Reflections of 2012--and What a Year It Was…

What a difference 10 years makes! iD8-TripleSSS celebrated its 10^th anniversary in October of this year. There are two words that encapsulate the year for us--technology and people.  They may seem like polar opposites, but it is the advances, innovations, and expectations in educational technology and the people with whom we worked on our digital journey that have made 2012 memorable.

Technology changed our processes, and services, and advanced our skills and services in ways that we could not have dreamed of even one year ago. We used to set up FTP sites, and transfer files through yousendit and related sites. Now we set up a Dropbox folder for each project, and we check the files on our phones and tablets. We ask our clients whether we should provide mapping documents or author online. Flash has given way to HTML 5 and social media has become as important as a website.

Print marketing materials? Nonexistent. Tablets? They are crucial to our clients and to us.  For years we’ve written some content for online courses. Now we are often asked to write the entire online course, thanks to the wonderfully qualified professionals we employ.

Rather than developing postsecondary content for only print or online courseware, we began developing content for multiple media and platforms. We recently completed a successful foray into app content development for the K-12 space, and we now create builds for proof of concept work and beyond . We learned about keeping our footprint “light” so we do not take up band-width. The amount of new buzzwords we now employ (not just read about) could easily comprise a short dictionary.

We studied best-practices in K-12 and assessed our  strategy in this entire market-space and made some investment decisions accordingly. We watched and acted as content become personal, and adaptive-learning  became the expectation at all levels. While content became more personal, access to resources continued to open-up, and OER (open educational resources) grew world-wide and became less of a threat (maybe) to the copyright world.

Finally, what made 2012 most memorable for us is the people. The loyalty, skills, and growth of our writers, developers, project managers, and creators inspire us each day. We have learned together and helped each other through challenging projects and times.

We suppose anyone with an organization claims to have the best people, but we will always argue that iD8-TripleSSS truly does have the best.  We do not settle for less than the best and are thankful everyday that each of these excellent professionals chooses to work and grow with us.

A client once said we are “transparent,” complementing us deeply and something we take to heart. “It’s personal” was our original mission when we opened our doors 10 years ago. “It’s still personal.”

Thank you! May your New Year be Healthy, Happy, and Prosperous-- from all of us at iD8-TripleSSS Media Development, LLC. 

Designing for Digital

In a recent study published by Educause, surveyors found that “students prefer courses with some online components and they expect their instructors to seamlessly integrate technology in their pedagogical practices.”

How can you as publishers help instructors give students what they want? How can we at iD8-TripleSSS help you achieve this goal? We will explore these questions in this post.

Broken into their simplest pieces the relevant product stages here are Product Visioning, Creation, Market Testing, and Product Support. What do each of these stages mean for technology integration? 

Product Visioning: At this first stage you and your authors are grappling with what course your product will support, what market needs it will answer, what the competition is doing and not doing – and it is easy to push Technology aside to deal with it later. But you can’t – not if you want to create seamless integration for your instructors and their students.

You should also be thinking about technology now. In the past technology has been an afterthought, an additional feature added on, and authored by someone brought on at the last moment. This doesn’t lead to integration, this leads to a bolt-on effect, and students will recognize that the media is not integrated with the rest of the material.

To avoid the bolt-on effect you should be asking yourself at the outset questions like the following:

●      What role will technology play in this product?

●      Will we use technology to deliver content, to assess learning, or both?

●      How dependent on technology will this product be?

●      What market needs will the technology answer? (You don’t want to just create something flashy without strong pedagogical value.)

●      iD8-TripleSSS has experience grappling with these type of issues, and we can help you think about the market-value and pedagogical-value of the technology solutions you might make part of your product.

Content Creation & Market Testing

Creation

●      While core body content is being written, the authors/SMEs need to know what you’re planning for the media. The plans, storyboards, and concepts for the media should be built out in as much detail as possible along side the core content.

●      iD8-TripleSSS has experience developing media products, and coordinating their creation. We can help you create solid media content in parallel with the “core” content.

Testing

●      Reviewers need to understand how the media and written content fit together. They should validate your plans. They should evaluate both together – just as the student and instructor will experience them.

●      You should be asking them if the media plays a sound pedagogical role? Is it accessible and easy to use? Is it worth an additional cost if there is one? Does it address specific needs?

●      If it the media will not be ready until down the road, then what can reviewers examine to understand what the media will be? Can they see storyboards, descriptions, etc.?

●      iD8-TripleSSS of course has years of experience coordinating authors, SMEs and reviewers

Support Tools

●      Support Tools are critical to a product’s and an instructor’s success.

●      Instructors and students need to know how the media will be accessed; and when and how it is to be used. The more comfortable your instructors feel with the technology, the more they will use it in class and assign it to students beyond the classroom. For those reasons, support tools are critical. We can help with this as well.

Media and technology are exciting new ways to deliver content. There are as many pitfalls as there are opportunities. Let iD8-TripleSSS help you avoid those pitfalls, and create an engaging, seamless experience for teachers and students!

Guest Blogger: David Ploskonka
David has had a lifelong passion for education. He earned a Masters in English, and worked in publishing for over five years before becoming a freelance editor. In his free time, he and his wife enjoy camping and traveling.