E-Zines: Create Colorful, Comely and Communicative Engagement with Your Online Audience

Concurrent Session 1

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

Are you strugging to engage your faculty via email communication? Communication Experts all agree on one thing - sending another email in this day and age just wont work anymore. In this highly interactive session, you will learn how to leverage the magazine creation capabilities of Canva and other similar tools to get the word out in a way that gets noticed. 

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Rodney Urand, University of Maryland-Baltimore County

After leaving a promising career as a young 'upstart' in Australia’s banking industry, Rod Urand began his American life as an Assistant Director in a YMCA camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Customer Service expertise from his previous trade served him well as he worked with conference groups, youth and family services, and other participants at one of the largest conference centers in the Pocono Mountains. The next stop in his career took Rod to New Jersey where he was elevated to the position of Executive Director of the Camp Branch of the YMCA of Newark and Vicinity. Combining his customer service credentials, his facility management experience and technical know-how, Rod left the non-profit world for management positions in national known property management corporations in Arizona, Virginia and Maryland. Unable to suppress the entrepreneurial spirit and energy, Rod founded a small company called Yackendander Training and Consulting to provide hands-on training and consultation services in technology products such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, and other audio and digital editing software packages to name a few. His client list and partnerships include both small business, academia and some of the top training companies in the United States. Rod Urand is well versed and credentialed in the world of technology, instructional design and video production. In addition to his ownership role in his company, Rod also maintains a full-time career with The University of Maryland, Baltimore in Maryland. Here, he focuses on instructional design and support for Faculty.

Co-presenter: Clark Shah-Nelson, University of Maryland - Baltimore

Clark Shah-Nelson serves as Assistant Dean of Instructional Design and Technology for the University of Maryland School of Social Work and is a doctoral student in Evidence-Based Management/Business Administration. Clark is an eLearning instructional design development professional with 25 years experience in educational technology innovations: teaching, designing leading award-winning online and distance learning teams for learning management platform implementation, training, end user support, professional development and engagement. He has presented at numerous online learning and ed tech conferences, was co-founder of the Blend-Online Educause constituent group, co-founding master chef of the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Technology Test Kitchen, and has recently volunteered as Conference Co-Chair for OLC Innovate and Engagement Co-Chair for OLC Accelerate Clark has authored chapters on synchronous tools for teaching and learning support and co-authored a chapter on professional development installations. As a consultant, Clark has worked on several international projects in the realm of blended and online learning.

Extended Abstract

Glean key-concepts in a short time span with this engaging session on communicating with your faculty beyond just another email.

A colleague reached out the other day and said they get about 2,500 emails a week and it is difficult to sift through to get to the good stuff. Perhaps you are like this person, one who dreads opening up email to see lots of words on a screen, giving you anxiety and fatigue.

If you can identify with this statement, and you are in a position where you have to communicate to a mass audience, it is time to throw that email draft out the window and send an e-zine instead. 

With the power of tools such as Canva, you can quickly become an in-house Magazine Publisher and get your word out in a way that is it received positively, via a regular publication. Faced with the demands of instructional design and faculty support during the global pandemic, you will learn how to create a E-Zine with bite-sized tidbits on teaching strategies, design, a focus on faculty successes, and ways to leverage data insights. You will learn how to divide up the e-zine into short monthly columns for a variety of authors, and produce an end product in a short timeframe, but with big visual and interactive impact. You will learn how to create a E-Zine with loads of hyperlinks, embedded videos and images that faculty can use as they peruse and explore a particular theme. 

Join this session and you’ll be able to:

  • Build a professional looking electronic magazine (e-zine) for regular publication

  • Engage with your audience using a combination of rich media including video, animated gifs, QR codes and embeds

  • Master a first impression that is a positive and lasting using a tried and true four-minute strategy.

  • Adapt and communicate using a variety of universal styles that appeals to all audiences.

  • Keeping track of analytics to ensure that engagement is effective.

Handouts will include a mini booklet/guide to how an E-Zine is made, best practices tip and cheat sheet on how to create engaging content via Canva and other tools as well as a list of available free-to-use tools for publishing.

Communication is crucial for success in every industry. This combination of artistry, technical expertise, knowledge, and visual communication is proven (Avolio, Sosik, Kahai, & Baker, 2014) to stop people from  hitting delete.