When Professor Vanessa Cruz was developing courses for online delivery, it was important to her that they be aesthetically pleasing, engaging for students, easy to navigate and, pedagogically sound. An Illustration course was to be offered as a hybrid, meeting both on campus and online. A Motion Graphics course was to be offered fully online.

Professor Cruz participated in the Summer 2006 Moving a Traditional Course Online Seminar offered by CIRT, then began meeting with Instructional Designer Erin Soles during the Fall 2006 semester to discuss course design as well as communication and course tools available in Blackboard. She used Photoshop and Adobe After Effects to develop her overall design and used Dreamweaver to produce the course modules. She then uploaded her courses to Blackboard using the "unpackage" option, which allows for the display of the entire course through the Blackboard interface.

The courses are being offered during the current semester and beautifully meet the challenge of teaching multimedia courses in the online environment. In the Motion Graphics course, a Welcome Video introduces students to the course and their professor. Students work through lessons on specific techniques. The lessons are QuickTime movies in which Professor Cruz demonstrates and explains the techniques with a narrated screen movie, which students may watch as many times as they'd like. A podcast also provides multiple examples for each technique. Course readings are listed in Blackboard, along with project specifications. Students post their projects in progress in the very active discussion board for peer review and comments before final submission.

Student feedback gathered to date indicates that students appreciate the flexibility of online learning and the level of interaction available.

" She [Professor Cruz] answers any questions promptly and thoroughly, and if it can't be put into words she sends me a quick time video walking me through the steps of my question."

" I really like this DL course because I can do the work whenever I want."