Goal of the Project

At Heartland Community College while working as the Media Technologist in the IT Department on the Web Team I was tasked with creating a series of video tutorials showing a variety of personnel at the college how to perform basic website maintenance and content updating using the Microsoft Expression Web 4 software. This training video was in a 10 part series of screen recordings I performed detailing how to do content updating and maintenance of the college's website at the time. Each department and division at the college would typically have their own web content personnel tasked with making web page changes and additions and these training videos were aimed at providing asynchronous trainings which they could watch as their schedules allowed.

Project Specs

Category

  • Screen Recording
  • Training Design
  • Video Training

Software Used

  • TechSmith Camtasia 8 icon
  • Microsoft Expression Web 4 icon
  • Apple Motion 5

(click icon to view name)

Hardware Used

  • Sony F-V320 Dynamic Microphone

Audience

  • Heartland Community College Website Maintenance Personnel

Solution to the Problem

To create these training videos I first created a script of the training for each topic to be covered. Then using the TechSmith Camtasia 8 screen recording software I would screen record myself reading through the script text into the microphone while navigating the mouse though the various steps to successfully perform the topic being presented. In total for this Web Maintenance training there were 10 screen recordings created in this series presenting topics such as this Introduction to Microsoft Expression Web 4, plus trainings on opening a web page, editing text, inserting images onto a web page, inserting hyperlinks, uploading and adding links to PDFs, saving web page changes, validating web pages, and editing a "meta data" comments block on web pages.

These training videos were then uploaded along with the video transcription and captions so the videos could be shared inside a Blackboard Learning Management System course which the trainees could access, watch the videos, read further instructions provided in the training course, take a quiz, and successfully complete the Web Maintenance Content Training. These video tutorials were used at the college from 2013 through 2015 at which time the college transitioned to a content management system for the web site.

I created the motion graphic titles appended to each tutorial video using Apple Motion 5 software.

In total, while serving as the Media Technologist at Heartland Community College I scripted, narrated, recorded, edited and produced more than 80 screen recording video tutorials on a wide variety of technology topics.

Video Text Transcription

(Text On Screen: Introduction to Microsoft Expression Web 4)

(Tom Corcoran, Media Technologist Speaking)
Microsoft Expression Web 4 is an HTML (or Hypertext Markup Language) web page design and maintenance software application released from Microsoft starting in 2006 as a replacement for the discontinued Microsoft FrontPage 2003. We use the latest (and final) release of Microsoft Expression Web called Microsoft Expression Web 4. The program is now discontinued itself as of December 2012 and is a free download from Microsoft.

You should be getting this software installed on your computer after successfully completing this Web Site Maintenance Training course.

To find the Microsoft Expression Web software on your computer you can follow these steps:

  1. click the Start menu (traditionally in the lower left of the Microsoft Windows taskbar),
  2. then click All Programs,
  3. scroll to the Microsoft Expression folder,
  4. opening that folder you will see "Microsoft Expression Web 4" (if it is installed on your computer).

Once you have Microsoft Expression Web software installed on your computer you will be able to open the software. Click the Microsoft Expression Web icon to open the application.

You might get a box in the middle of the screen asking if you'd like Microsoft Expression Web to be the default web editor. Uncheck the checkbox and click Yes.

After opening the software you will be presented with a somewhat familiar interface if you have used the older Microsoft Office 2003 applications such as Microsoft Word 2003, Excel or PowerPoint. At the top of the screen you will see the familiar menu options of File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, etc. just like in Microsoft Word 2003. As a matter of fact, what you will be doing with Expression Web is very much like using a word processing program. Likely you will be adding text and possibly inserting links to Adobe PDFs or links to other web sites (internal Heartland Community College web sites and links to external web sites). These are all things you can do with a traditional word processing application like Microsoft Word. But rather than working on a text document you will be opening a web page file. The main section of the screen is the "editor" portion of the Expression Web software. Here you can type text, edit text, insert links to PDFs, link to web pages, and more. Again if you've used a word processing program this should look somewhat familiar to you.

This interface can look a little bit daunting at first but you can close many of the side panels so these don't become a distraction. Simply click the Xs next to the panels top right to close that panel. Don't worry you can always reopen those panels under the Panels menu at the top of the program. Here you can choose "Reset current workspace" and those panels will open back up. Or you can simply press F4 on the keyboard and the panels will auto hide meaning they collapse along the left and right sides of the screen and will popout if the mouse is hovered over them. Either way makes the screen much less cluttered.

Next we'll be learning how to open a Heartland Community College web page in Microsoft Expression Web 4.

(Screen fades to black)