News from the Digital Media Program

Candace Egan became a full-time faculty member in 2004 for the Mass Communication and Journalism Department and now teaches MCJ 131, Online Media Design every spring for the Digital Media option.

The main objective of this class is to introduce students to the fundamentals of design and production of Web-based information.

At the end of the semester, each student will have a profile of a local musician included on the website www.valleymelodies.csufresno.edu. Egan redesigned the main assignment this past semester to focus on this website, having students produce and write the content. They were each assigned a blues musician and produced a multimedia story about them.

“The Valley Melodies website is a long-term project which I plan to use in MCJ 131 for several years,” Egan said. “I envision students interviewing musicians from several other music genres so that after several years we will have added many pages of content to the site.”

Egan’s educational goal for her students is to familiarize them with preparing text, video, audio and photo content suitable for the Web. Some of her students may become Web designers, while most will be better equipped to effectively contribute to a team, producing content for Websites.

“I enjoy creative challenges and opportunities available to media producers who communicate using the Web,” Egan said. “This is a new area and there is lots of room for contributing to the design language of this new medium while it’s in the new stages of development. It’s exciting being at the beginning of a new medium.”