creative media team report | 2014-15

spring 2015report

By: Courtney Miller, Erika Hang,& Martin Stack

Creative Media Team

2Creative Media Team, Spring 2015

Our Digital Presence

Our digital presence has grown through the roof, clocking in at over 35,000 views on our site (as of 6/1/15) since it launched in August 2014! Our data has also shown us that students are accessing our site remotely and around the clock. Based on this feedback, we are putting more emphasis on creating online tutorials, and will be launching a 2.o version of our site in July 2015 (pictured to the left) that features live chat, robust commenting and the ability for each user to better customize their own experience.

OurWebsite

OurSocial Media

Views: 35,000+

Followers: 300+

Tutorials: 100+

Version 2.0, Design by: Martin Stack


Student Helpdesk

Students

byMajor

VisitorType

This semester, we expanded our trucker-hat wearing team to include students from the Roski School of Art and Design and the School of Architecture. Not only are they experts in the Adobe software, but they have further inspired our Annenberg students to approach creativity in new and innovative ways.

The following visualizations show the types of visitors we received at the helpdesk. Though our traffic has grown, the demographics have remained rather consistent since our launch in August 2014.

Our Team


Screencasts

With over answered, our site has become more than just a supplement to ANN 301, it’s our epicenter for all things Annenberg Digital Lounge. For the student working on a project at 3:00 am, to the student studying abroad, we aim to give them the creative advice they need, whenever and wherever they need it.

We asked for student feedback throughout the year, and through surveys and mad-libs, we got it! Though our analytics told us a similar story, their repeated requests for more screencasts and tutorials made it crystal clear that we have been moving in the right direction.

As we head towards the Fall 2015 semester, we will continue to grow our library of screencasts, which can be found on our site, Vimeo, and our newly launched YouTube channel. In addition to producing our own tutorials, we will also continue to curate a library of digital resources.

35,000 views + 75 commentsOver 100 Screencasts:

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Mobile Apps

WordPress

Arts & Crafts for Creative Inspiration

Event Recaps


Certification Courses

The Instructors

Results

Chana Messer Rick Miller

Feedback

How would you rate your overall experience of the course?

Instructor Feedback

Of the 60 students who registered for the course, 40 students took the Visual Communication Using Adobe Photoshop ACA Exam.

Spring 2015 marked our official launch as an authorized Adobe testing center! We started with 2 Photoshop Certification Courses, taught by Adobe Evangelists Chana Messer and Rick Miller. The sessions took place Wednesdays, 5pm - 7pm, and Fridays, 1pm - 3pm for 10 weeks. 60 students registered for the course.

With a 77.5% passing rate on the exam, I think it’s fair to say that the course was a huge success! We received lots of positive feedback on the class and the instructors!

“Overall [Rick is] a very great professor; really open to questions and easy to work with and wants his students to pass and succeed in Photoshop.” -JOUR GRAD

“Chana kept things lively and effectively communicated the necessary information for students to pass the test. I actually felt like Chana over prepared me -- I was daunted by the test initially.” - COMM UNDERGRAD

3%

45%

27%

24%

Poor

Fair

Good

Very Good

Excellent

77.5%Pass Rate


Events

MONDAY 4/6

ANNENBERG DIGITAL LOUNGE PRESENTS

TUESDAY 4/7

WEDNESDAY 4/8

THURSDAY 4/9

FRIDAY 4/10

HEADSHOT STUDIO &PHOTO EDITING

11:00 AM - 8:00 PM

PERSONAL BRANDINGWITH YUMI WILSON OF

5:00 PM

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ANNENBERGCAREER DEVELOPMENT

CREATE YOUR BRAND & LOGO

11:00 AM - 6:00 PM

RESUME & COVERLETTER BOOTCAMP

11:00 AM - 5:00 PM

11:00 AM - 6:00 PMLEARN DIGITAL TOOLS AND PRESENTATION SKILLS 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

START YOUR WORDPRESSPORTFOLIO SITE

WITH THE ADOBECREATIVE CLOUD

FOR MORE DETAILED INFO: ANNENBERGDL.ORG

code

&thursday, april 16th2-3pmat ANN 301DHosted byPeggy Bustamante& Amara Aguilar

faculty only eventno prior experience necessary!

for more info:annenbergdl.org

COFFEE & CODEANNENBERG DIGITAL LOUNGE PRESENTS

As with any start-up, we wanted to put some continued focus on promoting our services and building relationships. We worked with Adobe for another set of Adobe Days, brought in the Digital Faculty for an afternoon of “Coffee and Code,” and partnered with our colleagues from Career Development on a career bootcamp, which included an event with LinkedIn and a week of programming geared towards students shaping their digital identities and landing a job.

Moving forward, we will continue to foster relationships and host even more events!

More Events & Partnerships Career Bootcamp: LinkedIn Headshots

Coffee and Code with Peggy BustamanteBlue Carpet Event


ASCJ 200

Another successful pilot, the Creative Media Team worked with Professors Judy Muller and Alison Trope on helping to shape the project curriculum for this converged course, which came under the synergistic banner of “ASCJ” and included students from Journalism and Communication.

Taught in the Digital Lounge on Friday afternoons, the lab section covered tutorials in Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Clip. Students worked on projects aimed at using digital tools for critical thinking. These projects were alongside traditional papers and readings, and were further supported outside of class by the helpdesk staff. Once completed, they were posted to their WordPress sites. Though the course accomplished its goals, scalability is a concern for the future.

Navigating Media and News in the Digital Age


Adobe DPS Pilot

Publishing an app is no easy feat, which makes it even more impressive that this small but mighty class managed to produce over 8 in just one semester! In addition to providing software support, the Digital Lounge also served as their first client, and arranged for the class to be visited by Team Adobe, where the students could pitch their apps to executives including the Senior Manager for DPS Product Marketing.

JOUR 499: Interactive Media Design for Publishing

Led by Professor Amara AguilarPowered by:

Communication Undergrad

Communication Grad

Public Relations

Majors represented:Journalism Undergrad

Journalism Grad

Specialized Journalism


Adobe DPS Pilot

Jessica Oliveira, an MS Journalism graduate with no prior design or mobile development experience, produced this interactive magazine that covers a variety of themes in which masculinity is present. The application includes one-on-one interviews, videos, and data highlighting the gender gaps present in America. The app was published to the iTunes store on June 5, 2015!

Example Project: Modern Masculinity


Digital Detox Series

Running with the Dean’s vision of “blue sky thinking,” we took his proclamation to create “an environment where innovation and creativity are encouraged to take seed and blossom -- and where spaces cause unconventional ideas to unite” to heart.

Some of the best digital projects begin with tape and glue. And with our Digital Detox series being some of the most popular events we offer, Annenberg students seem to agree.

Arts & Crafts Days

ARTS& CRAFTSZONE ATTHE DL

ARTS& CRAFTSZONE ATTHE DL

MAY 4-5, 12PM-4PMTake a study break and join us at the digital lounge! We will have FREE:book bindingbutton makingsticker machine...and more!!

Our Mindfulness + Creativity Lab, co-sponsored by the Mindful USC initiative, filled-up in under 10 minutes. Twenty attendees learned how to use mindful thinking to overcome creative roadblocks over a 7-week course. Our event was so popular, it was featured in a Canadian documentary, and we were also approached by Apple to feature our content on iTunesU. Our first collection will be published in summer 2015.

iTunes U: Mindfulness + Creativity Lab


Promo for Orientation

From tabling in the lobby to having Mr. Photoshop run around, we managed to help the Adobe Download numbers get up to 69.7%. However, we think one of the best strategies for getting these numbers up is to have them download it from the get go. Thus, we now have this promotional video and handouts distributed to all incoming Annenberg students. Next year, we hope to work it out with IT so that incoming students can receive their accounts and download the Creative Cloud at these orientations.


Partnerships

Current Partnerships:

Future Partnerships:


Plans for Fall 2015

Trisight

Larger Bluehost Rollout

What better way to work on our Public Relations strategy than to work with an Annenberg-student-run Public Relations firm! We asked our newly-formed social media team to come up with some new ideas, and boy did they deliver! The organization, currently run by Mitchell Paul and Laura Davenport, grad students in Strategic Public Relations, brings together students from across the university to create strategic communication services and integrated campaigns for small business clients. After pitching, TriSight has agreed to take on the Annenberg Digital Lounge as a client for next year.

Though the acceptance rate during our Spring 2015 rollout was not as high as we were hoping for (56%), we gained some invaluable insights for improving deployment, and of the sites that were created, many were successful and used by Bluehost for a student showcase site. We also know that marketing will play a big role, which we now have TriSight to help us with.

Because there is no better way for students to showcase the work they build than on a WordPress portfolio site, we think it is an essential component of the Student Tech fee, thus the Creative Media Team is planning a school-wide rollout for next year. To take it up a notch, the team is also working with USC ITS and the Bluehost development team on Shibboleth integration! If this works, this initiative could also solve many other current problems.


Plans for Fall 2015

More Certification Courses

Expanded Student Team for projects

We initially weren’t sure how successful the certification courses would go given the 10-week commitment, but with a 77.5% exam pass rate, we now feel secure that more certification courses is the way to go. We are now an official examination center through Certiport and plan to expand our offerings. Other exams we are looking at include Premiere Pro, Illustrator and InDesign. Since we did have students sign-up who didn’t complete the course and/or take the exam, and tons of students who were wait-listed, we plan to work with the administration on a potential fee bill charge for students who sign up for a course and don’t complete it.

We would love to think that it’s because we are so friendly and popular, but the truth is that our project load is starting to outweigh our bandwidth, likely due to the types of creative services we offer. To solve this problem in a budget-friendly way, we are planning to add another team of students to the Creative Media Team that is project-driven, versus tied to the helpdesk. We will also need to design more trucker hats that sport our new look and feel, to be revealed with our new website that will launch in July 2015!

Creative Media TeamFall 2014 Report

By: Erika Hang, Martin Stack and Courtney Miller

Photos via Instagram, @AnnenbergDL

2Creative Media Team, Fall 2014

Software/Programs We Support

Adobe Programs Other SoftwarePhotoshop CC

Illustrator CC

InDesign CC

Audition CC

Premiere Pro CC

Lightroom 5

Image editing and compositing.

Vector graphics and illustration.

Page design, layout, and publishing.

Audio editing.

Video production and editing.

Photo editing and management.


Student HelpdeskDecked with Digital Lounge trucker hats and swanky name badges, our 12 Media Support Specialists helped students with projects, answered questions, and troubleshooted Adobe CC installation issues.

Over the course of the Fall semester, our staff filled out support tickets. The following graphs show who visited the helpdesk.

Breakdown of Students by

MajorType of Visitors

Percentage of Printer Questions vs. Software/Program Questions


Adobe Partnership

AdobeMAX

The team attended Adobe

MAX to get ideas and learn hands-on from experts.

Creative Cloud Download NumbersNearly tripled!

1352

509AUGUST

DECEMBER

With the launch of the Digital Lounge and

the marketing efforts of the Creative Media

Team, Creative Cloud download numbers

showed a significant increase. We hope to

continue this trend into next semester.

students

students

Adobe DaysOver three full days, we offered 18

sessions that focused on the Adobe

Creative Cloud. Led by our Adobe

expert, Donna Caldwell, we had over

180 in attendance (see numbers for

each workshop to the right), We also

invited our friends from Annenberg

Radio News to host a few sessions

and partake in the fun.


Our Workshops: DIY Series

Our “DIY Series” took real-world examples and broke them down into simple steps. Students came with their devices and walked away with a cool project to showcase. Fall 14 Workshops included:

• DIY: Digital Identity - Students learned how to shoot with a DSLR, how to light a photo, and how to use Lightroom to edit their photos. In addition, they walked away with professional and fun headshots that they shot of each other.

• DIY: Photo Blogging - Students captured product shots and learned how to create high-quality images for a photo blog. Students dabbled in Lightroom, Illustrator, and WordPress.

• DIY: Rich Media Construct - This workshop showed students how to make a cinemagraph using the video timeline function of Photoshop.

• DIY: YouTube Production - Students learned how to capture video, bring it into Premiere Pro, and encode it for YouTube in Media Encoder.

Here are some examples of student work created in the DIY Series:


Other Workshops

In addition to the DIY Series & Adobe Days, we hosted a range of other workshops throughout the Fall semester, even bringing in some guest speakers:

• Digital Toolkit• Data Collection & Visualization• Intro to WordPress.com• WordPress: Advanced Theme

Customization• Apple Campus Rep Sessions with Kevin

Chuang• Adobe Photoshop 101• Adobe After Effects: Creating a Lower

Third• Adobe Illustrator: Creating Infographics• Twitter 101 with Robert Hernandez• Tapping into the Tablet Experience with

Amara Aguilar• 5 Must-Have Mobile Apps with Amara

Aguilar• Data Visualization: Communicating Maps

with Andy Rutkowski & Chimene Tucker• Intersections Reporting Workshop with

Annenberg Radio News• Blackboard with Carl Kuzmich

Signage by: Erika Hang & Martin Stack

Digital Signage


Student Engagement

Vimeo

Student Feedback

We recorded almost all of our workshops and uploaded them to our Vimeo channel (www.vimeo.com/AnnenbergDL) as well as our main website (www.AnnenbergDL.org).

This served as a resource for students who could not attend a particular workshop and/or wanted to revisit a workshop they attended.

“‘DIY: Digital Identity’ is an amazing workshop!! I learned so much on how to use Lightroom and I also got to take a great shot of myself. The skills I have obtained through the Digital Lounge are sure to help me in the future! I love Annenberg! Thanks Marty, you’re awesome!”

“Great workshop! Erika identifies what level of skill each person has and helps everyone accordingly!”

“I believe most students are still getting used to the Digital Lounge space. But it’s an awesome idea, great infrastructure and amazing people!”

“I attended the Data Collection and Visualization workshop led by Courtney and I don’t regret it! It was my first time attending a Digital workshop at the new Annenberg building and I learned so much!”

-Grad Student, Comm Management

-Grad Student, Comm Management-Undergrad, Communication Major

-Undergrad, Journalism Major


Our Digital Presence

We created a mobile-friendly WordPress site from the ground-up that houses all of our tutorials, schedules, and general information about the Annenberg Digital Lounge.

Visit us at http://www.annenbergdl.org

Website & Design by: Martin Stack


Our Social Media

We leveraged social media - Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter - as a means of connecting with the Annenberg community. In addition, social media served as an outlet to promote our events and workshops -- we were even featured by Adobe during Adobe MAX.


Adobe Marketing Promos: Photoshop Man

We don’t just teach digital skills, we also practice what we preach! Leveraging the bevy of talent on our team, we asked each of our 12 student workers to pitch ideas for a promo video. Narrowing it down to two, they worked in teams to storyboard, shoot and edit these marketing teasers, beginning with Photoshop Man.


Adobe Marketing Promos: Creative Cloudy

Our second character, “Cloudy,” may seem a little funky, but in the end saves the day by troubleshooting the Creative Cloud. This piece further showcases the animation and special effects skills of our highly talented team!

Tagline: Adobe Creative Cloud, it’s not that scary after all!


Photoshop CertificationWe are launching our ACA Certification by offering a 10-week Photoshop course, taught by Adobe Evangelist, Chana Messner. The course will take place on Wednesdays 5-7pm, starting. Feb 11, and will prepare students for the “Visual Communication Using Photoshop” exam. In the future, we hope to expand our Adobe certification to include ACA courses in Premiere Pro, InDesign and Illustrator.

Spring 15: Adobe Certification + DPS Pilot

Pilot: Digital Publishing SuiteWe are working with Digital Journalism Professor Amara Aguilar to pilot the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite in her interactive media course. This pilot will allow her 15 students to build interactive apps in Adobe InDesign and publish to the iTunes store. Based on the projected success of this project, we hope to consider expanding the Digital Publishing Suite to the rest of Annenberg for easy mobile app creation.


Spring 15: Bluehost Student Portfolio Pilot

In Spring 2015, we will be providing 200 students with WordPress portfolio sites hosted on Bluehost. This pilot will include students from Journalism, Public Relations, and also the combined ASCJ 200 course.

SupportTo support these sites, we’ll be hosting workshops on how to change your theme, how to add content and how to “pimp out” your portfolio site. We’ll also be posting screencasts on our website.

In addition, our resident WordPress expert, Nick Halsey, will be hosting weekly helpdesk hours for students to drop-in for WordPress support.

In order to help students better customize their websites, we’ve vetted a list of theme authors to recommend, and have even convinced a few of them to offer our students a discount.


Spring 15: ASCJ 200 + McWeb Rollout

Under the newly-launched ASCJ brand, which aims to promote curricular synergy across the Annenberg spectrum, Professors Judy Muller and Alison Trope have designed the first-ever hybrid course that aims to have Communication and Journalism students working with digital tools, side by side.

Courtney Miller has been working very closely with this power duo to help infuse digital projects into the syllabus, and the Digital Lounge is excited to be hosting the lab sections every Friday from 11:00 am - 11:50 am. This will give the Creative Media Team a lucrative entry point into the minds of our students, and will also allow us to provide hands-on support. Furthermore, having this birds eye view will help us to determine how to best scale our support should this course become an elective in the future.

ASCJ 200: Navigating Media and News in the Digital Age

McWeb: Media Asset Management SystemThe Creative Media Team will be helping to support the rollout of our Media Asset Management System, designed by Primestream/Fork. In addition to creating online tutorials that can be found on AnnenbergDL.org, we will also be hosting in-person workshops on Xchange and fielding questions at our helpdesk.


Spring 15: Digital Detox Series

While our mission still remains to teach students digital skills, we are also aiming to promote balance and further encourage creativity through non-digital means, taking some inspiration from our friends at Google who employ a Chief Happiness Officer to help foster positive growth. This alternative series will include a Mindfulness Creativity Lab taught by USC Marshall Professor Allen Weiss and co-sponsored by the Provost’s Mindful USC initiative, arts and crafts sessions led by USC Roski student group AIGA, and we are also looking to partner with USC Thornton and KXSC for some live tunes.

The Digital Detox brand identity reflects the “hands-on” style of the series. The logo and logo type are both constructed out of cut and ripped construction paper to represent the tangibility of the participants experience.

CMYK 0, 97, 81, 0Hex FF0830

CMYK 77, 49, 0, 0Hex 3B82FF

cmyk 0, 50, 100, 0hex FF8000

cmyk 0, 0, 100, 0hex FFFF00

Cross Collaboration:

creative media team report | 2014-15

Education

creative media team

creative advice

annenberg students

student feedback

student helpdesk students

adobe software

social media views

digital presence