The NMI has shifted from requiring students make course descriptions hosted on the portfolio you build in this course NMIX4020 to instead create case studies hosted on Medium.
All students in an NMIX course (not just those on the certificate track) are required to make a case study for each NMIX course they’re in by the last day of class (not the end of finals).
I’ll be walking you through some general steps to set up your Medium blog and also some of the NMI requirements. NMI requirements will be noted with **red asterisks or red highlight. You can find more details about the portfolio, dossier, and case studies at this link. For those on the certificate track, there are additional elements required with your Medium blog as you approach the end of the program, especially applying for capstone or finishing Brown Bag so be sure to check out the link and stay up to date. Let’s get started!
- Make your account
Go to medium.com and select “get started” in the upper right corner
Select sign up with google or email in the dialogue box, follow Medium's directions to set up your account and verify your email address
**Note: Be sure to use your personal email not your school email so that you can continue to use your account/blog after you graduate - Customize your profile. Psst! - You can customize your profile and blog at any time, so feel free to skip ahead to setting up the case study collection and come back to this later, but I recommend at least customizing your profile info with the following 2 steps.
- Click on the drop down in the top right corner and select profile. Your profile should look pretty plain right now, select “edit profile” under your name to change that.
- From this dialogue box you can upload a profile photo, change how your name appears, and add a bio. This bio will be what appears under your name on stories you write such as “Gwen, student at UGA” or “Jaden, web developer.”
- Extra! Extra! - Customize your blog
- Click out of that profile dialogue box and you’ll see more options for customization. You can always go back and change those details further in “profile information” but to really personalize your page head to “profile design.”
Design
Here you’ll see what your blog looks like to readers in various displays (desktop, tablet, and smartphone) and can view both your home page and story pages as you customize.
- In the left column under the header drop down you can customize the color, style, image, and text or even upload a personal logo if you have one, across the top of your blog.
- Your changes save automatically as you customize, but once you're happy with your header select “publish” in the top right to make them visible to readers.
- If you ever change your mind about changes you’ve made, you can revert to a previously published version from the drop down under the 3 dots next to cancel.
About You
- Personalize your blog by writing a little bit about you so readers know what your blog is about.
- Click on the arrow in the top left corner to return to your page from the design page. Then go to “about” under your header and select “get started.” This is where you can write out a description of yourself, your NMI Dossier, and even add a photo.
Make a Case Study Collection aka Medium List
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT STRUCTURE: Your Case Study Collection will be a “Medium List” titled “New Media Case Study Collection” and each Case Study will be a standalone “Story.” We’ll be setting up this structure as we go. You can additionally watch someone walk through these step with this video.
- Under the profile dropdown, go to “library” with the bookmark symbol next to it. This is where your lists are hosted and is sometimes referred to as “lists.”
- Click “new list” and in the pop up dialogue box add the list title “New Media Case Study Collection” for certificate/undergrad students or “Emerging Media Case Study Collection” if you’re an EM student.
- Make a Case Study aka Medium Story
- In the profile dropdown go to “stories.” Here you can not only write new stories but manage published stories and drafts.
- Select “write a story.” Here you’ll add the title, subtitle and body of your story.
- **Your title should be based on this structure: Project name + project scope + project/case study (i.e: Instagram Icon Redesign Project)
- **Your subtitle should be a sentence or short phrase that tells your audience what the project/product was about. (i.e.: An app that helps you connect with other new students.)
- **Your body copy should include the following sections
- *Project Date: When did you work on this project (i.e.: Spring 2023, May 2022, etc.)
- *Your Role: If this was a group project, list your role. Otherwise, this step is optional.
- *Project Overview: A brief, scannable overview of the project goals and results. Include the tools/software used in this section. (Recommended length: 2 - 3 sentences.)
- *The Challenge: What were the specific challenges, problems, or goals that this project attempted to meet? Consider user needs, technical constraints, etc. (Recommended length: 3 - 5 sentences.)
- *The Solution: Describe your method or process for creating this project, how you solved the specific challenges from the previous section, and describe the “why” behind your design/development decisions. This is the longest section, where you’ll include most of your process documentation (visuals) and highlights from the final deliverable. (Recommended length: as long as needed.)
- *Results: Success metrics, lessons learned, next steps for future iterations, etc. (Recommended length: 3 - 5 sentences.)
- With medium you can do a lot of interesting formatting to make your case study engaging, including adding photos. Explore this when you write up your official case study.
- Once you’ve finalized those details (or just added some text to practice making a story) select “publish” in the upper right corner
- This will take you to a preview of the story and a window to add up to 5 topic tags. **Make one of these tags the course number (in this case NMIX4020) and the other 4 relevant topics to your work.
- Then select publish, again, to make the case study live on your blog.
- Add Case Studies to your list
- Go back to “stories” in the profile dropdown
- From here, select published and then edit your case study story
- **Select the bookmark icon on the bottom right of the story and choose your case study collection list.
- Note: Your stories are already put in a “reading list” by default, you can leave this list selected or deselect it - it doesn’t matter.