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

The De sign Process
While play ing around on the computer is useful to help you un derstand the
technology and brainstorm ideas for your pro ject, the best pro jects come from
careful planning. When you first start a project, you might think that you are sav -
ing time by jumping right in and creating the project, but you are not. Agnew,
Kellerman, and Meyer (1996) outline a twelve-step pro cess for designing and
de vel op ing a multimedia project:
1.
Understand the scope of the pro ject/assignment.
2.
Brainstorm and do research.
3.
Select pieces of in formation to in clude in the project.
4.
Dis cuss sev eral over all or ga ni za tions.
5.
Se lect an or ga ni za tion.
6.
De cide on a met a phor for vi su al iz ing the body of in for ma tion.
7.
Decide on one or more media to represent each piece of in formation.
8.
Prepare scripts and storyboards as required.
9.
Fill in the or ganization with me dia.
10.
Provide links among pieces of in formation.
11.
Test the result with typ ical members of the project’s intended au dience.
12.
Revise the pro ject.
Ivers and Barron (2002) pro pose the DDD-E model: decide, de sign, de-
velop, evaluate. Other in structional de sign models are more com plex, but these
two models cap ture the important aspects of in structional design.
Don’t worry about fol lowing a specific step-by-step pro cess. Most of the
steps overlap, and some steps, such as evaluation, are continuous and take place at
every stage of the process. That doesn’t mean you should jump right to developing
your pro ject be fore deciding and designing—there is a gen eral flow from step to
step—but cre at ing a pro ject in volves con tin u ous eval u a tion and may in volve re-
thinking and redesigning parts of the pro ject as the pro ject be gins to take shape.
Be fore be gin ning, you must de cide what you want to do and what you want
your stu dents to get out of the project. This in cludes un derstanding the scope of
the pro ject and brainstorming ideas for the pro ject. Starting with a clear idea of
what you want the pro ject to cover is very useful. If you have certain ob jectives
(from your cur riculum or not), those ob jectives will help you determine what
your pro ject should cover. Try to limit the scope of the project, keeping in mind
the limits of your stu dents’ at tention span. Cre ate a pro ject that is small or build
in features that allow students to quit in the middle and come back to explore
other parts of the project.
The Design Process 3

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Don’t be afraid to brainstorm ideas. That means that you can come up with
ideas for what you want to in clude that will be re jected later. This is part of the
power of plan ning. If you create half your pro ject first, you have ei ther locked
yourself into something that might not be what you want, or you have wasted a
great deal of time creating something that you will throw away. By playing with
ideas in the early stages of the design pro cess, you can narrow down what you
want to do without throwing away large amounts of work.
While you are de cid ing what the pro ject should include, re search your sub-
ject. Be sure you un derstand the subject so you can create something that will
help oth ers learn it. As you research, you should de cide what in for ma tion you
want to in clude and be gin to collect the media you will use to represent that
information.
As you de cide, keep in mind that your decisions are not set in stone. You
should complete the de cide phase hav ing a good idea of what you want to do, but 
you should un derstand that the de tails can and will change as you move forward
with your project.
Once you have an idea about what your project will en tail, you should be-
gin to de sign it. You will de sign the or ganization and metaphor for the pro ject
(more about this in the next sections), you will create a storyboard for the pro ject
to help you un derstand the flow and interaction of the pro ject, and you will de-
sign
the in dividual slides, fig uring out what con tent and me dia go on each slide.
Now your pro ject is taking shape, and you should have a fairly clear picture of
what the fi nal pro ject will look like. But again, this is not set in stone. The de tails
can and will change, but they should change within the over all framework you
have de signed.
Next, it is time to de velop your pro ject. This in volves fill ing in the pieces:
creating or acquiring any media elements you need, creating your slides, placing
your media elements and buttons on your slides, and linking it all to gether. This
is much easier when you know what you want to do, hav ing de cided on the pro -
ject and having de signed the pro ject first. The hard est part will be writ ing your
scripts to make the pro ject do what you want it to do, and you will learn how to
do that beginning in Chapter 3.
The final phase is not really the fi nal phase: eval u ate. Eval u a tion is a con-
tin u ous and on go ing pro cess. You will con duct for ma tive eval u a tion, in which
you check your work to make sure that everything seems to be do ing what you
want, and you enlist oth ers to check your work as well. This can happen at many
different points in the pro cess, and it can be done by many dif ferent people, in-
cluding: you, your colleagues, your stu dents, and other members of the intended
audience for the pro 
ject. This for 
mative eval u a tion will pro 
vide you with
feedback to improve the project.
You also will con duct summative eval u a tion when the pro ject is complete.
As with any lesson, you want to think about specific ways you will know how
well the project worked with your stu dents. This can be used to decide whether
4 Mul ti me dia De sign

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or not you want to use the pro ject again, and it can pro vide feedback for things
you might want to change about the project for next time.