This audio piece is a discussion based on the question of “How does social media affect our productivity?” In my opinion we did a good job discussing the topic, gave out our own opinions, used reference to back up our points and included multiple forms of media in our audio to further discuss the topic. It is my first time making an audio, but I still tried to make it sound professional with a proper intro and outro, background music and fading effects. I consider these to be the most successful parts of my audio. On the other hand, the most problematic part is the way we talk did not sound professional enough. I personally did not sound clear enough and the whole conversation could be more interactive. We basically did not sound professional enough. To fix that we could change the tone when we are talking to make the conversation sound smoother. I also think some of the transitions could be smoother, some of the parts sound a bit abrupt. I believe those can be improved over more practices.

This assessment is an audio piece but I still tried to include as many skills we learned through out the semester as possible, for example interviews. Interview has been a big part of this semester and it is also something I put in a lot of work into. So I thought as the last assessment of this semester I should definitely include some interviews since it can also help me with the discussion in my audio. We used the skill we learnt in one of the lectures about how to ask the questions the get more information out of the interviewee. So we changed the question from “Do you think social media distracts you from your primary task?” to “How does social media affect your productivity?” By doing this we can get a wider answer and also make sure our interviewees give us their honest opinions instead of only negative information about social media because we asked about “distraction” in the first place. We also did a lot of modifications by listening to feedbacks we received from workshop classes. Panning sounds to different sides, adding additional footage, making the intro more understandable and so on.

For such a long audio piece, we tried to make it as coherent as possible, because it is different from videos, our voices and all the sounds we put in there is all our audience can pay attention too, so we have to make sure the structure is tight so our audience will not lose focus. By doing this, I learned I could put many different layers of sound without sounding annoying. Which is something I couldn’t do with videos, because watching something with three or four things making sound at the same time will be too much too handle. For this audio I can have two people talking at the same time, a background music playing and maybe some other sound effects all playing together. This can help me filling in the blanks and make the transitions smoother.

Before I start doing this assessment, I thought group work is just arranging everyone a task, and put it together. All we need is take some group meetings and make sure everyone is on the same page. I was completely wrong, there is no collaboration and teamwork in there. During the making process I learned we need to take part in each other’s part, give each other suggestions so they can improve, so our final work can be better. In the beginning the arrangement was Marie plans out the structure, Vivian go do the interviews and I will finish the assessment by editing. Then I realized that is just a bad plan, the final piece will sound like 3 individual audios put together. So I started to take part in Marie and Vivian’s tasks, help Marie to improve the whole structure and let Vivian know what she needs to pay attention to when she is doing the interview and help her out when she’s having trouble asking questions to the interviewee. By doing this I got to know everyone’s ideas, which really helped me to edit the final piece better. Good teamwork is essential to a group assessment, and this experience really helped me to know how collaboration works in media.