Visual Information Management Course -Branding Course Content
While working at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) in 2021 I was assigned to be the Team Lead for the Visual Information Management (VIM) Course, which was undergoing a complete rewrite based on service (Air Force, Army, Navy & Marine Corps) requirements. Working closely with Mr. Andrew Smith (another VIM Instructor) we spent the better part of 2021 researching, rewriting and forming the new VIM curriculum.
Following completion of the development of all required course materials, we set to work on making extra classroom deliverables to help make the content more digestible. We started with a series of 'VIM Best Practices!' one-pagers that complemented the course terminal learning objectives. Mr. Smith worked on gathering content, which I then formatted, chunking up the information into bite-sized best practice chunks. These serve a couple purposes: they offer a quick overview/review of content that we discuss in class, and they are provided in digital format to the students to keep and use them once they return to their units. They can serve as a solid basis for the development of 'train-the-trainer' material as the students bring back the knowledge and resources they've gained attending VIM.
A few of the VIM Best Practices one-pagers provided to the students throughout the course.
Keeping with the brand colors we had adopted, we also decided to create quick-reference posters to place throughout the classroom. Once created, I offered the posters up to the rest of the department as some of the content is applicable to other courses.
Several of the posters created to supplement the VIM Course and display in the classroom.
While DINFOS currently uses Blackboard as it's primary LMS, we do have access to the Google App ecosystem. We decided to use this to build out a VIM Google site to further enhance the students user experience and make the content more easily accessible and attractive. While enrolled at DINFOS, the students can access the site, to include easy access to all of their daily learning materials, as well as all other instructor-created resources that we've created throughout the development of the course. Presenting the content like this also allows the course instructors to quickly add any additional content prior to instruction.
VIM at your fingertips
Since launching the course in December 2021, the students have consistently given positive feedback on the course learning materials and the supplemental Google Site.
Students can navigate all student-facing, non-exam material via the Google site while enrolled at DINFOS.
As a designer in a position where I now teach the management of visual information assets, it was important to me to ensure that the student-facing content was presented in a beautiful and intuitive way. This allowed me to continue to flex my design skills while developing this course.
