"Teachers need to stop saying, “Hand it in,” and start saying “Publish It.”
- Alan November, veteran educator, speaker
The Rise of Creative Problem Solving & Visual Communication Skills
Content creation, visual communication, virtual collaboration, and creative problem-solving skills have become more important in recent years, ranking among the top skills sought by hiring managers, according to a recent 2023 study by Edelman*.
*The Creative Edge - How Digital Credentials Unlock Emerging Skills in the Age of AI
- Edelman, 2023
Adobe Express is a Force Multiplier for Learning
Students take essentially anything they have learned or experienced and - using Express - become publishers of their own knowledge and understanding. The evolution of their creative confidence is shown by and reinforced with the use of Adobe Express.
Using Adobe Express web page as the primary storytelling vehicle and using real-life examples, we'll examine a student's life and experience in higher ed as they are introduced to Adobe Express. The journey first starts in the classroom with self-exploration assignments. As their skills build through on-going use, they discover how Express can enhance interests in their personal life. Their culminating project would be a multimodal resume and video cover letter as they apply for their first job, post-graduation.
We will focus on three key, overlapping areas in this presentation:
- In the Classroom
- Out of the classroom/Student Life
- Career Success
In the Classroom
Initial Exposure to Express
Express makes it easy to create, easy to share, easy to consume, and on par with professional media houses. Rather than just leaving work sitting in an LMS folder, students and faculty can share and communicate quick shots of data (infographics or social media), to longer form-deeper documents such as a web page, with a global audience, across any device.
Ice-breaker and deeper topics might include:
- Who am I? (graphic, web page or video)
- Research findings (infographic, web page)
- Self-Reflection (web page or video)
- Curation for Success (web page, graphic/resume)
Express is discipline-agnostic tool - business/nursing/athletics - it can be used by anyone
Real-World Examples
Long-Form Journalism
A current trend in online journalism is the long-form story, where users can read and scroll an entire article on a single web page. The BBC article below is an example of this format.
This long-form, reportage-style concept can be easily replicated using Adobe Express Web Page.
Adobe Firefly
Firefly can assist students in creating realistic or conceptual visuals of complicated/multi-faceted ideas, with no experience in professional-level tools. Firefly (and Express) equals equity of creativity.
Firefly, can assist in illustrating a variety of topics:
- Who Am I?
- Emotional state
- What role does technology play in my life?
- My ideal vacation spot
- How do I define success?
"It's not AI that is going to take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI might,"
- Richard Baldwin, Professor of International Economics
Outside the Classroom
Hobbies and personal interests build job skills
Gone are the days of always taking your ideas back to the laptop.
Students use this tech in school, but they're only in school part of the time. Express empowers students to actively engage with community, family and friends.
- Community rally/food drive/yard sale/passion projects for social media or notice board and on-campus digital screens
- Club banners (Disc Golf) - competition, intramural, fundraiser for course course/clean up the course (collaboration)
- Reflection/summary - What I learned on my internship, How sports made me a team player in life
Clubs/Sports
Environmental promo
Self Reflection
Career Success
Text has had its era, video is taking over.
83% of people prefer watching videos to accessing instructional or informational content via text or audio. Drilling down on this idea, according to Indeed.com a video cover letter can help students:
- Stand out from other job candidates
- Apply for a customer-facing job
- Enhance a social media profile or a professional website
- Show your skills as a media professional
In addition, it can be easier to tell your story, get you noticed, and better show your personality.
And you can do it all with your phone! Express really is a portable production studio.
As an example here is a video cover letter from a student, focusing on the value of their education and how it has prepared them for the working world. Created entirely within Adobe Express, it covers a range of topics and includes:
- Why I'm best suited for your firm - striving, achieving, overcoming, see an obstacle, I overcome it
- Voice over
- Captioning
- Animation
- Animated lower thirds titling
- First-person and b-roll video footage
Completed video cover letter, created and edited in Adobe Express
“It is not about the technology; it’s about sharing knowledge and information, communicating efficiently, building learning communities and creating a culture of professionalism in schools."
– Marion Ginapolis, 50+ year educator and school district superintendent (retired)
Schools are using Adobe Express and enabling students to use the tools to build Digital Portfolios and video cover letters.
Express goes beyond the student and student learning
It's not just students who can be impacted.
Faculty research and publish - Faculty are often required to do research and publish their findings in official journals. Express can be used to socialize that research to a wider audience through social media and by publishing more "approachable" summaries of their research using Express web page.
IT/security/facilities can use Express for announcements, maps, tutorials or web pages to consolidate a list of web-based references.