Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

De sign ing As sign ments for Your Stu dents
As pow erful as it is to cre ate mul timedia pro jects for your stu dents, it is
more pow erful to have them create their own multimedia pro jects. While the
project you create can increase mo tivation and tap into different learning styles,
having stu dents create their own pro jects is an out standing ve hicle for creating a
stu dent-cen tered and constructivist learn ing en vi ron ment, for tak ing a
multidisciplinary ap proach to ed ucation, and for helping students understand
information and media.
Projects you assign can be simple or complex, involving a few dif ferent
types of media or several, us ing a simple design structure that you assign or a
complex structure and metaphor that your stu dents choose. As you continue
through this book, you will learn ad vanced techniques for making PowerPoint do
what you want it to do. You might share these techniques with your stu dents, or
you might let them cre ate less com plex projects. Another al ternative is to cre ate
templates for your stu dents in which you create the basic structure of the pro ject,
using simple or advanced PowerPoint techniques, and have your students fill in
the template with con tent and me dia. Templates are discussed in Chapter 10.
Student pro jects need to follow a similar design pro cess to any other multi-
media pro jects. However, as a teacher, you must de cide (1) how much you want
to pro vide for your stu dents and (2) how much help you want to give your stu -
dents at each step.
First, you must create an assignment in a way that stu dents can un derstand.
Agnew, Kellerman, and Meyer (1996, pp. 120–121) out line four keys to help
stu dents cre ate a well-or ga nized mul ti me dia project:
1. “[A]rticulate a well-thought-out assignment.”
2. “[D]emonstrate excellent examples of projects that others have cre -
ated.”
3. “[E]ncourage 
stu 
dents to un leash their creativity by find ing new meta-
phors for in for ma tion.”
4. 
Help “stu dents ex e cute an ef fec tive pro cess.”
As an ed u ca tor, you prob a bly are com fort able cre at ing as sign ments for
your stu dents. How ever, mul timedia pro jects can be larger and more complex
than or dinary assignments. Being clear abut your pur pose and ex pectations can
8 Mul ti me dia De sign

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help students un derstand what they are supposed to do and help them meet and
exceed your ex pectations. Be sure to match the pro ject you assign to your cur ric-
ular goals and the technical skills of your students. If you plan to have stu dents
create sev eral multimedia projects, you can make the first project sim ple to help
them un derstand the technology. As their technology skills grow, the projects
can be more complex.
Many students need concrete examples. The more multimedia you do (for
yourself or your students), the more ex amples you will have to show students.
You also want to en courage creative think ing, in cluding brainstorming
ideas for metaphors. A metaphor helps a user nav igate through a project by giv -
ing the user something from the real world to relate to what the controls (such as
buttons and hy pertext links) do. Met aphors can be closely re lated to the project
or can be an un related nav igation and visualization tools. You can pro vide your
students with a metaphor (this might be ap propriate for early pro jects), you can
brainstorm dif ferent metaphors for dif ferent pro jects as a class, you can brain-
storm with groups about metaphors for a specific pro ject, or you can have groups 
brainstorm on their own.
Finally, you will want to help your stu dents with the de sign pro cess. Stu -
dents might need help with all the de sign steps. You can give your students help
with all of the fol lowing:
• The Idea—A good assignment will have a clear set of ob jectives,
but it might allow students a great deal of latitude in picking a topic.
You might need to work with students to help them generate ideas
for their topic.
• The Re search—Since one pur pose of mul timedia pro jects is to en -
hance learning in curricular areas, you will have to de cide how much
of the research you will pro vide for the students. You could pro vide
all the in formation that will be used in the pro ject. You could pro -
vide specific resources for stu dents. You could help students find
materials (in the li brary or on the Internet, for example). You could
brainstorm ideas with stu dents about where they might find the
information they need.
• Se lect ing In for ma tion—Many students have trouble finding
enough in formation, and many have trou ble selecting the informa-
tion to in clude. You might need to help students nar row down the
appropriate in formation to in clude; they might not be able to in clude
everything they find.
• The Or ga ni za tion and the Met a phor—You might pick an or gani-
zation and a metaphor for your stu dents or help them find an appro-
pri ate or ga ni za tion and metaphor.
De sign ing As sign ments for Your Stu dents 9

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• The Me dia—Students might need help se lecting and preparing the
media representations of their in formation. You might help them de -
cide what me dium to use for each kind of in formation, and you
might help them with the technical pro cess of creating or find ing the
media representations. In the extreme case, you might give them
prepared me dia to use in their projects.
• Tem plates—You might pro vide a template for your students. This
can provide a metaphor, or ganization, and/or types of media.
In any of the above cases, you need to de cide what is appropriate for your
students. Sometimes the best pol icy is to leave the stu dents alone. At other times,
you will need to coach them through out the entire pro ject. At a min imum, your
students will need to check in with you on a regular basis, show ing you the de-
sign at var ious phases. It is of ten a good idea to set deadlines for various parts of
the pro ject, requiring stu dents to turn in something to you at each of the twelve
steps of the de sign pro cess (see “The Design Process” above) or at one or more
points along the way.
Mul ti me dia pro jects are of ten an ex cel lent ve hi cle for group pro jects. But
groups can be difficult. You may de cide whether you want to group stu dents by
ability levels, in terests, skills, or their own choice. Once you have groups, gener-
ally of be tween two and five stu dents, you need to help students work out the
roles they will play in the group. Some pro jects have natural roles that students
can play, di viding the project ei ther by subject matter or technical spe cialty
(gath er ing in for ma tion, video pro duc tion, VBA script ing, etc.). Learn ing to
work with a group can be an important ob jective of the pro ject, but group dy -
namics can be dif ficult, and you will have to mon itor how well members of the
groups are working together.
Be careful about se lecting the requirements for your pro ject. Make sure that 
they are suitable for your goals. Remember that part of the idea of learning mul -
timedia is to see that great artwork or sounds do not necessarily mean great in for-
mation. Make sure that, if your goal is to have worth while in formation, students
are aware that that is important.
Finally, try to save time for reflection. A great deal of the learning (for you
and your students) can come from look ing back at the pro jects and seeing what
went right and what went wrong and what was learned.