I have been teaching THEA 102 in various iterations at least once a year for almost 15 years and over those years, I have tried a variety of final projects. These include: designing the storm for King Lear; designing the Skriker poem for Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker; board games and zines and so on. These were all decent final assessments, but there was never a good through-line for the class entire and I usually got evals bemoaning the amount of work.
One of the main linchpins for the class are the music videos – we watch at least one music video per class and use them as a jumping off point for the topic of the day. At the end of last semester, it hit me – why not have the students film their own collaborative music video? That way all the smaller projects/essays/assignments can be pointed towards this final project!
That’s where the Digital Fellows comes in. I was concerned about accessibility for the students for this project; the Adobe Suite is way out of price for most students and I didn’t want to assume that they have access to iMovie or other programs like this. With the help of Academic Technologies, they were able to provide access to We Movie and someone on staff who could help students with using the program. This took a lot of pressure off of me (I didn’t have to learn a new program or record a demo) and I believe it took some pressure off of the students (knowing that someone on campus could help them!)
I want to thank Academic Technologies and Molly Lucareli for their amazing assistance. Having watched the videos, the students did an amazing job on them and I am really proud of what our collaboration has created. I am looking forward to continuing this project in future classes.
