SCSU students working on multimedia reporting projects now have a new resource on deadline: Online video tutorials to help them with digital media tools.
The Southern Connecticut State University Journalism Department has published several video tutorials to help students working on digital media projects. Topics include Photoshop, WordPress, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Audition and Final Cut Pro.
The videos were created by assistant professors Vern Williams and Jodie Mozdzer Gil to complement the Digital Media Skills course the department offers. More videos are being developed by Williams, Gil and Liz Glagowski, an adjunct professor in the department.
Williams said the goal of the videos was to help support handouts and in-class instruction in a way that allowed students to have access to help when they needed it.
“We decided to record our own videos so we could produce content explicitly for what our students needed, and make them parallel to class material,” Williams said. “As multimedia journalists now teaching multimedia skills, we felt it was incumbent upon us to produce produce videos that would have a high production value.”
The videos are free and available to the public on the department’s YouTube page.
“We wanted students to be able to access the videos long after their courses ended,” said Gil. “And we see a value to the greater public to have access to these skills as well.”
Williams and Gil started developing the videos in early 2015, and recorded and edited throughout the summer. Now, with more than a dozen videos completed, the department will start evaluating how effective the videos are in helping students learn the skills.
Williams, Gil and Glagowski have received a faculty development grant to host a workshop for other SCSU faculty looking to learn how to create their own videos. The workshop will be scheduled for the Spring 2016 semester.
The videos
The following videos are available for students and the public to use to augment their digital media skills. More videos will be added as they get posted to YouTube.
Adobe Audition: Editing tools
Adobe Audition: Exporting files
Adobe Audition: Working with multitrack sessions
Excel: Working with charts
Excel: Sorts and formulas
HTML: HTML Basics
InDesign: Creating a document
Photoshop: Image sizing
Photoshop: Layers
Photoshop: The selection tools
WordPress: Getting started
WordPress: Embedding content
WordPress: Posts, links, categories and tags
WordPress: Adding photos to blog posts