Course Description

Course Objectives

Every professional needs to teach, train, or inform someone at some time. Perhaps you are a teacher, introducing a new subject to your students. Perhaps you work for an organization that needs to familiarize employees or other stakeholders with procedures, skills, or the workings of a system. Or perhaps you work for a business, and need to tell investors and customers how your product or service will make people's lives better. In any case, multimedia is an effective way to communicate these ideas. And that multimedia is best received when it is delivered through an interactive interface that is easy and fun to use.

This course has two goals. The first goal is to teach principles underlying the effective design of multimedia communications. This includes an introduction to multimedia, concepts of usability engineering, and principles of sound user interface design. The second goal is to give students practical experience developing and integrating multimedia learning materials using a variety of software tools.

At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to …

• Design an interactive multimedia website for a given audience and topic.
• Develop a prototype of their design incorporating multimedia output.
• Evaluate their prototype and specify appropriate modifications.

Readings

We will be using 2 textbooks for the class. Both may be read online for free. They are:

• Interaction Design Foundation (2014). The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Edition.
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018). How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

In addition, readings from the current literature may be assigned. These may be found in the Course Materials section of the Blackboard site for the course.

Course Materials

For this class we will be using software from the Adobe suite. Your SBU email address has been assigned an Adobe Creative Cloud named-user license. A notification email will be sent directly by Adobe. The account and software will be accessible at account.adobe.com. Please provide your email address at the sign-in screen and select the "Company or School Account" option when prompted. Afterwards, you'll authenticate with your NetID and Duo at the SSO portal. You can also use Adobe apps on campus.

You are responsible for backing up all of your work - having your hard drive fail, or losing a USB drive, is no excuse for not having your assignments done.

Office Hours

Office hours will be conducted primarily on Zoom. You must sign up for office hours on my calendar (Google calendar appointment slots). You can also set up a special appointment with me by sending email. Please be on-time as appointments are only 15 minutes long.

If you need to contact me, the best way to communicate is through email. If you use Brightspace’s email tool from the course site, it will automatically include your full name, course name and section when you send me an email. Please allow between 24-48 hours for an email reply. Your Stony Brook University email must be used for all University-related communications. You must have an active Stony Brook University email account and access to the Internet. All instructor correspondence will be sent to your SBU email account. Plan on checking your SBU email account regularly for course-related messages. To log in to Stony Brook Google Mail, go to http://www.stonybrook.edu/mycloud and sign in with your NetID and password.

Technical Assistance

If you need technical assistance at any time during the course or to report a problem with Brightspace you can:

• Phone: 631-632-9800 (client support, Wi-Fi, software and hardware)
• Submit a help request ticket: https://it.stonybrook.edu/services/itsm
• If you are on campus, visit the Walk-Up Tech Support Station in the Educational Communications Center (ECC) building.

Course Requirements

• Class Participation - 30%
  Each week you will be given a Discussion topic based on the lectures/readings. You are required to start a new thread by the middle of the week, and then respond to your classmates' threads by the end of the week. Late posts/responses will receive a lower grade.
   
• Project - 70%
  Over the course of the semester, you will develop a term project in 7 parts, each the result of a homework assignment. Each homework has a specific due date; although you can update each part for a better grade, handing it in on time ensures that you will get appropriate feedback from me. See the Assignments section for further details and the Schedule (below) for due dates.
  

Advisories

Critical Incident Management: Stony Brook University expects students to respect the rights, privileges, and property of other people. Faculty are required to report to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards any disruptive behavior that interrupts their ability to teach, compromises the safety of the learning environment, or inhibits students' ability to learn. Although this class is not meeting face-to-face, all online discourse is expected to be civil and respectful.  

Student Accessibility Support Center: If you have a physical, psychological, medical, or learning disability that may impact your course work, please contact the Student Accessibility Support Center, Stony Brook Union Suite 107, (631) 632-6748, or at sasc@stonybrook.edu. They will determine with you what accommodations are necessary and appropriate. All information and documentation is confidential.

Academic Integrity: Each student must pursue his or her academic goals honestly and be personally accountable for all submitted work. Representing another person's work as your own is always wrong. Faculty is required to report any suspected instances of academic dishonesty to the Academic Judiciary. For more comprehensive information on academic integrity, including categories of academic dishonesty please refer to the academic judiciary website at http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/academic_integrity/index.html

Course Evaluation: Each semester Stony Brook University asks students to provide feedback on their courses and instructors through an online course evaluation system. The course evaluation results are used by the individual faculty, department chairs and deans to help the faculty enhance their teaching skills and are used as part of the personnel decision for faculty promotion and tenure. No individually identifiable data are ever reported back to the university or instructor. Students who have completed previous evaluations can view all faculty ratings at: https://classie-evals.stonybrook.edu/. If two thirds of the class fills out the class evaluations before Reading Day (December 15), I will award everyone with an extra 2 points.

My Own Advice

Think of me as your cranky client. There may be times when you disagree with what I say. You may think that some things are a matter of opinion, or that you are right and I am wrong. Just remember that I am the one giving out the grades. When I make a suggestion, be sure to listen, because it may have an impact on your final grade.

Start your assignments and your project early. That way if you have trouble, you can get help in time to finish your assignment by the due date. This will also help you to avoid a last-minute crunch in the lab.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. If you don't understand something, it's likely that your classmates don't understand it either. Raise questions in class. If you need further explanation, come see me during office hours. If you can't make my office hours, send me email. Be sure to do this before you get hopelessly lost.

Work with other students. I do not mean that you should copy each other's work (which will not be tolerated). Rather, you should learn from one another. If you can't figure out how to make something work, see how your colleague did it. It is also useful to discuss different ways of approaching a problem.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you anticipate any problems with this class. If alerted to them early on, I may be able to accommodate your needs.

Schedule

Classes are divided into two parts: theoretical and practical. Readings are from The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures (HPL), or other specified online sources which can also be found in Documents->Readings on Brightspace. Homework assignments are due on the date listed, and will be presented in class on that date. Please note that this schedule is approximate, and subject to change.