Celeste Gonzalez

CST 201-02
December 18, 2015
Course Reflection
CST 201 is an introductory course to various media applications. The
major areas covered throughout the course are digital images, animation,
video and text, and audio. Becoming familiar with the client to designer
relationship was also touched on. These areas cover in the class also serve
as the course outcomes for the semester.
The class was designed for the students to meet the necessary
outcomes by working on assignments for each outcome every week. In order
to ensure that students would know how to properly use the media programs
a lecture about managing the program was given at the beginning of each
week. For my specific section this would be on Tuesdays. Are use of digital
images was shown by being able to use Photoshop and creating our own
postcard. For audio we had assignments where garage band was used to
make audio loops. The technical use od audio was also used to make a radio
ad for a movie. Using adobe Illustrator, we showed our knowledge text and
manipulating it to fit our guidelines and design. Edge animate was the
program used to create 2D animations; such as an ad for the San Francisco
Zoo. The course not only focused on our technical use but, used the basic
rules of design. These rules or guidelines of design are known as P.A.R.C
(Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, & Contrast). By practicing P.A.R.C and
critiquing our classmates work we train our designers eye and become
better at communicating the message at hand through visual design.
Overall the course was a great introductory class to some programs I
had never used before although, some days it was questionable if the class
time was needed. For a person like myself I am more creative when I am in
my own space on my own so having to work on some assignments in class
felt like they were lacking creativity. The good thing about class time was
that there was an instructor to answer your questions if you had any and
classmates to course ideas off of. To answer the question of whether or not I
met all of the class outcomes, I have to be honest, I might have missed a few
or not fully met them. This could be contributed to a number of things, like
class being at 8am and not being a morning person. Which caused me to
miss some classes and fall behind; that lead to there being time constraints
for completing an assignment. These very reasons among with the fact that I
am not very good t asking for help and a personally tough semester
accounted for myself to not fully grasp all of the outcomes.
For future students I would recommend checking iLearn constantly and
asking for help when needed.