Liquid Landscapes: Design, Networks, and Stories

David Phillips, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities (co-taught with Associate Professor of English, Judith Madera)

Question

What’s your Recipe for this course that you co-taught with Associate Professor of English, Judith Madera?

Answer

The following steps detail how to turn a traditional community-based research assignment into a digital video narrative storytelling assignment.

• Collect first person narratives—film clips, interviews, news articles,
• Collect supplementary material relevant to the context: in this case, maps, community plans, and photographs of devastation caused by extreme storms.
• Set up a small group collaborative team to determine the content of the story and how they want to present it.  A storyboard can be a great way to do this!
• Think about how to best represent the perspective of the person whose story you’re telling.
• Look at best practices—other examples of multimedia storytelling.
• Do run-throughs of a ‘rough cut’ in your group, and build in feedback from everyone for improving.
• Present and get feedback from the class!

 

Project Description

Develop a course website that is topic focused, acts as a showcase, and is an archive for both class projects and individual essays.  Train students how to effectively use Adobe Spark.

An important piece of the students’ work was the interrogation of questions of human relationships with the environment and how communities do restorative work in re-integrating environment in their lives.

Purpose

The purpose of the website was (a) to demonstrate the importance of archival work by showcasing a website that is populated exclusively with student generated content, including essays, multimedia projects, and presentations, and (b) to highlight the value of archival work as a resource for research and analysis.

Learning Goals

• Learn to do storytelling through multimedia.
• Provide multi-modal sources to weave together a story.
• Engage in collaborative work in presentation using these new formats.
• Think differently about what makes for an effective presentation.
• Creative archival material that is accessible.
• Communicate important messages with abbreviated presentation formats.

Role of Academic Technology

The Adobe Spark platform was critical to facilitating the exercises we engaged in.  Students were able to express themselves, to be creative in bringing different elements into the presentation, including photos, diagrams, film clips, audio clips, and other graphic content.

Technology

Adobe Spark

Target Skills

• Adobe Spark multimedia presentations
• Storytelling through multimedia, combining interviews, quotes, photo-essays, maps, and other relevant sources

Outcomes & Perspectives

Showcase

LIQUID LANDSCAPES: DESIGN, NETWORKS, AND STORIES

Student’s Perspective

Instructor’s Perspective

“I really loved how easy it was for students to learn the Adobe Spark software.  Within a half-hour, they were up and running.”

– David Phillips

Assessment

• It always helps to have students do either a collaborative or an individual reflection on both the process involved in the assignment and the outcomes.
• I encourage, as a follow up to multimedia presentations, for the presenters to prepare questions for the class.
• I also encourage the class to be fully engaged, and to take notes so they can be prepared to ask the presenters questions as well.