Al Briggs' integration of Adobe programs

At the end of 2019, Al Briggs, Program Coordinator VE Graphic Design, attended Adobe Max in Los Angeles.

The conference is an annual event that combines a showcase of the latest developments in Adobe software, along with hundreds of different workshops and talks hosted by designers, educators and industry professionals.

Al attended several sessions on the use of Spark as a creative presentation tool and spoke to the Adobe team about the best ways of incorporating some of these tools into his teaching practice. Spark enables users to create and easily share engaging visual content.

When Al returned from the conference he ran a workshop showcasing these tools with his staff who  planned on integrating Spark into their courses as they believed that using tools like this would help students collate and present their work in the quickest, most straight-forward way possible.

Since the move to remote delivery Al has run additional sessions for staff looking at how to use tools such as Spark for online teaching and learning.

A number of staff in his team have spent significant time and effort in producing video content to supplement their remote delivery.

An interesting example of a microsite created by Leigh Milward, VE teacher in Graphic Design using Adobe Spark can be found here.

Al and his team have also integrated the use of these tools for students in the final semester of their Associate Degree program who undertake a Capstone project. This year, the students are using Spark to share their progress and final presentations.

He was also able to create an engaging presentation for the programs midyear orientation. It had over 200 views, which is impressive as the course only had an intake of approximately 100 students. The ease of access to the information in the presentation has made it a valuable tool for new and prospective students.

Al is looking forward to showcasing and building on the student’s skills with Spark, as well as Behance and Adobe Portfolio for the course’s graduation show this year, which will be entirely digital, and will utilise all of these resources.