Hello blôg I’ve been assigning course graphics to some STAs and giving feedback on those, it’s going pretty well so far! I’ve made this spreadsheet to keep track of things:

Right now there have only been 4 requests, but Maddy told me there are about 15 courses to be updated, so things will probably pick up soon.

I also met with Marla and Heather, Director and Assistant Director of Course Development (I think) to discuss how I can help them in their roles. I’ve been tasked with learning more about the video manager where lectures are uploaded and edited. LAITS is trying to switch to a new video manager, but there are some bugs, so I’m going to work on finding these bugs and making some documentation for fixing them (with the help of people who actually fully understand the video manager lol). Exciting stuff! Lots of meetings lately! See ya next week!

Longhorn Open Ed Tech GitHub Page

I’ve been working with Chris to redesign the GitHub landing page for Longhorn Open Ed Tech. Here’s how the original page looked like.

I made some some Figma mockups to draft out the changes I’d like to make. Here’s the first version.

Chris and Maddy really like it, Chris’ only main concern with this one is that the GitHub icon doesn’t read well as a link to the Project Page. He gave me some suggestions, so here are two more iterations.

Chris likes the one with the icon + text link the most (which was also my preferred one), so we went with it. The HTML and CSS are pretty simple so it didn’t take me too long to put them together. Here’s how the final site looked like locally for me. I also made the pull request so I’m just waiting for Chris to approve the merge before the changes are up live.

Shadowing a Cascade Meeting

Hi there! This week I got to shadow a meeting a fellow STA had with a client who needed help with Cascade. By this point of my STA career, I of course know the basics of cascade, but I had never personally and individually worked with a client needing Cascade assistance before. So, shadowing someone else leading a meeting like this was an interesting and insightful experience.

Here are some notes I took:

• Start with intro on how meeting will go
• Ask if client has a background on Cascade, how much?
• Share screen
  • Go through inspo on what client wants. Check out example pages from STAs.
  • Determine what elements do they want in their Cascade cite: pull quotes, videos, etc
    • Fo videos clarify the difference between an embedded one and a linked one. Embedded is preferred.
• Suggest using a single specific folder for all their media
• Explain save/submit modes, publish mode and how that will take longer to update on its own once you click on it.
  • Remind them not to publish till all edits are done.
• Reassure them that help will be available to them when needed.
  • Web editor chatbot
  • Cascade tutorials
  • Reach out
• Send followup email after meeting with helpful resources and the discussed steps to take.

More AMS PPTs and WordPress Documentation

Hello, this week I started off by continuing with the AMS 310 PowerPoints and making sure the lectures were transferred to the new format in time for the professor to record her lectures. I talked more about it in my last post. Then, Thuy introduced me to the WordPress Documentation project that she, Cristina, Relena, and maybe some more folks had been working on. There are many departments at UT that have their own WordPress websites, and  the WP documentation project involves creating a series of help guides to help additional editors understand how to do all the important processes involved with maintaining and updating content on a webpage. The process of WP documentation first involves identifying the pertinent processes that would be useful for editors to know, then writing out a step by step guide with pictures for extra visual assistance.

For example, the WP documentation that I was working on was for “The Theatre (&) Philosophy Project, which you can visit here. It is a comparatively simpler WP, so it was a good introduction for me, and I worked on posts like How to Add Philosopher. Here are some screenshots of what that looked like for the Add a Philosopher guide.

Outside of work, I have just been working on school and the like. Relena and I are in a class together called “Perspectives in Design,” and it is nice to see a fellow STA in a non STA zoom. I already talked about this, but Samurai Champloo is sooo good I’m still thinking about it.

A Continuation of After Effects

I have not been working on anything new, but I did finish assets for the AfterEffects training in development. This is the banner that STAs will animate to learn about the puppet tool 🙂

I have also been completing Photo ID requests and am going to be writing documentation (summaries) for some of my old projects as I don’t have anything assigned at the moment. I can’t wait to update here when I have assignments to show!