Academic and Emerging Technology

Adobe Creative Cloud includes far more than Photoshop. Across disciplines, its tools can help students communicate ideas visually, prototype concepts, tell stories, document research, design experiences, and create professional-quality work.

This hands-on session introduces practical ways faculty and students can use Adobe tools in teaching and learning, with an emphasis on creative experimentation rather than technical mastery. Participants will explore examples of visual communication, digital storytelling, presentations, portfolios, interface and experience design, and multimedia projects, including interdisciplinary student work that moves from research and user insight into tangible prototypes. The examples in the accompanying deck show students using Adobe tools to redesign campus digital experiences, create mobile interfaces, develop financial-literacy resources, build portfolios, and communicate complex ideas visually.

The session will also consider how newer AI-enabled features can lower the technical barrier to creative work while making human judgment, audience awareness, and intentional design choices even more important.

Participants do not need prior Adobe experience. The goal is to help people identify one or two tools and approaches they can realistically incorporate into a course, assignment, research project, presentation, or creative workflow.

Participants will leave able to:

• identify Adobe tools that fit different teaching, learning, and communication goals;
• see how visual and multimedia prototyping can support learning across disciplines—not only art and design;
• use approachable workflows for creating images, layouts, presentations, video, portfolios, or prototypes;
• think about creative assignments in terms of audience, purpose, iteration, and communication, not just software;
• understand how AI-assisted creative features can lower technical barriers without replacing critical and creative judgment;
• identify a practical Adobe-based activity or project they could try in their own work.