While our country is slowly reopening, we are all still spending more time at home than we’d probably like, and consequently all have a little extra free time on our hands. If you’re sick of baking sourdough bread or tending to your quarantine garden, why not try your luck at learning some new digital skills?
CQUniversity and representatives from Adobe have teamed up to create free webinars for CQUni staff and students, designed to teach users all sorts of Adobe tricks. As you may know, Adobe has made their Creative Cloud apps free for uni students until 6 July 2020, to try and help with any difficulty studying that may have arisen because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2019, CQUni hosted an ‘Adobe Day’ at the Rockhampton campus’ Digital Media Complex. A smashing success, the day had Adobe experts giving tips and tricks to students and staff. Sadly, because of the pandemic, ‘Adobe Day 2020’ could not happen. So, the CQUni Digital Media staff had to get a little bit creative.
CQUni Digital Media lecturer Michelle Roberts played an instrumental role in organising the webinars.
“[Adobe] had a lot of talented people who were also isolating at home, so we started talking about doing webinars… We have now had staff and students from Perth to Melbourne and all over the country attend,” Michelle said.
The webinars were initially designed to help CQUni staff members who were more accustomed to on-campus teaching transition to online teaching, focusing, at a very novice level, on things such as content creation for online learning.
From there, they grew into more general-knowledge webinars which staff, students and CQUni alumni were welcome to attend. Since April, there have been eight webinars, and there are more planned, with Michelle adding that the webinars will run into June before recommencing in term two.
The most exciting thing to come out of the webinars is the Adobe x CQUniversity Meet Mat Mini Competition. Judged by Alwyn Hunt, an Adobe expert and character texture artist who has worked on blockbuster films such as The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, the Meet Mat Mini Competition gives students a chance to showcase their creativity and artistic ability. The competition asks that students download a Meet Mat model to their computer, and then add amazing texture to the character using Adobe Substance Painter and submit it! Prizes are up for grabs for the winner and runner-up. The competition is running until July 3, meaning it is the perfect thing for you to try your hand at over uni break! For more information on how to enter, just visit this page.
If you’re interested in learning some new skills, catching up on previous webinars or attending an upcoming one, you just need to visit this page for all the information on how to register. There have already been webinars on Photoshop, Premiere Rush, a video-editing software, Adobe Spark, a web-publishing software, and Adobe Connect, which is for podcast creation, just to name a few. All the details are on the website.
While they can be a little tricky to wrap your head around at first, having knowledge of one or more Adobe programs looks great on a resume and greatly enhances your employability, especially if you are looking to get a job in digital media, communications or marketing. Michelle has a few tips for students looking to dip their toes into the world of Adobe.
“My advice for everyone is to start by thinking of it as just playing around and not having to get it right to start with. The more you use something, the more familiar, and less scary, it becomes,” Michelle explained.
“Do something that you don’t care about first, so when the time comes to do the thing you care about, you feel confident with the program.”
She added that because Adobe often uses a similar layout and set of tools for its programs, once you get the hang of one, you will find it a lot easier to learn another one, because you will already have a basic understanding of how it works.
Michelle recommends online tutorials for anybody who feels a bit stuck, adding that if you are a member of the state library you can access exceptionally good step-by-step tutorials from LinkedIn Learning.
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These webinars are not only a lot of fun, but also a great opportunity to learn some highly coveted skills for free! So, the next time you find yourself at a bit of a loose end, why not jump on and get involved with one of the previous or upcoming webinars? Who knows, you might even end up winning the Meet Mat Mini Competition!
Access the webinars here.
Thank you to Michelle Roberts from CQUni’s Digital Media department for participating in this blog.
Caitlin Murphy is a current Professional Communications student and member of the Social Squad – a group of content creators helping to promote student and campus life at CQUniversity.
