TDT1-Task 3
Multimedia
Kristine Thayer (000196154)
Western Governors University
5/24/2011
Mentor: Karen Lamb
This essay will describe the purpose for the submitted multimedia product and the audience it is intended for. It will also include a description of the software of choice—Adobe Captivate—and a rationale for using this program. The steps that were followed to create this product will also be discussed in a fashion that would facilitate someone else using the description to create similar products; this document has been provided as a separate file in portable document file format (PDF) and the file’s name has been provided at the end of this essay. The discussion for the conceptual framework has also been included in this document.
Audience for Multimedia Product
The target audience for the multimedia product is active duty enlisted USCG Petty Officers (POs) on assignment as instructors to a TRACEN “A” school. They are adults ranging from 26-44 years of age and 87% of them currently are male. At minimum they have a high school diploma or GED and some have attained a college degree. Before assignment to TRACEN Petaluma as instructors, they have progressed through the CG promotional system and completed performance-based training when they attended “A” school during their first year of CG enlistment in order to gain subject matter expertise in their chosen rate. All instructors are considered subject matter experts in their designated rate.
The range of learning styles varies widely with this population of learners. However, the fact that they have been indoctrinated over a number of years in performance-based training indicates stronger kinesthetic and visual learning tendencies. As the USCG requires numerous job-related tasks to be completed with computer-based software applications available on the CG data network (e.g., communications via email and other messaging systems), a majority of these instructors have acquired basic to intermediate skills using the Microsoft (MS) Office suite of applications to complete their daily job-related tasks. CG members overall use both MS Outlook and MS Word most often in their job.
Very few have had experience or training with document/graphic design concepts, graphics-based software applications, and multimedia. These instructors sign up for professional development courses based on time availability and because they want to—not because they’re required to.
Purpose for Multimedia Product
The purpose for the multimedia product is to support the instructional unit Create Effective Visual Training Aids. Although it doesn’t completely address an entire terminal performance objective (TPO) completely, it does support one. This product is only 2 minutes in length, which allows for an introduction that leads towards fulfillment of this TPO.
TPO 4
Given a USCG Image 6.0 Standard Workstation using MS Word, the student will customize a Structured Writing Template’s table layout while effectively applying the design elements of type, contrast, alignment, and space with a minimum rubric score of 4.0.
Software Chosen to Create the Multimedia Product
This multimedia product is a computer software simulation using Word 2007, which requires some type of screen capture software to most effectively demonstrate how to do specific actions in the program. Adobe Captivate was chosen to create this product because it is one of the best available tools for creating computer demonstrations and simulations. It is an excellent tool for capturing a series of screen shots that appear as if they’re a real time video to demonstrate numerous computer actions non-stop. Captivate takes a screenshot and waits until the screen actually changes to capture another image. It also tracks both keyboard and mouse movements while capturing a recorded real-time session. In addition, it creates bubble captions (during the screen recording process) which provide—textually—the action to take prior to the action that is about to occur on the screen. Another program—TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio—could also have been used for this product.
Rationale for Choice
The reason for choosing Captivate over Camtasia Studio is that it does a more effective job creating the visual cues on the fly (i.e., captions, highlighting, etc.). It is easier to edit audio on a per slide basis rather than Camtasia Studio’s single audio file capture. In addition, you can insert audio clips on a per slide basis in Captivate and this is handy. Audio is the most challenging part of recording any video production, so it’s beneficial to have editing capabilities based on a section of the project. In the end, however, it also takes more effort to edit a Captivate project than you would usually need to spend when capturing a full motion recording in Camtasia Studio. This writer still believes Captivate is the better choice for software simulations and likes the fact that it will publish a self-contained executable file that embeds the video player with it.
Process Followed to Create the Multimedia Product
The process that was followed to create this two minute multimedia product was extensive. A tutorial was created in a separate, formatted document to best describe the process in a step-by-step fashion. The separate document that covers the entire process was uploaded to Taskstream and is entitled TDT1_Task3_Tutorial_KrisThayer.pdf.
How the Conceptual Framework Helped in the Design Process
The conceptual framework that was created for this project was a storyboard. The actual storyboard (SB) used has been included in the Appendix of this document. The SB was immensely helpful in organizing this project and helping to keep boundaries around the scope of the project. The first version included 12 slides in the SB and it wasn’t clear how long the final video would be initially. Once the first testing of the video sections was complete, it became clear that the scope of the video was too large for a one to two minute time frame. The first draft was over 11 minutes unedited. Therefore, it was back to the storyboard to revisit the plan. A great deal of editing and hacking needed to happen to get the project down to no more than two minutes.
As shown in the final version of the SB, there were only five slides and much less information. The SB helped to maintain integrity of the project scope and forced an iterative process of fine-tuning until the project fit within the timeline.
Appendix
Page 1 of Storyboard – Slides 1-3
Appendix cont….
Page 2 of Storyboard – Slides 4 and 5
