C226 Fall 2020

Class policies

1. Course format

The online version of the course will feature two weekly synchronous lectures, via Zoom,at 11:30AM to 12:45PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You will receive an email early on those days with a link to each lecture. Labs will be held on Fridays, and will also include a Zoom, but instruction for each lab will come from a pre-recorded video lecture, and when necessary, a tutorial video. These can be accessed from Canvas, in the Kaltura media Gallery. All work in C226 will be organized into weekly modules, which will include assignments, handouts and links to the videos.

Associated with each Tuesday lecture, there will be a Participation assignment. Some of the these will require only sentence or two from you, but others will be feature worksheets, surveys or creative exercises. You will produce something creative for each Friday lab — essentially practicing the skills you will demonstrate on the major projects — and submit this work to Canvas. See the Grades section below for more information.

I encourage you to think about C226 as a theory-and-practice course. The lectures will give you ideas about visual communication and show you examples you can use as models for your own creative work. With tutorials and creative exercises — and ultimately your major projects — you will put those ideas into practice with cameras and industry-standard computer software. A series of handouts and videos will help you master the technical skills necessary to do these assignments.

2. Course work

There are no exams in C226. Lectures and creative exercises, along with tutorials, will prepare you for four major graded assignments, which are hands-on projects: a Picture Story, a Video, a Magazine Design and finally, a published Website. The first two projects are worth 20 percent each of your final grade, and the two design projects are worth ten; together, therefore, projects make up three-fifths your final average.

The remaining 40 percent will be determined from the following:

• Weekly quizzes will cover the lectures for each week. There will be 15 of them, 14 of them graded, but we will drop your three lowest scores. Quizzes will be on Canvas, and open on Thursdays at 12:45 (following lecture) and close Friday night at 11:59PM. Quizzes will be scored out of 100, and your 11 best will comprise 15 percent of your grade. There are no makeups for missed quizzes.
• Twenty percent of your grade will be based on your level of participation in lectures and labs.
  • Tuesday participation will be based on that day’s lecture; work for most of these small assignments is due at 11:59PM on Tuesdays (one minute nefore midnight). A few longer assignments will be worksheets that you will use to analyze professional work in each unit. These are due at 11:59PM on Wednesdays.
  • Friday participation is lab work. You will have prompts at the end of Thursday lectures, and you will usually have until Monday at 11:59PM to complete and submit lab assignments.
  • You may submit lab work late for half credit if you miss the deadline.
  • There will be videos (on Kaltura and YouTube) for labs, alongside step-by-step handouts for any tutorials.
• The final five percent of your final grade is attendance — the percentage of our Zoom sessions — lectures and labs — that you attend this semester.

3. Attendance

This class will be taught synchronously, meaning you should plan on attending Zoom sessions every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I strongly urge you not to fall behind by missing sessions, and be sure to review lecture slide PDFs (on Canvas) and to watch lab videos.

Every lecture is important to your learning; when this class is taught in person, attendance is therefore required. C226 has 30 planned lectures, with half of them involving a creative exercise or tutorialand 15 labs. Your AI will hold Zoom sessions every Friday, during hich you can check in, and ask any questions you have about the lab assignment — or indeed anything else about the class. Videos for Friday labs will be available after lectures on Thursdays.

4. Resources

There is no textbook for C226. Support materials, including assignments, handouts, lecture videos and slide PDFs, course material, etc. are all available on Canvas.

Lynda.com

The website lynda.com is a peerless resource for learning software. You can get FREE access to these materials IF you have a Monroe County Public Library card. Once you do, you can access Lynda through the library’s website. Go to: www.monroe.lib.in.us/
… and click the Services tab to get to Lynda.

5. Equipment

Hardware: This is a highly technical and hands-on class, and in order to complete it successfully, you must have access to equipment with which you can produce the work. For the online version of C226, this includes:

• A computer (Mac or PC)
• A camera or smartphone for shooting photos and video

Canon 80D cameras and tripods are available for checkout in Franklin Hall. We recommend you use these cameras to shoot your photographs and videos for C226. You can reserve a camera at https://mschoolcheckout.indiana.edu/. Checkout will be open Monday through Friday from 9AM until 6:30PM, but closed from noon to 1PM.

Software: In addition, you will need install (if you haven't already) several software applications in order to do the work I will be asking of you. These applications are:

• Adobe Bridge
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Premiere
• Adobe InDesign
• Atom (for editing HTML and CSS code)

The Adobe applications listed above are all available to you free as long as you are an IU student. Using them requires you to install Adobe Creative Cloud on your computer.

Adobe programs

The latest Adobe Creative Cloud software is available as a FREE download via
adobe.iu.edu

Your IU log-in will give you access to all of Adobe’s CC programs — almost three dozen in all, including InDesign, Photoshop and Bridge, which we will use in this class, as well as Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, Audition and more.

Please be aware that the way we access Creative Cloud has changed.

For more information on this, go to kb.iu.edu/d/bdfy.

For instructions on downloading and installing Adobe Creative Cloud, go to kb.iu.edu/d/bffs.

Online: As this is an online course, you will need a reliable Internet connection to participate. The online tools we will be using include:

• Canvas
• Zoom (for lectures and Friday lab check-ins)
• Kaltura Media Gallery (via Canvas)
• YouTube

(Optional): Consider an external drive to store and transport your work. This could become especially important during the video unit. Video files tend to be quite large.

I recommend a 1 or 2 Terabyte drive. While this has far more storage space than you will need for this class, you will find such a device very useful in other classes, especially if you plan to produce other visual work such as photography and video. You can buy such a drive for about $50. A 5TB drive can be had for just over $100.

6. Communication

Visit Canvas regularly to get lecture and lab notes, check your grades, etc. We will use Canvas to provide you with course material for some of the lab exercises and essays. To access Canvas:
canvas.iu.edu

Two-Step Login (Duo) is now required for all IU students.

If you need to set up Duo, get started at:
twostep.iu.edu

Learn more about recommended devices at:
kb.iu.edu/d/anfl

For help resources, see:
kb.iu.edu/d/aluu

Outside of class, we will communicate primarily through Canvas and e-mail, so check your e-mail regularly.

7. Learning vs. grades

Learning and grades do not always coincide. Learning is a life-long process, and you alone are responsible for your own education. In courses such as C226 that involve creative work, grades can be counterproductive to learning. Students who are overly concerned with grades typically play it safe and give the teacher what they think he or she wants. Real learning, the kind that will stay with you long after a course ends, requires you to take risks — and make mistakes.

In C226, when you are faced with a choice between playing it safe for a grade and experimenting—with the possibility that you will make a mistake you can learn from—take the risk! Choose what will contribute to your long-term learning, not what you think might enhance your grade.

Grades are a hollow reward compared to the satisfaction of learning something that’s fun, challenging and meaningful. They are also an imperfect attempt to quantify judgments about quality.

I will do my best to correlate grading to your learning, but you may not feel the match is perfect. Please remember I am grading your work—not you. Moreover, at this stage of your education, your process is more important than any product you generate. Use the feedback to improve your process of telling visual stories.

Nonetheless, you have a legitimate right to be concerned about your grade in C226, and you are always welcome to discuss it with me. If grades are important to you, the best way to get a good grade is to invest significant time, effort and care on your assignments, essays and quizzes—in other words, to master the course’s knowledge and skills. The surest way to get a poor grade is to knock out your assignments at the last minute.

8. Self evaluation

Self reflection is one of the best ways to improve rapidly in any endeavor. For each major projects, I will ask you to write a short essay evaluating your product and learning process. This relates directly to the ACEJMC competency that says you should be able to “evaluate your own work … critically.”

I will give you the space to make mistakes without being punished by a grade — if you demonstrate you are trying and if you tell me in your self-analysis essay how you learned from your mistakes.

9. Academic integrity

Regarding academic integrity, use basic common sense, but all assignments must be your own work. You determine the topics for your projects, you operate the camera, you perform the software editing. All of the images and footage in your projects must be work you have performed for this class (with the exception of certain allowed background material, such as old family photos for the Video project).

If academic dishonesty occurs, I will follow the IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Conduct, located at this URL:
studentcode.iu.edu/

Academic misconduct is defined as any activity that tends to undermine the academic integrity of the institution. Violations include: cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, interference, violation of course rules and facilitating academic dishonesty. When you submit an assignment with your name on it, you are signifying that the work contained therein is yours, unless otherwise cited or referenced. Any ideas or materials taken from another source for either written or oral use must be fully acknowledged. All suspected violations of the Code will be reported to the Dean of Students and handled according to University policies. Sanctions for academic misconduct may include a failing grade on the assignment, reduction in your final course grade, and a failing grade in the course, among other possibilities. If you are unsure about the expectations for completing an assignment or taking a test or exam, be sure to seek clarification beforehand.

In an online class, there is no way to ensure that you are not referring to notes for taking quizzes in the privacy of your own home — and in fact, I am fine with you using your notes during the quizzes. But I would ask that you work alone and not in a group that includes other students from our class.

10. Deadlines

Deadlines are important, but we are aware that university life demands you juggle many competing priorities, especially given the many potential chalenges of an online class. I have added deadlines for all the Participation assignments, but you can submit lab work after deadline for half credit for up to one week. Participation assignments will not be accepted after one week from the stated deadline.

Your first three projects may be submitted up to ten calendar days late, at a penalty of 10 points per day. These projects will not be accepted more than ten days late, as the score will have reached zero at that time. The one exception to this is the final Website assigment, which must be turned in during Finals Week.

If you are having problems meeting a deadline, we want to help you get back on track, but please let us know as early as possible — before, not after, the deadline. Negotiating with supervisors is an important professional skill. Start building it in C226.

11. Incompletes

A course grade of incomplete will be permitted only for serious illness documented by a physician. A timetable for completing the course work must be negotiated before the incomplete is granted.

For more on IUB’s policy regarding incompletes:
www.iusb.edu/registrar/incomplete.php

12. Online misconduct

One thing to always keep in mind when taking any online course is that the others with whom you interact throughout the semester - including me, your instructor - are human beings. The first rule of netiquette is to "remember the human" when you are communicating with me or with your peers. The second rule is to "adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life." It's not likely that you would yell at, mock, or belittle another student in a face to face class, so don't do it here. The feeling of anonymity that some people have when they are online can lead to those sorts of behaviors but they are not acceptable here or in any other online class.

Please take a few minutes and review all the Core Rules of Netiquette and these considerations for when you are attending class remotely.

13. Special needs

If you have a learning disability, a physical disadvantage or other special needs, please discuss them with me early in the semester. I want to work with you to accommodate your situation and help you succeed in C226.

14. Learning during the pandemic

Even though our class will be taught entirely online, please make sure you are observing IU policies on wearing masks and physical distancing, especially if you are in Franklin Hall to collect equipment or to work in the Multimedia Lab.