In an effort to promote Digital Media Services support services and wider use of digital media on campus, Alma and one of her colleagues developed an structure to deliver short courses in six different tracks. These tracks included Computer Solutions, Web Apps, Media Theory, and Mobile Computing as well as a track that focuses on equipment and software available through Digital Media Services and a Contest Track.
The tracks were developed to tie course topics together and enable students to become “certified” in an area, with the exception of the contest track. The contest track intended to tie together short courses that would benefit students interested in entering one of the planned monthly contests.
All short courses were developed to be 60 minutes long and be conducted within the Digital Media Lab at one of Loyola University Chicago’s Lakeside campuses. Courses also required advance (free) registration to ensure workstations would be reserved in the teaching area of the lab. This in-person nature of the courses was the program’s chief weakness as students will seldom make time to attend an event that doesn’t tie directly to a class or student organization.
The team followed this structure for three months before planning to build online, self-paced resources. The structure of the short courses provided a major starting point for the online Competencies that would replace them.
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