That Professor Houston...and Visual Design

Thanks for a great discussion regarding Professors Houston and Sheffield. Some people still need to catch up with that discussion, so I won't post the final debrief here. But look for that in the Discussion soon. I think the consensus so far is that Professor Houston is the more likely copyright violator. But there have been some arguments that were pretty good about Professor Sheffield too.


Through this discussion it is obvious that copyright is a tough issue and requires everyone to use their judgment. The only way you know 100% for sure if your use falls under Fair Use is when the judge rules in your case. But no one wants to deal with that!


Just like the people on this discussion probably gave you new things to think about, so will involving others when you are trying to determine fair use for your own class materials. Reach out to colleagues, librarians, and instructional designers to get feedback on fair use determinations. Do your best to balance fair use for the benefit of your students and for the protection of copyright holders.


Now on to Visual Design. This was a particularly difficult module to write because there is so much great information and so many things to share with you. If you think I missed something that you have a question about, be sure to post it in the discussion. I have many resources that I didn't share with you lest I create too much of an external cognitive load. (You will know what that means by the end of Module 5 if you don't already.) 


I did not tackle the issue of fonts because in most of the tools you will use, those are fairly constrained. Sans serif fonts, such as Arial, work best for the web. So try to stick with those. I also wanted to share this video with you. It uses different characters to represent fonts, so if you like different fonts, you will love this video!

In this module, you will add your course header and icons. This is kind of a magic moment when your course really starts looking like a course! If you hate your custom graphics or need other letters or numbers, let us know sooner rather than later.

As a reminder, we are approaching a checkpoint on December 6. If you have not completed modules one through four, please finish up soon. Double check your Assignment tool for assignments that were returned for completion.

We know that you are in the final crunch for the semester and are looking forward to the holiday break to spend some quality time with your course. Just be careful not to get too far behind. You want to be able to spend some quality time with the special people in you life too!

Keep up the great work!

Andrea