Changing pedagogy for contemporaneity with new design platforms

Abstract

For centuries, the mighty pen dominated classroom pedagogy in academia. In the 1980s, PowerPoint emerged as a significant tool to enhance in-class presentations. For the most part, academic presentations were confined to the four walls of the classroom. In 2019, the Coronavirus pandemic emptied the campuses, causing a pivot in the classroom experience. ZOOM, and other video tools, proliferated as channels for sharing oral and visual information, but there are better communication channels. We posit that academics should utilize graphic design platforms that provide more capability than PowerPoint technology. They exceed the typical slide projection capability, and they allow for more flexibility when integrating course content with social media. Graphic design platforms can be used to create Facebook posts and covers; they can be used to create invitations, cards, resumes, business letterheads, invoices, websites, logos, newsletters, brochures, business proposals, videos, worksheets, and infographics. In this paper we discuss and exhibit two specific communication strategies (that is, live videos and social media postings), and examples are provided using Canva. However, the same examples could have been created using other design platforms such as Stencil, Crello, Picmonkey, Snappa, Easil, Adobe Spark, and Pablo.