multimedia scholarship

ok, i really enjoyed this session. i had a few (well, alot of) qualms about scalability, but will try to keep a lid on these while looking at the messages behind it. there were also lots of very big words and worthy ideas which (not for the first time) resulted in me feeling really really stupid. but i'll try to keep a lid on this, etc, etc, etc.

the session looked at a multimedia scholarship course. it's an add-on, 2 credit (!) course open to students from any discipline or level, and the intention is to show students how to use cinematic imagery and techniques effectively to convey message. the speakers were at pains to point out that it isn't a film-making course - instead it's about visual textual imagery (or something) and visual theory. so the aim is to let students explore new techniques, help them find a topic that is relevant to their own field of study, and to present it in an engaging way. the course is also designed to be participatory - to encourage students to recognise their responsibilities in joining in scholarly conversations, and to present complex ideas in ways that will hook non-experts in and allow them to explore further. it's not about simplifying the content or the message, but about layering it so that people can engage with succinct ideas to begin with.

from what i can gather, the stimulus for the course is a film about iraqi doctors (itself the product of an earlier project at the university) and some of the difficulties they face. students view this, explore the things that strike them about it, or that they can relate to, and then take this idea further. so, for example, a journalism student looked at some of the parallels between the landscape in the film and his own experiences growing up in a very remote part of california, and used this to explore areas of commonality. another student (and i'm taking a wild guess that she was studying political science) picked up on the very damaging effects of sanctions, and used this to explore the unintended consequences due to unavailability of vital medical equipment. and so on.

why were they doing this? well, one of the speakers used the lovely phrase that "documentary is the new black" :) there was very clearly a strong social responsibility message running through the course, and part of the course was examining the strengths of certain technologies for getting ideas out into the world (eg, when would you present something in a wiki vs promoting it via a blog?) and about initiating and shaping conversations out in the real world [as an aside, there's been quite a lot of buzz around real-world vs acadaemia in almost all the sessions here]. they did help students initiate conversations within established networks or through existing contacts - bringing the external voice into the work seemed to enhance students' views of the value they were bringing through their own work.

there was a lot of focus on exploring re-use and mashups using existing sites and resources such as remix america as a starting point and as a stimulus. they also made use of kaltura and reelsurfer for developing the projects - though it was also about giving students the confidence to use new and emerging tools as they appeared (michael wesch made an interesting point in his keynote earlier that things are changing so fast that nobody can really be classed as a digital native - we're all learning together).

they showed a couple of examples of the final products and showed how the image-based artefacts linked very closely with text-based materials too - so you end up with a very rounded product. i did like the idea of having a common stimulus (ie, the film) and then encouraging students to find their own angle; and developing confidence with new techniques and/or tools as part of the process of creating something concrete.

the scalability thing really does bother me though. they were dealing with very small numbers (13 in the last cohort) and meeting for 2 hours a week. some students reported spending 45 hours of self-managed time developing the ideas and products - which for a 2 credit module seems insane, but it was voluntary so they were obviously getting a lot out of it. there must be less intensive ways of doing the same thing - and i get the impression that the next phase of their work will involve looking at how they could roll the course out in different ways.

(2 of the slightly intimidating words they used were punctum and studium - which got me thinking that an uxbridge dictionary definition of punctum could be a rebellious stomach)