“Adobe Express is easy to learn and is more targeted to specific user needs. So, it’s quick to teach, if teaching is even necessary.“
Tanya Pretorius is a trainer at TheTrainingCentre.co.za. She is responsible for delivering engaging and effective instruction, guiding students, digital learning capacity, and ensuring her students develop digital skills. She recently shared her experiences with Learning Curve and what it was like training Adobe Express.
What’s Important to Her?
She values ease of learning, accessibility, and immediate application of digital tools in education. She appreciates software tools that allow students to grasp concepts quickly and engage in hands-on learning without excessive technical barriers. Ms. Pretorius believes that students learn best when they have an urgent need to create content, which enhances their motivation and engagement.
What are Her Main Challenges?
• Maintaining student engagement and motivation – She believes that the more engaging learning is, the more effective it is.
• Bridging the digital literacy gap – Some students lack technical skills, requiring her to simplify concepts and facilitate learning.
• Ensuring real-world relevance during training – She strives to make content creation meaningful by connecting digital concepts to their application in practical projects.
How Adobe Express Helped
Ms Pretorius has used Adobe Express in both personal and professional capacities. Ms Pretorius has trained Adobe Express online and found it easy to teach it as the program is particularly easy to learn for students with limited digital literacy, making teaching it a seamless process. She has also used it to create promotional materials for her own projects.
She says, “I have used Adobe Express to create promotional material for various Facebook event promoters who are not digitally literate. I have also facilitated classes in Adobe Express.”
Adobe Express significantly influenced her teaching strategies. The program’s interface has streamlined the program, making its uses more targeted, quicker to teach, and easier to master – so much so that formal instruction would be unnecessary for digitally literate users.
Her adaptation to Adobe Express was seamless. This ease of use was a defining factor in student engagement – because, according to her, when students realise what they can create with minimal effort, their creativity flourishes.
Here’s what else she had to say:
How easy was it to adapt to Adobe Express as an educator?
“Super quick adaptation. Extra quick with Adobe Express. Once you know a few programs, an app is a piece of cake! Those layers on the right of Adobe Express are fabulous!”
In what ways has Adobe Express helped you or your students explore your creativity?
“The students are much more engaged because they can see the full potential of what they can do, and the ease is very important.”
A Trainer’s View on Preparing Students for Future Academic Success
With over 400 million young people aged 15 to 35 and a tertiary education enrolment rate of only 9%, Africa faces a massive skills gap. More than 25% of young Africans aged 15 to 24 are not in education, employment, or training, leaving them unprepared for the demands of a rapidly evolving job market.
The digital revolution and AI-driven economy create new career opportunities, but 40% of young job seekers lack the necessary skills to compete. Traditional higher education alone cannot bridge this gap quickly enough. Adobe’s micro-credentials offer a fast, flexible, and practical way to equip graduates with job-ready competencies that match industry demands.
Ms Pretorius recognises the role of education software in helping solve these many challenges.
How do these tools prepare students for future academic or professional challenges?
“Appification means they know the steps, but their creativity must also be honed and their visuality trained. There is a key there. Tertiary education hones the students’ creativity and visuality, and Adobe Express is an accessible tool with which to do it.”
What feedback have you received from students about using Adobe Express?
“Talking, chattering, grinning, laughing. A big mood change in the classroom. Constantly – Gosh, Adobe Express is so easy!”
What are you thoughts on Adobe’s micro-credentials, and will it help support students from all walks of life to display digital proficiency?
“Love it! As mentioned, I think you should take micro-credentials much further and even micro-credentialise educators.”
How Adobe Express Benefits Higher Education Institutions
According to Ms Pretorius, Adobe Express enhances student creativity by providing intuitive tools for designing compelling presentations, infographics, and visual storytelling projects. Adobe Express also simplifies content creation for faculty, allowing educators like her to develop engaging course materials, interactive lessons, and multimedia assignments with ease.
Students are the big winners, as they are empowered with real-world digital skills, preparing them for careers requiring proficiency in visual communication, branding, and multimedia production.
The final word goes to Ms Pretorius. Asked if she would recommend Adobe Express to other educators, she replied, “Absolutely, anything rocks that gets students engaged and improves their attitude.”
By integrating Adobe Express, colleges and universities can ensure that students and faculty spend less time struggling with design tools and more time focusing on creativity, storytelling, and impactful communication.
Faculty promotions and discounts are available directly through edu@learningcurve.co.za, alternatively individual educator and student licenses can be purchased directly from our online store.