After careful reflection, I found that the project I favored most was the audio story / interview. Although I greatly enjoyed finally putting together my final recap video for the ArtX club, I found that I was delighted in creating audio and making it stand out. There is something special about this type of storytelling because you are limited to just the one of the five senses, which meant I had to really get creative to make the most of just my audio. I’m used to making videos with sound, so this was a nice change since I had only taken one other audio class prior to this one.

Valuable skills I gained over this course definitely came from my writing abilities. It forced me to word things cohesively and with purpose. Writing and speaking skills go hand-in-hand and the more they are used the more confident I can become in my communication methods. This is important to me because I want my future career to be in digital communication and design. Additional skills I learned from this class include telling a well-written story and making changes for others to better understand. The same applies to my career because if I plan on doing well in my field I need to communicate effectively in multiple types of situations, and sometimes it calls for changes as I go.

The one thing I wish I learned was tips and tricks from the instructor and the methods they actively use. So not necessarily a skill, but just techniques from one professional to another. Also, as far as other websites and resources I found outside of class, generally consisted of miscellaneous youtube videos on how to do specific effects or make things work the way I envisioned. I take inspiration from places like instagram of other creators showing how-to videos on things I am interested in and applying that into my creative work.

The fact that this class was focused online did not affect my learning negatively, it was an appropriate setting because what we are learning is online. However, to make it easier for students, would be to change the due dates for the peer review project to be sooner to the day that the item is turned in on the assignments page. It was not very fun waiting for feedback and not having much time to do anything about the changes that were suggested. I understand that the days are about 2 days about each but the flow of when different projects needed to get done had an awkward pacing.

Overall though, I think the class helped boost my practices in digital communication to prepare me for graduation by covering the basics one more time. I appreciated the flexibility that the class offered as well. One thing I wished to see was the instructor giving feedback and comments online, it felt very distant and disengaged in that aspect, and although this is a mostly independent class, feedback from the instructor is welcomed.

Thanks for reading!

-Elsa Temme