The learning objectives of the Digital Media Production track will allow faculty to:

• Produce digital video and design learning experiences that incorporate media production tools and blended learning resources to promote student reflection, creativity and information technology fluency.
• Create a digital story and integrate a new media narrative assignment that incorporates audio, image and video editing.
• Advocate for student media literacy and communicate the ethical use of digital media, including respect for copyright and Creative Commons licensing.

The goal of the digital media production track is to provide you with hands-on experience and access to tools and support that enable you establish a public web space, produce a digital video interview and create a digital story.  As we engage in discussions, and group and individual projects, these experiences will also help inform our conversations about digital media pedagogy (instructional design, evaluation, academic resources), ethical use of media and how best to integrate these types of assignments in the classroom.  Dr. Marcia Whitehead, Humanities Librarian, will also be joining us – fully participating and adding valuable insight that help faculty connect digital media projects to library resources and information literacy course goals.  There will be 3 projects:

1) You will establish a WordPress blog of your own.  You will also contribute to the group’s online portfolio (this site) that will contain the digital media you produce throughout the week.

2) You will produce a 2 minute interview that will require you to reflect, stage, film, ask, respond, edit and publish video to the web.

The theme of this interview should be framed around your teaching philosophy, your research interests and/or your thoughts about teaching digital natives. Relating to the theme, please think of 4 questions that you would like your faculty partner to ask of you.  You responses will be recorded and you will edit an interview that includes jump cuts, response shots and titles.  This talking head activity is designed to provide you with an idea of what’s involved when producing documentaries and/or self-recorded lectures for blended teaching and learning.  Project expectations will be further explained on May 14th.

3) You will also create a 3 minute digital story from a written narrative.

The content of your narrative is open-ended and can be about anything you desire. Typically, faculty write stories about their experience teaching a specific course or how they overcame a specific challenge or barrier in their career.  This narrative should be no more than 350 words and must be written by May 16th.  You will then record this as an audio file and identify images that illustrate and amplify your narrative. You will need between 8 and 16 images – please start acquiring them now.  You can search for photos online or you can scan them in our Technology Learning Center prior to Faculty Academy.  This new media narrative activity will allow you to experience the research, technology, visual, critical thinking, analytical and project management skills necessary for producing multimedia. Project expectations will be further explained on May 15th.

Concluding each session on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, you will be encouraged to write a brief post in your WordPress blog or record a 90 second video in Youtube that reflects on your day’s experience. This will be considered your work-at-home. Reflective questions include: What new learning was discovered? What was challenging about the tools or process I used? How might these tools this influence my teaching practice? What projects could I integrate in my course to help foster information, digital and media literacy in students?

You will learn to use Audacity and iMovie to produce your digital media. Your digital video interview and digital story will be uploaded to Youtube and embedded on your WordPress blog. Your blog will also include your reflections (text or video posts). On Friday, you will give a 10 minute presentation that highlights your blog, interview and digital story to all of the Faculty Academy participants and describe the lessons learned, challenges observed, and your future ideas for digital media project integration.

Recommended Readings & Videos
Tips and Techniques for Video Interviews, Interview Journalists’ Network, 2012
Case study: Dr. Malcolm Hill, Associate Dean, Digital Storytelling in a First Year Seminar
Digital Storytelling Cookbook, Joe Lambert, 2010
Teach Yourself Visually: Digital Video, 2nd Edition (Chapters 3, 4, 8), Lonzell Watson, 2010