We just wrapped up an incredible quarter of community scholarship in our required “Strategic Research and Business Practices” course (this class is co-taught by Dr. Malcolm Parks and me). I’d like to share the multimedia proposals that our student teams created for our clients. Probably our greatest challenge was doing business with the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Climate Change” program — especially since they’re based in Washington DC. The embedded video above, as well as the one below, is testimony to the diversity of thought that our professionally-minded students bring to the task-at-hand. They’re all worth watching, so I’ve also posted the links from our other teams’ client work (including Birdnote, The New Hive, the Woodland Park Zoo, and the Pacific Science Center).
We deliberately gave no guidance to our students on how to create these videos — indeed, many of them had never done anything of the kind before. Their only directive: 5-10 minutes, self-contained with enough production value to convey the essence of their proposal in a non-distracting way. And if an 8 year-old can make a YouTube video, so can they. They certainly can — and they did! Even better, we spared ourselves the drudgery of back-to-back Powerpoint presentations.
PACIFIC SCIENCE CENTER
THE NEW HIVE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYELraXo5RA&hd=1
WOODLAND PARK ZOO
BIRDNOTE
13 Comments
It is such a pleasure to be a part of this program and this class was fantastic. It was a thrill to work a local organization, to actually provide solutions to their communication obstacles. Best of all, I learned so much from my peers! I finished the class feeling more inspired than I have in years and I hope people do enjoy these presentations.
These presentations were so different, yet both totally hit the mark. Both were creative and realistic for the client. I love the Mommy blog idea, it completely makes sense and I could see moms utilizing, contributing, and building a community to better both children and our environment.
Thanks to all the clients (especially mine, Pacific Science Center), you gave us real world problems and treated us like professional consultants instead of students. The MCDM program is so successful in part because of our partnerships with people and organizations like you!
Like my peers, I love being a part of the MCDM program, and truly enjoyed watching the innovative and ambitious approaches taken by the various groups. Working with the EPA on Climate Change was equally rewarding and challenging, and I would bet the EPA was pleased to have received two distinguishly different, yet practical and cost-effective solutions to think about.
Whew!~ is it really over?! Hanson and Mac really threw down the gauntlet when they said there would be no slides in this self-contained presentation, which meant a few of us ‘newb’ iMovie novices had to quickly ramp up production skills! I guess there’s nothing like jumping into the fire and being able to run as fast as you can without being burned! I now feel comfortable using iMovie software, Jing, Camtasia and look forward to learning FCP next quarter (due to iMovie’s limitations!). It was pretty interesting, from a communications interaction perspective, how our team attempted several platforms to share content, first Media Space, then MS Skydrive, and then both, ultimately using old fashion and reliable email! Our team was in constant communication, similar to a 24 hr baton relay race of work production! Constant drive moving forward with a singular vision. It was the first for me to ever be pushed so hard by a team, I was worried about my own personal novice abilities, but they put blind faith in me which I had no option but to succeed. We decided from our first meeting to take the MCDM new slogan “Go Epic” and so we did! The end product resulted in a wonderful collaborative solution and presentation, which I hope shares our combined “voices”/talents (but channeled through Thor Tolo…anchorman news!). Thank you Team CIRRUS for the opportunity as you pushed hard (to the very last hr…thx u very much~!!lol) keeping the faith & striving for perfection when I didn’t feel I had it in me! ;)) May I collapse now? *thud*
Wow!!! I was speechless when I saw all the multimedia presentation. I was totally blown away by the quality of all the presentations that were on view. I came into this program knowing nothing about video editing or any of the tools that makes it work. Tools like iMovie, Jing, Camtasia and host of others that made our production successful. Thanks to this program and especially, our final presentation, I am conversant of those tools. I wish MCDM provided video editing class. That would be awesome.
Watching all the PSC presentations, you would be forgiven for thinking that all the three groups coordinated. The truth of the matter is, we did not coordinate but each of the groups suggested unique and implementable ideas for PSC. learning how teens communicate through various medium and strategizing ways to captivate them for the interest of science has been both rewarding and satisfying.
I equally enjoyed all the other videos in particular the NEW HIVE. The skills that were on display were simply fantastic. I learnt a lot from them and hope to use the acquired knowledge in the foreseeable future.
The MCDM has given us a unique opportunity. Instead of just studying a subject we get to apply what we have learned into real world applications. Hopefully some of the clients we worked with will be able to take something from our proposals. Even through the EPA was not an ideal candidate for some due to technical issues; I think they will be able to learn a lot from the proposals.
The quality of work produced this quarter was outstanding. Class interactions, both in class and online was very impressive. I learned a lot and I am very grateful to have the opportunity to have worked with you. I cannot wait to see what happens during the upcoming quarters.
Watching all of the videos again after the presentations brought an even greater appreciation for the quality of work this class put forth. I love seeing all of the unique angles people approached the challenges and used diverse strengths to create stellar proposals for real-world clients. I’ve learned so much from my peers and realize the true potential of what I can gain from this program.
Working with clients both near and far gives us yet another idea of the struggles of real life communications consultants. Sometimes we’ll have limited access to information or deal with a distance barrier. Hearing from each group and each client taught yet another valuable lesson. Thanks to MCDM for landing such incredible clients and upholding students to such high standards of professionalism and creativity. We all benefit from this hands-on learning.
After reviewing this post, I think my biggest takeaway from COM 529 – beyond the client interaction, beyond the research experience – will be a firsthand account of how new modes of media production empower people.
At my job, we so often note that our company’s business model is predicated on ideas like “the upload culture”, citing YouTube trends and the affordability of professional-grade technology.
But this wrap-up of the class really has really encapsulated this concept for me: the notion that anyone at any skill level can produce and self-publish engaging, quality work. It’s really satisfying to see the fruit of everyone’s labor gathered in one spot like this after witnessing the process unfold: client briefing, research, strategy, media production.
It’s one thing to “discuss” how a high school student with a FlipVideo camera can produce overnight what only five years ago it took a professional production team five weeks to create on a significant budget. It’s another thing to work among eight groups produce eight well-thought videos for real clients with limited guidelines over the span of an eight week grad course.
Again, congratulations to all on the impressive work. I look forward to working with many of you next semester in McPherson’s marketing class.
I’ve enjoyed hearing the many take aways and learnings that were gathered as some of us put away our PowerPoints and moved into the unknown (read: “Scary”) world of developing a presentation with multi-media tools. I for one had not done something like this before but I had gotten pretty darn proficient on PowerPoint. Although I did not do any of the hands on production of our presentation, I watched as our ideas took on a whole new life with visual representation, pacing, music and words. We were told that what mattered was not the quality of our presentations, but how we brought forth our ideas and how these ideas nailed our clients objectives. However, as those that sat through the presentations know, the quality of the presentations DID matter, as it was through this quality ideas were brought to life. It made me realize that I still have so much more to learn beyond PowerPoint, to use the new multi-media tools available to me. And most importantly, they aren’t really that scary. I know our team was incredibly nervous when we were writing the script as we just didn’t feel like it would gel. However, once the multi-media WOW factor took hold, our presentation did gel and we felt pretty proud of all of the hours, lack of sleep, weekend meetings and overall investment that went into our presentation. Thanks to Hanson and Mac for providing us with a unique opportunity to develop something we are proud of. By not putting this project in box, and leaving a lot of interpretation on how to approach our project, you forced us to think it through as a team, even when that can be quite painful, and simply figure it out…..which we did!
What I have learned from making (or trying to make videos) is that it is really, really difficult. It is clear that this class project really required everyone to learn a variety of new (and extremely useful) skills in a hurry. The project was very effective at pushing us past our self-perceived boundaries and comfort zones and really brought out the best in each person and in each team.
I’ll second what Lynn said about group collaboration and the collaboration tools that we’d like to use to make it more efficient and more effective. The current tools are not always easy to learn or to use. Add to that the variety of platforms in use and the diversity of the students in each group and there’s room for lots of friction and misunderstanding.
In the end, it is clear that each group managed to do what was necessary to conceptualize and produce a video that conveyed their message in high-fidelity form.
My hats are off to all of you — great work!
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