Digital Creation

Professor Elle Gregory; Professor Lisa Chopin; Rosie Glynn; Rob Johnson; Cameron Rutter; Peter Sondergeld; Sarah Howard; Dr Nona Press

Digital Creation

Digital creation is about digital production of content. The capacity to design and/or create new digital artefacts and materials; digital writing; digital imaging; digital editing of images, video and audio. At higher levels, the ability to code and to design apps/applications, games, virtual environments and interfaces.

Use the below guiding questions and resources to design and plan your assessment and learning resources/activities to support student development of digital creation capabilities.

Student learning outcome examples

Design and create digital content including presentations, posters, images, webpages, digital media (online, print and audio) and videos.
Demonstrate basic digital editing skills as appropriate to the discipline.
Design and produce digital solutions to creative, scholarly and professional problems.
Analyse how digital design is influencing the discipline and its cultural practice.
Design digital solutions with an awareness of accessibility, universal design, inclusivity and sustainability.

Assessment design

Example assessment types may include:

Presentation
Poster
Infographic
Video
Print media
Creative work
Performance
Webpage
Animation
Coding/Modelling
Design
Project (applied)
Exhibition

Assessment considerations:

Often digital content is produced as a means to demonstrate other digital capabilities such as digital communication. Consider whether you are assessing the creation of content or the use of content or both. This should be represented in your marking criteria and standards.

Marking criteria examples for Digital Creation

Content has been designed for accessibility
Appropriate use and acknowledgement of copywrite material
Protect your own and others intellectual property when creating digital content
Appropriate selection of digital content
Appropriate manipulation of digital content to enhance visualisation/readability
Uses secure processes to work with digital content
Content applies outstanding graphical design skills
Appropriate selection of digital tool to create digital content (assess affordances and limitations of a range of digital tools to confidently select an appropriate digital tool to create digital content)
Quality of digital production
Quality of digital editing
Audience engagement through embedded digital interactivity
Audience alignment/ mirrors authentic digital content

Criterion standards case example

Assessment: Create scientific figures

High Distinction	Uses secure processes to work with sensitive content in a digital environment.
	Careful selection and purposeful digital manipulation of images using a range of digital technologies enhances the visualisation of relevant content to create figures suitable for scientific publication.
	The content in all figures is expertly communicated through accurate, sufficient and specific labels, headings and annotations using outstanding graphical design skills.
Distinction	Uses secure processes to work with sensitive content in a digital environment.
	Careful selection and digital manipulation of images enhances the visualisation of relevant content to create figures suitable for scientific publication in most cases.
	The content in all figures is expertly communicated through accurate, sufficient and specific labels, headings and annotations using excellent graphical design skills.
Credit	Uses secure processes to work with sensitive content in a digital environment.
	Careful selection and digital manipulation of images enhances the visualisation of relevant content to create figures suitable for scientific publication in most cases.
	The content in figures is clearly communicated through accurate labels, headings and annotations using excellent graphical design skills.
Pass	Uses secure processes to work with sensitive content in a digital environment.
	Careful selection and digital manipulation of images enhances the visualisation of content to create figures suitable for scientific publication in most cases.
	Essential information in figures is clearly communicated using basic graphical design skills. Structures have been accurately identified in most cases.
Marginal Fail	Uses secure processes to work with sensitive content in a digital environment.
	Selection and digital manipulation of images is not the most appropriate or sufficient to clearly visualise the required content.
	Errors and insufficiency in structure identification results in superficial information on digital images which is difficult to interpret.
Fail	Uses secure processes to work with sensitive content in a digital environment.
Fail	Frequent errors in labelling and content interpretation results in digital images that are not appropriate for publication.
Low Fail	Does not use secure processes to work with sensitive content in a digital environment.
Low Fail	Insufficient digital images to be able to visualise content.

Capability development case examples

Assessment: Create scientific figures

Synchronous in-class activity: Workshop

Activity 1: Select relevant scientific figures from peer-reviewed publications to share with students. Include a range of examples that demonstrate outstanding, satisfactory and poor digital creation skills. In small groups ask students to critique the figures and explain the positive and negative attributes of each figure in terms of clear interpretation of the data/image. Whole of class discussion, led by the academic to collate findings on qualities of an outstanding scientific figure and align to assessment criteria and standards.

Activity 2: Provide students a partially complete scientific figure or some data to use to create a scientific figure. Encourage students to bring their own device and use relevant digital tools to complete the figure. This may include a demonstration of how to use the digital tool by the academic. Students are asked to post their completed figures onto Padlet or a shared online site for academic feedback or pair up with another student to provide peer feedback.

Resources

Types of assignments module overview – Digital Skills: Assignment Essentials provides students with step-by-step instructions on how to create a range of digital content including video; audio and podcasts; presentations, posters and infographics; websites, blogs and wikis; 3D models; and coding. This site is under a creative commons licence (Copyright © 2024 by Charles Sturt University) enabling you to use and adapt content in your own learning management system for your students.
Filming with your phone (YouTube, 15m16s) provides key information and many tips for filming a video on your mobile phone, including lighting, audio and editing.
storyboard templates are available for download.
Digital Design Fundamentals(Digital Marketing Institute, blog)
Writing your script (YouTube, 4m38s) looks at effective video script formats and the scripting process.
Use this example Google Doc storyboard template.
Watch How to avoid death by powerpoint. (YouTube, 20m, 31s)
Find out more about Design Fundamentals.
Use GIMP, free image editing software, to resize or edit images. Find out about more tools for working with images.