Auburn University students build workforce skills and explore the role of police in society with the help of Adobe Express

Auburn University students build workforce skills and explore the role of police in society with the help of Adobe Express

Auburn University continues to produce rising retention and graduation rates as one of the top public U.S. universities. The university's success can partially be attributed to its focus on academics and student experiences, including career-focused programming that ensures students succeed both in and out of classrooms.

Dr. Makeela J. Wells, assistant professor of sociology, knows the importance of connecting classwork to real-world opportunities. Dr. Wells first taught classes while working towards her Ph.D. She quickly realized that traditional assignments focusing on exams and papers didn't always align with what employers needed in the workforce.

Bringing attention to issues that impact officers

For her Police and Society class, Dr. Wells asked students to research issues in policing that impact police officers, such as safety precautions during domestic violence calls or dealing with mental health challenges experienced by officers. Rather than having students deliver their research only as written papers, she added visual element to the assignment to align with how many employers want to view and interpret information today. She assigned students to groups and asked them to combine their research into an eye-catching, informative six-slide infographic created with Adobe Express.

Dr. Wells displayed the students' projects on the Digital Wall - an immersive multimedia display in the Innovation & Research Commons (I&RC) at Auburn's Ralph Brown Draughon (RBD) Library - to share findings with the broader student population. Dr. Chelsy Hooper, instructional technology coordinator, and Jonah Lasley, instructional technology specialist of the I&RC helped create basic templates in Adobe Express and then assisted the class in adding design elements that grab the attention of passing students.

"Adobe Express is unique in the ways it enables students to easily customize their templates with colors, layouts, and fonts that work with their topic," says Dr. Wells. "Most students know how to develop basic presentations, but having to present infographics challenged them. They had to simplify their arguments and think creatively about visuals that support their theme."

Seamless collaboration for students through an online app

Students Amanda Mirshak, Alex Marr, and Gabby Cupp examined the issue of how to keep officers safe when responding to domestic violence calls. Cupp designed a purple and black background for their template and then copied the design to create the six slides. The group inserted white iconography alongside the bold white text to illustrate their statistics and recommendations.

"We debated over what type of iconography we should use," says Marr. "Fortunately, Adobe Express has libraries of creative assets that we could search through for ideas and to find the best graphics that worked for us."

Collaborating is easy because the online creative app saves everything to the cloud. Group members could work on their pages at the same time from any location or check out work done by a teammate to send feedback or recommendations.

Students quickly learned to use the app, even without previous design experience.

"I don't consider myself an artist," says Mirshak. "But once I started using the tool, I realized I could come up with and try out really cool designs on my own. It gave me confidence that if I ever needed to pitch ideas to someone or make a presentation, I could do it."

Another group, comprised of Alycety Horton, Sydney Geller, and Caroline Callahan, focused on the stress felt by law enforcement during school shootings. Their iconography used many human-shaped figures to emphasize the impact on people. The group used design to emphasize the theme, illustrating percentages through shaded police figures and turning a QR code into the outline of a police badge.

According to Geller, the ability to stretch her creativity not only made the assignment less stressful and more engaging, but it also helped her grow design skills.

"There are so many jobs that include social media," says Geller. "Being able to add graphic design skills to my resume sets me apart from other psychology and sociology majors who don't have that experience."

Both Geller and Horton put their design skills to work when their summer internships asked them to create content for their organizations' social media accounts.

"At my internship, they typically used Canva, but I switched to Adobe Express for my social media project," says Horton. "The interface was so much easier to use and capabilities like generative fill made what I could do with Adobe Express a lot more advanced."

Impacting law enforcement and the community

The Police and Society projects ran on the Digital Wall all year, giving students a real opportunity to change minds and impact people around Auburn University. They also made a difference for local law enforcement. Officers spoke to students in the classroom about their experiences, and then came to observe the final presentations to learn more about the research and suggestions. One officer saved the QR codes on each presentation to review source materials and possibly present recommendations to his own department in the future.

Learn more about incorporating Adobe Express into your classroom here.

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