1.0 INTRODUCTION

In 2008, San Diego State’s Journalism and Media Studies (“JMS”) Department established a dynamic, skills-driven course – JMS 550: Media Skills Capstone (“JMS 550”) - designed to teach students an array of digital media skills. The course focuses on the following topics:

· Digital photography and photography editing

· Digital sound and sound editing

· Digital video and video editing

2.0 PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY

Many students are new to digital media and have little understanding of basic the mechanical procedures underlying media capture, production, or distribution. JMS 550, for its part, is still developing as a course. To that end, course modules and instructional materials are currently quite disorganized. This project seeks to streamline instructional materials and, in doing so, give students a single reference location for reference acquisition.

3.0 AUDIENCE

This project’s intended audience will be future JMS 550 students. The JMS 550 student pool primarily consists of undergraduate seniors and master’s students.

An additional “audience” includes JMS 500 instructors, who will use the tool to deliver more effective in-class instruction.

4.0 USER NEEDS

As this is my fourth semester serving as the courses technical instructor, I am acutely aware of requisite user needs. Observed user needs include the following:

· Previous JMS 550 students have indicated a need for a web-based, general reference tool.

· Previous JMS 550 students have indicated a need for the web-based tool to be organized in a “modular” format, or a format that allows for users to select topics by general media archetype (e.g. “creating a podcast,” “creating a slideshow”).

· As a JMS 550 instructor, I have consistently noted that having a module-based learning tool – which delineates necessary procedures underlying content creation – would greatly enhance in-class instruction.

· As a JMS 550 instructor, I have noted that the course’s organization is decentralized; often, full use of available instructional materials is made difficult due to a lack of organization.

Over the past two (2) academic years, the JMS Department has worked diligently to develop multimedia instructional tools specifically for JMS 550. These tools encompass the following media types:

· Print-based .pdf files

· Photographs (.jpeg)

· Audio files (.mp3)

· Video-based instructional files (.flv format)

· Flash-based slideshows (.flv format)

Accordingly, the developed website must be dynamic to organize and display several different media types.

5.0 ENVIRONMENT

The website will be accessed during in-class instructional sessions, during in-class lab time, and as students work independently on projects.

Hosted media file sizes and formats (.flv, .mp3, .pdf, and .jpeg) require comparatively minimal Internet resources (high-speed Internet has been widely dispersed and Flash has rapidly emerged as the video Internet standard. Likewise, Adobe Reader is popular freeware) and, thus, are easily accessible by most users. All SDSU computers (including those in the JMS 550 lab) currently possess the software and hardware resources required for access.

6.0 LIMITATIONS

Since all materials have been created specifically for JMS 550, no copyright or fair-use considerations are necessary.

In order to facilitate comprehensive utilization by JMS 550 students, the site will link to necessary software, all of which is currently free of charge on the Internet (Flash player and Adobe Reader, notably).

7.0 GENERAL SOLUTION

The proposed website, as a general solution, will function as a multimedia organizational tool designed to help JMS 550 students acquire skills required for multimedia news production. The homepage will describe each learning module and directions for access to desired module (s).