IT 6710 Miyashita

Job Aide Makeover

Dr. Dunlap

Overview:

The purpose in creating a job aide for Podcasting with Garageband came from having

taught classes of students to create these presentations following a group demonstration.

Although all the steps were presented in a sequenced pattern many students had difficulty in

working with the program despite its user-friendly set up. This was partly due to the different

learning styles of the students, which led to the problems that students faced while working.

Audience:

The three groups that will make up the audience are students, teachers, and

administrators; each group presents different challenges that need to be addressed. Within the

students the first issue faced is that many students are familiar with and have vast technological

skills, but do not how to apply them towards academics. Part of this job aide is to help them

have a breakthrough of using technology for school and their personal lives.

For the teachers that use this there is often resistance to the incorporation of new

technology as many do not have or take the time to use the vast resources that are available to

them. Introducing new ways of assessing student knowledge and skills through such a medium

will allow students to excel in a format that suits their strengths.

Administrators are being pushed to keep up with 21st Century learning and the use of

Podcasting is a basic step into strengthening these skills. Key to this group is the adaptation and

application of it by them and not simply lip service for its use.

Each group will provide a number of learning styles including; visual, auditory, and

kinesthetic. The job aide will be given to students as part of a class demonstration that will be
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walked through as a group. Following the demonstration the students will then have this aide to

help solve any simple problems or fill in any knowledge gaps that they may have missed in the

original presentation.

Learning objectives:

It is intended that following this project the learners will be able to recognize other areas

of their lives that podcasting can be utilized not only academically, but socially as well. From

this point all will have the basic skills to create a podcast and hopefully will want to expand upon

these basic skills to become more techno savvy and proficient.

Problem/solution:

Many students are unaware of how to create a podcast and this presentation will solve

that by walking them through the steps of creating a basic podcast. In doing so the students will

be able to use a new medium to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of information

while developing a new skill.

Evidence:

The following evidence will be present in the presentation and allows for the user to walk

through the creation of a podcast with limited instruction. This limited instruction will create

opportunities for the instructor to work with students on expanding these skills or helping those

that struggle.

1. Step by step instruction

2. Screen shots with enlarged shots emphasized areas

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Dr. Dunlap
3. Sequenced instruction

4. Detailed captions.

6. Anecdotes:

Presentation skills have long been part of the high school curriculum that students have

been subjected to and now as then the fear of talking in front of a room filled with one’s peers

frightens many. With the advancement of technology the “boring” lecture style of presentation

with students gripping the podium with white knuckles can be avoided with the implementation

of podcasting. The podcast allows for a creative audio-visual presentation to be developed that

can hook the interest of the audience.

When students complain about having to create a podcast, an alternative assignment of

creating a formal in class presentation is offered and many students from fear of public speaking

then opt to complete the original assignment. The most difficult part that students face is

recording and listening to their voice as they try to record at the correct volume, tempo, and

inflection of voice.

Format:

The format that was chosen for the presentation at first was that of a comic, but as the

screenshots were incorporated it became difficult to present the information in the manner that

was desired. Instead dense screen shots were used with enlarged picture in picture elements to

emphasize important areas as they pertained to creating a podcast. Using comic style captions

the information was then organized sequentially to allow the user to follow the intended
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directions. As a handout the information is hard to organize without visuals, but Garageband is

a program that is difficult to capture in small snippets.

Sequencing:

The sequencing of the this job aide was difficult as in one’s mind it is easy to map out the

way the information would be presented. Even in sketching it out as a rough draft, but being

concise with information that is rich in detail presented a large challenge. According to

McCloud (Pg 15) “moment to moment, a single subject in a series of actions” was a key in

creating the sequencing of the aide. In using this principle the presentation walks the user

through the creation of a podcast in small chunks.

The previous idea from comic design by McCloud built off the ideas that were first

presented by Abela 2008 (pg. 86) “Forking is also a bad thing in presentations. Time is linear.

Your presentation… will in reality be presented over time, which flows in a straight line. So

design it along a straight line.” This concept is evident with podcasting, by working through

each step the user will create a product that doesn’t skip or avoid important steps along the way.

The blending of captions with the various screen shots for each step is influenced by

Tufte’s fourth principle of Analytical Design. According to Tufte (pg. 130) the integration of

evidence is demonstrated in how “Minard brings together various modes of information in order

to describe…” In the job aide the use of multiple screen shots with the captions allows for a rich

display of how a podcast comes together.

Graphics:

The use of graphics for this job aide were important, verbal or written instructions
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Dr. Dunlap
without any visuals would not allow a student to efficiently use their time to create a podcast.

Rather the graphics as Abela 2008 (pg 90) states “can increase your audience’s understanding of

your material, help convince them of your recommendations, and help them remember what you

have presented.”

In using the enlarged images, the concept was adapted from McCloud (pg 37) “Choice of

Frame: showing what the reader what they need to see. Creating a sense of place position, and

clarity.” This emphasized a specific piece of content that was important for the job aide.

“Completely integrate words, numbers, images, and diagrams” (Tufte Pg 131) Blending

all the different information is useful as the graphics themselves do provide an explanation of

how the user would create the next step of the podcast.

Text:

The text is fairly brief for each step on the slides, its intention follows the ideas of Duarte

2008 (pg. 140) “content should lend itself to be quick processing” The intention is to keep

students from reading too much, rather connecting the explanation with the images.

Simplified instructions are intended to “compress the story” (McCloud Pg 31) as a video

presentation of this could become long and drawn out, the words that are captioned allow for

quick message relaying.

Since this handout is a follow-up to a class demonstration, the same information is being

presented as the students saw that day in class. That allows for the text to then be added as an

overlay to the previous presentation by using call out boxes as suggested by Abela (2007 pg 127)

Layout:
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Dr. Dunlap
The layout of dense material was used after trying to create a comic that best represented

the presentation. Nothing really worked in the initial planning stages and Comic Life was used to

create the final aide, but it isn’t exactly in comic form. The use of the bubbles for the captions

for each image were used in accordance with McCloud (pg 30) “there’s no image so vague that

words can’t lock into a desired meaning.”

The blending of the graphics and text compliment one another as Abela (pg 133) “make

sure that your text is placed close to the relevant graphics whenever possible.” The use of the

thought bubbles creates a direct link to the intended graphic and supports it properly.

According to Tufte (pg 137) “the purpose of an evidence presentation is to assist

thinking.” With the use of graphics and text a clearer picture is painted that guides the user to

the desired endpoint that the singular use of text or graphics could not produce.

Measurement:

Measurement of the students’ success on this presentation will be done through the use of

the assignment rubric that is created in part with this handout. Depending upon the expectations

that are laid out for the students at the start of the assignment regarding what is included in the

podcast the students will be responsible for incorporating those skills. For those that do not meet

the expectations, individual meetings to discuss the student’s process will be conducted to find

gaps in the job aide and student retention of information.

Peer review results:

Greg’s suggestions of creating a screen cast in the future for students were well received,
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Dr. Dunlap
although not applicable for this project. He also suggested the numbering of the captions to help

guide the students through each page along with the titling of the page providing a brief

description of the task at hand.

From Karen, the suggestion for the job aide that was most helpful was the addition of the

color for the captions. In revising this final product, each caption was given a uniform color

depending upon what number it was in the sequence of instructions. This way the user would be

able to identify that blue was always the first direction to follow on the screen.
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Job Aide Makeover
Dr. Dunlap

Abela, A.A (2008) Advanced Presentations by Design. San Francisco: Pfeifer.

Duarte, N. (2008) The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. Sebastopol: O’Reilly.

McCloud, S. (2006) Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic
Novels. New York: Harper

Tufte, E. (2006) Beautiful Evidence. Graphic Press.