Moodle Portfolio

When designing multimedia lessons, as well as other learning objects and artefacts, I often find myself having to design custom buttons in order to aid learners in navigating complex and multi-layered lesson pages. Using images as buttons is often problematic and using text links is not the most attractive option. However, using CSS to style the button element can not only help you to improve aesthetics and introduce visually appealing effects but also improve navigation, user experience and accessibility. Moreover, you can also get really creative and design special-purpose button elements such as toggles and lock buttons!

LottieFiles bring scalable, vector-based and lightweight animations to the web which provide consistent user experience across screens and devices. That's why, as a designer working in education, you should harness the power of Lottiefiles not only to hone your design skills but also to be able to design high-quality, engaging and interactive animations which can greatly enhance instructional content as well as better engage your learners and bring static content to life! 

While Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications continue to make strides in education, they are still quite prohibitive and difficult to scale due to substantial hardware cost and highly technical skillset required in their production and deployment. Spherical 360° images and video resources delivered via the web browser, on the other hand, are much easier to design and deploy, offer some degree of immersion and learner control and you can use them to engage your students in various forms of simulations, procedural training or simply transport your learners to inaccessible or remote regions.

Despite falling short of a fully-fledged learning theory, Gamification definitely has a place in a learning designer's toolbox and you can use tools such as Level-Up to introduce interactive game elements e.g. badges, progress bars, quests and leaderbords to learning scenarios in order to drive engagement, sustain motivation and, most importantly, make learning enjoyable rewarding and fun. Finally, Level-Up works with a wide range of Moodle activities and resources and supports highly complex logic so that you can easily meet the demands of different gamified learning scenarios.

Lightboard videos featuring an instructor using a large size glass board are becoming more popular, especially in context where the focus of instruction is on writing, drawing diagrams as well as deriving formulas and equations while providing verbal explanations and supporting gestures at the same time. Producing Lightboard videos is not only an excellent opportunity to provide support to instructors who prefer the so-called "talk and chalk" teaching style but also advance your video and audio production skills.

Whether you want to establish presence in an online environment, build trust and credibility or simply communicate an inspirational or important message, video testimonials and interviews might just be the perfect tool to help you to better engage your audience. Being highly visual and versatile by nature they can also help you to convey emotions, open the floor for discussion or set the tone around an event, research project, course or subject of study.

Recording computer screen activity combined with high quality audio narration has never been easier and Screencast offers new and exciting ways for teachers to diversify instruction and create engaging explainer videos, particularly useful for demonstrating software applications, showcasing digital tools, run simulations as well as presenting model solutions and feedback/corrections on assignments. What's more, many digital tools used for Screencast productions now come with a range of built-in effects (e.g. zoom, spotlight, annotations, transitions etc.) that can be used to facilitate comprehension and further enhance instruction

Despite being less visual in nature, compared to other forms of multimedia, Podcast still has a definite place in education and a polished Podcast series can be used effectively to build a community around a subject, spark a discussion, provide supplementary course material, explore new territories and make your lecture material accessible to students 'on the go' using portable devices. Although being a generally less engaging medium compared to video, Podcast episodes still offer a lightweight accessible alternative for visually impaired students which can be used to complement more visual media. Finally, as a multimedia developer, you can also take your Podcast to the next level and explore video as well as 360 video podcast production.

Many developments in modern web design make it much easier to add graphics, animations as well as interactive and responsive interface components to a webpage without having to code them manually. Bootstrap, WebAwesome, FontAwesome and LottieFiles - some of the web's most popular and free CSS/JS frameworks, offer a wide range of customisable graphics and web elements which can be easily added to a course page in order to aid and improve interactivity, engagement, user experience and page navigation. All this is particularly useful when designing content-heavy course pages which require substantial and monotonous vertical scrolling.

Most institutions often follow existing marketing and branding guidelines which dictate the use of such graphic elements like logos, colour pallets and document templates. However, individual departments or divisions are often free to design and use their own. Designing a logo for your department, team or even a project can be an excellent opportunity to bring your team together, brainstorm different concepts and, most importantly, hone your design skills.

There are many educational benefits to using cartoons in language learning e.g. improved vocabulary and grammar acquisition, deeper emotional engagement etc. so why not making your own animated cartoon to help your students along their language learning journey! An animated cartoon can not only help your students to learn better but also provide ample opportunities to introduce a whole new range of engaging and interactive classroom activities and bring your students and staff together.

Video lectures, and other forms of instructional videos, have become commonplace in online education as well as various modes of blended learning. Made popular by MOOCs and other flipped classroom approaches to education, the most successful and engaging video lectures are often characterised by high production values and the use of a green screen recording techniques. What's more, these resources can be further enhanced by interactive quizzes, pools, real time discussions as well as accessibility and navigation features such as smart chapters, dynamic scripts and closed captions.

Releasing new features of existing products, as well as completely new tools and technologies, always brings excitement to designers and users. That's why a feature release video can be an excellent opportunity to engage with your audiences, showcase new features ahead of time and, most importantly, encourage social sharing and get the conversation going within the community of users.

The omnipresence of portable devices in recent years has not only led to such powerful concepts as Mobile Learning and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), reshaping some aspects of leaning, but also created a vibrant market for various educational apps across different subjects and disciplines. These apps can not only be used in student independent and self-directed learning but can also be employed to support face-to-face classroom instruction especially in the field of language learning.

Open Educational Resources (OER) do not only improve and facilitate access to educational materials for a wide range of international learners, but also offer opportunities for designers and academics to share ideas while collaborating on various projects and often forming dedicated multidisciplinary community of educators. That's why taking part in designing an OER presents an unmissable opportunity for educational designers to not only showcase innovative design ideas but also develop a wide-ranging pedagogical and web design skillset.

Supporting online delivery of instructional content with advanced graphs and charts can definitely present additional educational benefits. However, image-based graphs created with proprietary software packages are not without problems in terms of responsiveness, interactivity and the ability to easily edit them. That's why using an open-source JavaScript library for data visualisation you can create a whole range of editable, responsive and interactive charts with just a few lines of code.

Illustrations as well as other forms of instructional graphics are commonplace in online and e-learning courses. However, when dealing with more complex scientific concepts, structures, formations and phenomena, more engaging and real life representation is required for effective learning. That's why you can use 3d models in your course page to offer learners a more hands-on opportunity to interact and manipulate the models in real time which bring additional instructional benefits and increased engagement. Most importantly, 3d modelling and relevant web design offer a wide range of high-level design skills you can get under your belt as a designer.

The proliferation of many different e-learning authoring tools offers designers opportunities to combine several types of media and develop reusable and interactive multimedia learning objects delivered via the web browser without advanced programming skills. However, while offering enhanced interactivity as well as increased learner engagement, the design principles behind them also raise important questions regarding the accessibility, user experience and responsive web design which every designer should address as part of their creative workflow.