Business degree advisement

From CTLpedia

Summary: Keeping up with the various options and requirements for a getting various degrees in business is difficult. Rod Christian (MCC Business faculty) visits about 60 business classes a semester to give students advice on their business related career paths.

This project will replace those visits with a self-running PowerPoint presentation, which we think will be more effective.

Contents 1 Project Goals 2 Relation to CTL Department Plan Inititiatives 3 Project Staff 4 Project Timeline 4.1 History 4.2 Current Status 5 Project Resources 6 Project Outcomes

Project Goals

Our goal is to create a presentation that will inform business students the options for obtaining an Associate in Business Degree or an Associate of Applied Science in Business degree. Our goal is also to free Ron from the repetition of doing the presentations.

Relation to CTL Department Plan Inititiatives

This project falls under the 2006-7 #6 CTL Innovative Instructional Technologies Program. This project is an innovative way to advise students.

Project Staff

Rod Christian: Rod has many years experience teaching business classes. He also spends much time keeping up with the Universities transfer requirements.

Ken Costello: Ken is highly skilled at designing PowerPoint presentations. His understanding of pedagogy is applied to the timing and layout of visual, textual, and audio elements in the presentation.

Project Timeline

History

Rod came forward with this idea in late February 2007. Ken agreed with the pedagogy and the technical feasibility of the project. In early March Rod did a recording of the script that would go in the PowerPoint. The recording was done on a portable digital dictaphone from one of Ron's colleagues.

Ken felt the quality of the recording was not good enough for the presentation, and since file space was not an issue, a higher quality sound (and larger file) was preferred. Ken also suggested that Ron make a script to read rather than doing the narration off-the-cuff. Ron was concerned that it would feel stiff, but decided that a script would come across more polished.

Rod re-recorded his script on the same device but at a higher quality setting. Even though not studio quality, Ken felt the recording adequate for the purpose. Ron also provided Ken with the written and digital copies of the forms that his narration discussed.

Mid March Ken began the creation of the PowerPoint that utilized Rod's narration and screen shots of the forms. Ken also found and embedded photos related to business and business courses in the PowerPoint. The photos were there to add realism to the subject and for motivational purposes.

Ken discovered some discrepancies in the script, which was fixed by Rod; plus, Rod had some changes to the script due to changes at ASU's Business College. Ken and Rod decided to show these new changes as Late-Breaking News announcemences. Ken would add the graphics and possibly use his own voice as the "newsbreak".

On April 5th, Ken was completed the PowerPoint presentation. He placed it on a CD with all of the accompanying audio files. Ken also designed a CD cover. He then duplicated about 50 CDs. Ron started distributing the CDs to various business instructors. Initial feedback was good but some reported a delay between slides. Ken suspected the CD drive would spin down while a slide was being shown, then when a the next audio file needed to be loaded for the following slide, the CD drive would have to spin up, taking time. Ken suggested to Ron that the files could be copied to the hard drives of the computers that were showing the presentation. That solved that problem.

About 90 classes were shown the CD during the month of April, meaning it got a lot of use.

Current Status

The CDs have been copied and they will be ready to do their job when the next semester comes along. If Ron encounters any updates to advising business students, the PowerPoint can be easily changed to reflect those changes.

Project Resources

Sound recording device: Rod is using a colleague's small digital dictaphone to record his voice.

PowerPoint: Ken uses Window's based PowerPoint 2003. He is careful to only use animation features that is available on both Mac and Windows versions of PowerPoint.

Sound Forge: Ken uses Sony's Sound Forge program for editing Rod's narration.

Word, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat: The forms were recorded in these formats. Screen captures of the forms were used to bring the form into PowerPoint.

Project Outcomes

About 90 classrooms of students were shown the business advisement presentation. Feedback was very good and about two thousand students benefited from the advisement provided by this multimedia product.