The Authoring Languages Committee held seven meetings and conducted a Dialogue Day at GateWay Community College. Our focus on authoring languages was a faculty perspective. Faculty seem to be divided into 2 camps:
In order to help the 10 percenters who feel isolated, we agreed to produce a handbook to help/guide them through the instructional development process. The handbook has been developed, produced, and distributed to people who attended the Developer's Dialogue Day. (Donna Rebadow at PVCC can provide your representative's name. MCLI will coordinate the updates and additions to the book.)
The Multimedia Developers Handbook is a resource for any Maricopa faculty member who wants to consider ANY aspect of instructional technology, ranging from overhead transparencies to presentation software to full-blown computer programming. Here is the organization of the Handbook:
Here's the breakdown for the 10 percenters:
The problem is that most of the handbook has to be filled in. It took us all year to organize the handbook and for Ken Costello with the committee's help to design the media selection check sheets, but we also wanted to organize a Developer's Dialogue Day because at most other events developers never get to see each other's projects or discuss the "behind-the-scenes" action. On March 31st at GateWay Community College, we had several sessions including 8 presenters from 5 colleges using tools such as NovaNet, Director, HyperCard, and NeXTStep, touching on development issues such as the team process and scripting techniques.
We also brainstormed and used the recommendation process for Ocotillo groups. We recommended an Authoring Pilot Project. In the past, a 10 percenter had to be a content expert, instructional designer, programmer, and graphic artist. We recommended that faculty members work with students to develop a section of their course into a multimedia project with the help and expertise of MCLI. Through the hard work of Alan Levine, Maria Hesse, Naomi Story, and Alfredo G. de los Santos Jr. this recommendation will be piloted next Spring. The faculty projects are being identified as this report is being finished.
Our committee is very excited about this project as we feel that we can begin to "Develop the Developer" much as we "Train the Trainer." Since this is a pilot project, we aren't sure what direction the project will take. Our vision was to have faculty identify 2-5 students who take their course in the fall. Then in the spring the faculty member (with released time) with students (getting college credit by taking a Special Projects course) identify a unit of instruction that they all feel could be more effectively taught using multimedia. The teams would meet and use MCLI resources to develop the instructional material.
Other suggestions for projects included:
