Context

While working at IMG, I have taught numerous seminars. IMG's focus is on instructional technology, or technology to be used either while teaching or in preparation for teaching. These seminars cover a variety of instructional technology, but our focus is always on technology for teaching, rather than technology for technology's sake. I've included two PowerPoints that I have worked on: Streaming Media and PowerPoint (part 1). The Streaming Media seminar guides participants through converting a video to Real Media format and uploading the video to the streaming media server. The PowerPoint seminar's focus is on PowerPoint 2007, but the first part of the seminar deals with design issues.

Although I try to make the PowerPoint a stand-alone product, the focus during the seminar is on the presentation and hands-on experience rather than the PowerPoint itself. The PowerPoints serve as a guide post during the seminar for those who need extra time. Participants may refer to the projected PowerPoint as supplemental to the workshop. The importance of the PowerPoints emerges before and after the seminar. Before the seminar, they may be used as preparatory information and as a means to keep notes, while after the seminar they may serve as reminders.

Audience

Our primary audience is faculty members; however, both faculty and staff attend. It's difficult to narrow down a teaching approach since almost any employee with any Auburn project can attend which leads to a spectrum of technological expertise. In one seminar, a majority of the participants may feel comfortable with new technology, so the seminar is speedy and over quickly. However in the next semester, participants may not have a grasp on computer basics so there is much backtracking and catch-up. To alleviate this dichotomy among participant experience, we try to focus on common tasks performed with the program presented in direct hands-on training.

The authoritative audience for the PowerPoint seminars was me, for the most part. I had complete control over the seminar presentations and seminar PowerPoints as it was not required that someone else look at them before the seminar. However, the primary audience could also be a part of the authoritative audience. Opposed to the Blackboard Flash videos where I do not know if people use them or not, I can gauge how well a seminar performs by participant feedback. Although not as concrete as feedback from a single person reviewing a document, if the participants do not react to a certain segment of the seminar, then I know I need to work on that particular section.

Process

For some seminars the focus is on how to perform a task (such as the Streaming Media seminar). For others, we talk more on why things work and why these tasks are performed, as seen in the PowerPoint seminars. In either case, we highlight effective use of the technology over the technology itself.

Our lab has two projectors connected to two computers. The computers can be operated by a single keyboard and mouse (through a program called Synergy). On one screen, we will usually have a PowerPoint for the seminar loaded while we use the other screen for demonstrations. As a disclaimer, many of the IMG PowerPoints are created and tweaked overtime by multiple people. So although I may have not created a specific slide in a specific PowerPoint, I have edited the entire PowerPoint to 1) update/correct the content, 2) add to the content, or 3) change the layout of the content.

The first part of the Streaming Media seminar is on how to convert and add videos to the streaming media server. The first part of the seminar focuses on "house keeping," or information that will not necessarily be used in the seminar, but all the participants must complete. This includes general information about the streaming media server, the formats the server will support, and how to request space on the server.

The second part of the seminar contains all the steps to get a video file onto the streaming media server. During this part of the seminar we perform the tasks together. Once the video is converted, then we find the file online. The address online can be confusing, so I broke the URL down using colors to show how their streaming media file address will differ from the test one they uploaded in the seminar. The black color is constant (same for everyone), while the red/green/blue colors try to explain the address, rather than simply telling them their address.

The PowerPoint seminar was created by a former IMG employee. When she left, I took over the presentation and modified it, updating it to Office 2007. Much like the other seminars, I begin by explaining design guidelines. There are really bad PowerPoint presentations out there, so I try to show people not only how to use PowerPoint, but how to use it effectively. As Jean-Luc Doumont says in his article "Slides Are Not All Evil," they impress us with colors, clip art, and special effects, but not with content. As a sequence of information chunks, they easily create a feeling of tedious linearity, failing to reveal any memorable (hierarchical) organization of content). Slides are a difficult art." (Doumont) It's easy for someone viewing a bad PowerPoint to recognize that it's a bad PowerPoint, but while creating a PowerPoint, it's not as clear. I use the PowerPoint presentation as a meta-example of bad PowerPoints. The slides discussing font and colors, for example, depict poor design choices-- the fonts are difficult to read and "busy;" the colors are glaring and hurt the eye. The two slides show examples of what not to do while the participants were the viewers, rather than the creators.

Near the end of the seminar (time permitting), I include a comedy routine describing the bad habits of PowerPoint as a bookend to the seminar. The comedy routine reinforces the design guidelines I detail in the first part of the seminar but without beating the participants over the head with the information.

Reflections

It's difficult to gauge faculty/staff response to the seminars since we rarely hear in-depth feedback. In the past, we offered seminar surveys to gauge how well the seminar satisfied the participant's needs, but IMG does not do that anymore-- I am not sure why. So aside from the sporadic "I learned a lot" or "thanks for the help," we can't develop the seminars towards a specific audience or approach. The most we can do is gauge how effective a seminar is through participant feedback during the seminar. However, we always go over the seminar before each semester to ensure it is the up-to-date and correct in regard to the technology we teach. This is an approach we adapt with much of our help at IMG. Since our audience (depending on the software) may include everyone at Auburn, our help must explain how to perform specific tasks clearly without assuming the user will have a certain degree of computer expertise.