BOB: Barron's Own Blog

Now the part that really gets my heart pumping … the practical application.

Thus far in this assignment, I have utilized the following media:

1.       storytelling and an overall conversational style

2.       a distracting visual device as metaphor for inconvenience

3.       larger, more engaging font faces

4.       color

5.       descriptive images which define specific relationships

6.       a subtle photograph to visually evoke a sense of intensity, surprise, and even annoyance that often accompanies the arrival of change

7.       some cute clip art, so I can make a point about one of my pet peeves:  the inappropriate inclusion of cute clip art, or a variety of media when it is done just for the sake of using a variety of media or being cute

8.       internet content to extend the argument via simple hyperlink (to an audio file, nonetheless,) and a hyperlinked image to induce the same reader response

9.       internal document linking to provide the reader with an optional non-linear reading experience.

My coup de grâce is the video clip from 60 minutes, included immediately above, which is an interesting and slightly frightening introduction to properly framing the use of new media in my current work.

Each day in my profession, I observe how the efficacious use of media is being driven by other forces that are hard at work.  Again, que market economics for a cameo … in every scene.  In aⁿ recession economic downturn, with supply and demand in office, my job, and more substantially, continuation of funding for most institutions of higher education rely substantially on some oversimplified bottom-line metrics.  Research, however, confirms that the process of generating the highest caliber of academic excellence is not exactly comparable to the process required to generate your standard 18-25 year-old widget with a Millenial complex.  How will we be successful?  Engagement.  Call it what you want, but effective (as it is being measured) education will require better communication with the technosavvy clientele that we have created.  It has been said that, in every advising appointment, students are really asking three questions:

1.        Do they know?  (Accurate Information)

2.       Are they there? (Accessibility)

3.       Do they give a damn? (Care and Esteem)

As an educator, I represent the institution’s best effort to ask another set of equally important questions:

1.       Who are you? (Self-Awareness)

2.       Where are you headed? (Goal-Setting and Self-Direction)

3.       What do you need and who can help you? (Self-Inventory, Requirements Inventory, and Resource Identification)

Answering these questions and arriving at the positive outcome we desire (while besting the required bottom line measures), will require new ways of doing business.  The desired outcomes necessitate the use (and reuse) of remediated tools, practices, and methods, modularized and highly variable content that is specific to the individual, and content and venues that have been transcoded into the new media realms that are so appealing and widely utilized by the typical incoming student.  Scarcity of resources will require us to utilize the tools at hand to effectively communicate with students, strategically prompt student learning at every opportunity, and then reinforce, redirect and celebrate with students, respectively.