This semester I have had the joy of being the host of the Adobe Express & Firefly web series, where the focus is not just to offer engaging content, but to offer tips, strategies, and practices for not only using Express and Firefly but for integrating it into the curriculum. 

In the first session back in August, “Reimagining Assessments to Supercharge Learning,” I framed the conversation about digital literacy and why it mattered in higher education. After that, I offered a few low-stakes / high impact approaches to using Express to in the classroom to improve student engagement, and then turned things over to Mia Freeman, a former student of mine, who talked about digital creativity, visual communication, and her own digital literacy journey—highlighting for attendees how simple to use technologies like Adobe Express can be a gateway to deeper levels of engagement in the course. In particular, Mia shared her incredible Minecraft EDU project, which is a digital, navigable monument representing the fames and shames of the history of medicine. 

In the September session, “Driving Student Engagement with Generative AI,” I shared how educators can build more meaningful learning experiences — even failure-friendly experiences — that focus on the joy of discovery and integrating digital fluency into the classroom. For this episode, I had Amogh Busnur, another former student of mine, share his experiences from my course and highlight how those engagements launched him on a path of digital creative discovery—going on to teach himself a range of tools/platforms and showcasing how he used a variety of the digital writing skills from my class in other course at IU as well as in his own professional work. My contribution in this episode included showing fellow educators an example of two of how they might use Express and the functionality of Firefly in Express, to breathe new life into assignments and activities.

We took October off, given that EDUCAUSE, AdobeMAX, and Adobe EduMAX were all happening that month. But then just this past week we picked back up with the November episode where we focused on digital badging, micro-credentials, and the Adobe Learn platform to help support students and faculty as they venture into working with creative tools like Adobe Express. This episode featured Brian Johnsrud, Global Head of Education Thought Leadership and Student Success at Adobe, and Holly Johnson, Associate Director of Digital Learning Experience Innovation and Outreach (University of Utah). Brian helped frame the conversation about student success, badging, career readiness, and Adobe’s role in that larger ecology. Holly offered us an incredible use case, as students in the Eccles School of Business engage in Social Impact projects where the complete specific Adobe Learn modules (earning badges) as part of their work with Tech Moms, a local non-profit. My role was a bit more talk show host than usual, but I did demo the Adobe Learn platform and offer some quick insights into creating presentations using Adobe Express. 

If you’d like to view the November event or either of the previous episodes, you can click the links or visit the Adobe Education Events page and select the Express and Firefly series. However you get there, just click the “watch on demand” button, complete the registration, and you should have access to the recording as well as any resources shared as part of that event.