ASIS&T, we offered 4 identical sessions at the iSchool: 2 in Winter 2002 and 2 in Winter 2003.
In LIS 560, I selected Photoshop as a vehicle for teaching computer literacy, that is, to equip students with transferable knowledge and skills that will apply in many situations involving a computer, not just one program. I used Photoshop as a means to demonstrate the concepts behind digital graphics, computer architecture, and imaging devices. In developing the lesson plan for the workshops, I covered the theory behind graphics applications rather than simply listing the functions of Photoshop. The workshop activities I designed addressed multiple learning styles, ranging from a crayon coloring exercise (to convey the concepts of pixels & color palettes) to a team scavenger hunt (to de-mystify the user interface).
Using the materials I generated for LIS 560 as a guide, I created a PowerPoint presentation and an activity packet for the workshop. I also received feedback from Lorraine Bruce, my instructor for LIS 560, on the lesson plan. Dowell and I then split up the lesson plan by determining the parts with which we felt we had the most expertise.
The first set of workshops, which we taught in March 2002, were very well received by the workshop attendees. The ASIS&T student chapter asked us to repeat the workshop the following March as well, which were also successful.
Through this experience, I learned many valuable and practical skills in teaching that I might not have attained through coursework alone. The workshops provided me with a laboratory in which to experiment with different teaching styles, activities, and methods. And most importantly, the feedback I received from students provided a valuable source of data that gave me a way to review and revise the workshops in real time.
One interesting example of this was a lesson for me on collaborative learning. In the first workshop, the attendees worked alone on the scavenger hunt. I gave them a list of different functions and tasked them with finding the associated command in Photoshop. By the end of the activity, many students were frustrated, but a few were not. I noticed that those who weren't had teamed up with the person next to them and had easily completed the scavenger hunt. In the following sessions, I asked the attendees to work through the exercise with a partner, and the response to the scavenger hunt improved markedly.
As a result of these workshops, Dowell and I were approached by the instructors of the Fluency in Technology (FIT 100) distance course to record a segment on Digital Imaging for their NetPoint online videos. The video distilled some of the concepts from our workshops, and we are now reaching a wider audience than we ever expected. In the coming months, Dowell and I will be teaching a new series of workshops on advanced Photoshop skills at the Information School.
 Sitepath diagram |
 Garrett IA diagram |
Noting the recent publication of several books on Information Architecture (IA), I became interested in taking a course on the subject. The Information School's MLIS curriculum, while impressively interdisciplinary and well-rounded, lacks an IA course. Thus, I set about designing my own Independent Study course on IA.
In order to create the Independent Study, I needed to submit a proposal to the school that included a list of the learning objectives, resources, activities, deliverables, and evaluation criteria I would use to guide my study. I began by surveying the literature of IA, including the most significant books, web sites, and mailing lists in this fledgling discipline. From these I created a syllabus that would allow me to explore these readings in depth and apply them to a real-life project at the same time.
I approached David Hendry, an iSchool professor with some experience in IA, and asked if he would be willing to act as my instructor for this independent study. He agreed, and we began meeting once a week to discuss the issues I explored throughout the term.
The readings provided a foundation of theory and best practices, and I spent the first few weeks absorbing them all. It was then time to apply the concepts to practice. Using the Faculty Accomplishments project as the test-bed for my ideas, I produced several documents central to the information architecture process. I applied what I had learned through the readings and noted how each book contributed to each activity.
In the beginning, I wanted to learn about both the theory and practice of IA. The latter turned out to be easier to accomplish than the former. The discipline of IA draws from extant theories in Library & Information Science, Architecture, User-Centered Design, and Systems Science. However, there is no single theory of IA, and many practitioners of IA have attempted to re-invent the wheel with new theories of how information should be organized and used.
This experience taught me some of the complexities involved in curriculum design. Teaching a discipline involves extracting the key concepts and practices of a knowledge domain and producing curricula that convey those concepts and practices to learners. With information architecture, a fairly new discipline, the key concepts and practices have yet to be reified. By developing my own training module and testing it on myself, I have a better idea of how to go about designing a course (or series of courses) on IA.
I am working with a few Information School faculty members to develop a quarter-long special topics IA course, and I hope to learn more about the curriculum development process through this interaction. The goal is to eventually propose a sequence of courses that will serve as a certification program in IA.