Documentation:Stop Motion/Main page/Plan

Curate or create? Does a resources similar to what you're envisioning already exist? You can check Creative Commons licensed sources and resources in the Public Domain to start with.

If there are appropriately-licensed images, slide sets, or other works you want to use, ask yourself if you can build some context around them specific to your goals. Building context or activities around already-existing resources is faster and cheaper than creating something new. Here's an example of curated content, which took the form of adding discussion questions, a self-assessment segment, some links, and more to a YouTube video describing MOOCs.

Objectives. Identifying broad goals can help you define what your students should learn and understand, while the objectives provide specific and measurable outcomes (Gagne, Wager, Golas & Keller, 2005 in Frey and Sutton, 2010).

• What do you want your audience to learn while watching your animation?
• Which approach is best-suited to support that learning: a narrative, explanation, or something else entirely?
  • What features does your project need to have to accomplish your goals? Do you need audio, or just animation? Can you use paper cutouts, or do you need something else?

Impact. Consider the potential impact your project will have on the learning environment. How will learners use the animation(s)? Will you need to create guiding questions, things to watch for, or follow up activities so learners can use what they've learned? Think about what activities the animation might replace (tutorial, lecture) and how you might use that time for other activities to support the learning from the animation. Additionally, knowing the needs of your learners helps you target the content and approach to them, making it more likely that you'll be producing a useful learning resource.

Assessment. Consider the measures you'll be using to check that your animation had the desired impact on learning: did test scores or performance in collaborative activities improve? A good instructional design principle is to check for alignment between learning objectives, assessment, and the activities associated with the presentation.

Test. Once you've gathered your equipment and software, experiment with it. Test everything: create a five-second animation and accompanying audio track, and edit and publish the animation to familiarize yourself with the process, and uncover any issues with file format or audio quality before production. Make sure your chosen tools can do what you need them to.

Timeline. Check with colleagues who have made stop motion animations previously to get a sense of how long your project should take. If this is your first time producing a stop motion animation project, allow a lot more time than you think you need.