SART 66/68 – Architecture II

Course: Studio Art 66/68: Architecture II
Instructor: Prof. Jack Wilson
Assignment: Architectual Space in Digital Media

The experience of architecture is spatial and it is also temporal. The purpose of this assignment is to encourage students to explore and analyze existing buildings and places on the Dartmouth campus from the perspective of their own experience in a spatial, aesthetic and temporal sense and to investigate the history and character of a particular building or place. The work to complete the assignment will consist of research as well as video production.
Students will work in teams of two determined by the instructor.

Each team will select three buildings or places from the following list in order of priority of your preference:

  • Dartmouth Row
  • Hopkins Center
  • Hood Museum
  • Collis Center
  • Robinson Hall
  • Baker/Berry
  • Rauner Library at Webster Hall
  • Alumni Gymnasium/Memorial Field
  • Fairchild Science Center
  • Leverone Field House
  • College Park/Bartlett Tower/the Bema

The instructor will assign each team to a building or place from their list of selections.

The class will attend an orientation session with Jay Satterfield, Dartmouth’s Special Collections Librarian, to learn about research access to the Rauner Special Collections Library. This archive will serve as a primary resource in researching the building or place assigned.

The class will also attend digital video tutorial sessions in the Starr Instructional Center at Berry Library. Teams will complete an edited digital video recording of approximately 8-10 minutes in length. Each team is to research and explore the experience of that building or place using historical analysis as well as contemporary visual experience through the medium of digital video. Students will use iMovie as an editing program for this exercise. Camcorders, editing stations and portable hard drives are available for use through coordination with the Jones Media Center. The Instructor will arrange to make DV tapes available from Jones for the taping and storage of projects. Final projects will be burned onto DVD’s.

SOCY.001: Intro to Sociology

Course: Introduction to Sociology
Instructor: Joshua Kim and Susan Simon
Assignment: Sociological Mashup (Team Project)  (25 Percent of Final Grade)

Throughout the term your team will be working on a sociological mashup.  Your mashup will be a short (5 to 7 minute) video project that utilizes one or more pieces of the rich media (video) from our course curriculum.  Your mashup is designed to teach one of the main concepts we cover in our course (from the modules).  The goal of the mashup is to make the topic of the module interesting and exciting to a high school or college audience.  You will be posting your Mashups on YouTube, and then linking them to the Sociological Mashup Wiki in Blackboard.

Topics that your teams can choose to teach with your mashup include: The Sociological View and Culture and Socialization, Social Interaction, Groups and Social Structure,  Deviance and Social Control, Stratification in the United States and Global Inequality,  Inequality by Race and Ethnicity and Inequality and by Gender, Family and Religion, Social Institutions – Education, Government and the Economy, Population, Community, Health and the Environment, or  Social Movements, Social Change, and Technology

Source materials for your mashups include the videos that we watch in the course, PowerPoints from the curriculum (available for download in Blackboard) as well as other video and image material you fine.  Keep in mind that you job is to use the curriculum to teach the core concepts of the module you choose.  The idea is that we learn something best if we need to teach it, and your teams will be teaching these concepts using the mashup structure.

Each week we will devote our X-Hour time to your team working on their Mashups.  Training on video editing software, as well as the original media to mashup, will be provided.  We will also provided training on designing a mashup.   The videos you will be using as the main sources for your team Mashups are the ones we will be watching each week for our modules.  They include:

The Persuaders
Devil’s Playground
Sick Around the World
Declining by Degrees
The Lost Children of Rockdale County
Nova World in the Balance

Teams will be able to pull scenes from these videos, as well as supplement with other materials (such as images or videos you get from the Web) as well as provide a voice-over.

To see all video projects, visit the course YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/introsocdartmouth

Example of Final Project

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AAAS.045-GEOG.040 – Africa: Ecology and Development

Course: Africa: Ecology and Development
Instructor: Caroline Faria

From week 4 on, groups of 3-4 students will present short video ‘mash-ups’ to the class covering a key concept and case study of ecology and development in Africa. You may choose to cover a topic you have learned about through the class or a related topic of interest. These mash-ups can include visual and audio material produced originally by students and/or collected from a range of sources and edited together into 5-minute short films. The concepts and ideas presented in the videos should tie to key themes discussed and presented during the week in which the material is shown (with the exception of students presenting in week 4 and 5 who may choose to focus on topics covered in weeks 1-3 also). Students should begin their video with a brief (1-2 minute) discussion of how they chose their theme and what they would like students to think about as they view the film. The presentation will close with a Q and A session and a discussion of the key themes raised. We will review these as a class on Thursdays as a way to stimulate discussion, to learn about new case studies researched and to review key concepts of the class so far. You can find a grade guide used to assess these essays at the course blackboard site.

Example of a Final Project

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WGST 66-THEA 10: Hearing Voices Through Invisible Walls: The Art(s) of Facilitation

Course: Hearing Voices Through Invisible Walls: The Art(s) of Facilitation
Instructors: Ivy Schweitzer and Pati Hernandez

Video Project, 5-7 minute maximum, to be done in groups, shown to the Dartmouth Community, and assessed according to rubrics determined by the class (see below).  This project is one of two culminating group projects for the course, whose overall theme is “Hearing Voices through Invisible Walls.” During the term, we study the way various arts and artists facilitate voices of people who usually go unheard in our society. Five artists, each working in different media, specifically photography/videography, theater, dance (two), and journalism, visited our class and presented their own theories and methods of facilitating voices. They talked to students specifically about their video projects and the issues these projects raised for them. Each visitor helped the students address crucial issues about how and why one facilitates someone’s voice; we encouraged students to think specifically about what they found helpful in these artists’ presentations by requiring them to write short “Critical Reflections” on each artist’s visit, which we commented on and graded.

Our first visitor, Greg Sharrow, an ethnographer at the Vermont Folk Life Center in Middlebury, VT, helped the students navigate a central issue. Our first reading assignment, Paolo Freire’s indispensable philosophy of liberated education, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, stressed the importance of dialogue. Sharrow stressed the importance of the involvement of the facilitator and the necessity of “deep hanging out” to equalize power inequalities between the interviewer (who has the camera and the desire to facilitate) and the interviewee (who faces the camera and may not want to have his/her voice facilitated).  Thus, early on students got the idea that only one person could/should facilitate/interview. Greg uncovered a conflict in the class between those who wanted to do the projects in a group and those who wanted to be the solo interviewer. At the end of the class, the members elected to embrace both, and some students did, indeed, choose to work by themselves (though we assigned helpers to these students because edited solo is so time-consuming).

The goal of this project is for each group to produce a short video that facilitates the voice of someone in the Dartmouth community whom the members of the group feel is behind an “invisible wall.” The point is to use video technology and the art of video in the service of voice. Thus, the emphasis is on facilitation and not on the technical production of the videos. The subject of this video project will be determined by students’ specific interests and in consultation with the professors. In approaching their subject, we encouraged students to apply the ideas and methods described by our visiting artists, in the texts we have read and discussed in class, and in the resources on the Blackboard site provided by Susan Simon. This assignment is 20%  of the final grade.

First, we required students to hand in a “pitch” to be discussed by the class. A few weeks later, we required students to submit a Video Project Treatment, a form that includes a short description of what they will do, what materials they will include, and what point they are trying to make, what roles everyone in the group will fill. We also asked them to include a short annotated bibliography (minimum of three sources, which can be drawn from the class readings and viewings), 1-2 pages. 5% of final grade.

Rubrics for student assessment of Video Projects: These rubrics were determined by members of the class through a discussion in class that took about 45 minutes. This discussion, although initially frustrating, was extremely helpful because it clarified the aspects of the project everyone thought was the most important––and that was “facilitation,” rather than technical aspects. Although students were, on the whole, leery about assessing each other’s work, even in groups, we felt the determining of rubrics helped them to clarify what was most important to them and to the class.

THEA 10/WGST 59 “Hearing Voices Through Invisible Walls: The Art(s) of Facilitation”

VIDEO PROJECT ASSESSMENTS

Please fill out as a group, one for each video not your own. This will be shown to the group that made the video, and we will use it to assign a grade for the groups on the video projects.

Name of Video:
Name of Students:

I. Facilitation- (40%)  100pts.                         ________________   x4   _____________
– mutual engagement
– comfort/space
– theory integration (praxis)

II. Organization (30%) 100 pts.                         _______________  x3 _______________
– focus
– goals

III. Overall Effect (20%) 100 pts.                         _______________ X2 ________________
– risk taking/daring
– creativity

IV. Production (10%) 100 pts.                        _______________ x1_________________
– citation
– transitions

TOTAL                                                               _______________

Scale:
A=100-95 (97.5)
A-= 94-90 (92.5)
B+=89-87 (88.5)
B =86-84 (85.5)
B-= 83=80 (82)
C+=79-77 (78.5)
C = 76-74 (75.5)
C-=73-70 (72)
D =69-6- (65)

Example of Final Video Project

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Native Cultural Production: (Re)Mapping Race, Gender, and Nation

Course: Native Cultural Production: (Re)Mapping Race, Gender, and Nation
Instructor: Prof. Mishuana Goeman
Assignment: Multi-media Map Presentation

Student groups will present 5-minute multi-media mapping project based on the readings and their interests. The presentation will consist of conceptualizing a map or creation of space that might exist between two communities discussed in our readings or with an individual community of your choosing with approval of the instructor. The size of the class will depend on the group size, but it will be between 3-4 people.
The idea is to promote a thoughtful exploration of how we narrate space, account for a “layered geography,” and examine the culturally specific tools that are part of cartographic consciousness. We will complete our project on a step-by-step frame and if the steps are followed on time, the project will not consume your finals period. This course will require the use of the x-hour period that will be devoted to the project and learning the skill of camera handling, filming, film editing, and putting together a video project. Also you will be responsible for signing out the cameras. This does mean you are agreeing to pay for damage and loss. The librarian assures me, however, that students have taken this responsibility well and that no incidences as of yet have occurred! I will have classroom cameras reserved for the week seven. Slots fill up fast for the cameras so if you need them, sign up in advance. If you do need to miss an x-hr, it will be your responsibility to set up a training time with the librarians in order to use the equipment. These training sessions are important, but they do have times on Tuesday night that require signing up. Your group does have the option of not doing a film project, but you do need to talk to me with a plan of what you would like to do in its place.

Portfolio:
Portfolios will be important for the class as they will let me know how you are thinking about the readings and how this ties into your conceptualization of the project. The journal entry is to reflect on how the readings and theoretical approaches become part of the process of the creative production. Each entry will include a thought-provoking question to pose for class discussion. It may even be a question that helps your group with a particular issue relating to your project. You should purchase a binder and use this to organize your written entries and film material, available on blackboard. The items are to help you not get behind on the project and have to rush at the end. Remember it takes four times as long to edit as it does to film. Therefore the items below are used to help you carefully plan your shots, filming, and content before you begin. In the end you will have a ten-week reflection on this process. The materials in the portfolio are items often used in the film industry.

    Portfolio Items:

  • Weekly Journal reflection on the reading and Your question
  • Project Idea
  • Video Treatment
  • Story Boards
  • Project Schedule
  • Shot list or Footage Log
  • Peer Evaluation of Group

Government 83

Course: Government 83 – Political Communications
Instructor: Prof. Deb Brooks
Assignment: Communicating Politics: A Dartmouth Classroom Simulation

The start of the simulation involved a detailed campaign communications strategy memo which was jointly developed and written by the team.
Each media team was responsible for producing 4 campaign advertisements, along with appropriate press releases for their candidate. The first 3 ads were each 30 or 60-second radio ad and/or direct mail, and had to include a specific strategy for targeting a particular group over voters given hypothetical budget constraints.
Each individual within a team was assigned to take ownership for one of the first three ads, with the final ad produced collectively by the team. Each student wrote a paper on their “owned” ad, describing their strategy for the creation of the ad in light to related readings from the course.
View the Final Projects

WGST 51 / COLT 39: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall


Course: WGST 51/COLT 39 – Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Instructor: Nancy Canepa

The Basics.
For your major project in this course you will be making a video together with 2 other students (i.e., groups of 3). Group selection is up to you; given the nature of the project, choose people whom you not only get along with, but who share your ideas on interesting directions in which to expand your experiences with fairy tales. You’ll make your videos using iMovie, and with the extensive help of the Jones Media Center (see syllabus for various instructional and tutorial sessions). Each video should be 5-7 minutes (please: no LONGER than 7 minutes!).

How to start thinking about it.
In your video you’ll be adapting or relating a fairy-tale type, paradigm, or set of motifs that you have encountered in the course to your own personal experience or to some aspect of modern life. The video may take a number of forms: theatrical/ cinematographic dramatization of a fairy tale (in whatever temporal and spatial dimension you like); a dramatized telling (incorporating visual material); a musical rendition (e.g., MTV-type video); a dramatized interview with one or more characters from a tale; a narration in images, etc. etc.! I’m open to and interested in other ideas, of course, but make sure to share them with me before you embark on the project.

How to frame your fairytale.
Approaches to “retelling” the tale or reconfiguring the motifs you choose may involve reversals of fairy-tale patterns or character types we have seen; sequels or prequels to familiar tale types; shifts in narration (e.g., from an objective 3rd-person narrator to a 1st-person narrator [one of the characters of the tale], or to an unreliable 3rd-person narrator); reframing the tale (e.g., changing its temporal and/or spatial coordinates); reinterpreting or zooming in on single episodes, elements, or characters of a tale.

The nitty gritty.
Throughout the process I will be distributing handouts to help you with the various phases of the project. To give you an idea of this process, these are the main steps:

  1. Choose your group, and brainstorm about possible ideas for your video.
  2. Create a proposal, and complete the treatment plan. (I’ll give you a form to help you.) Hand in a narrative summary of proposal/treatment (500 words).
  3. Showcase your ideas in a “pitch session” in which each group will have 5 minutes to present their proposal and then receive feedback from the rest of the class.
  4. Participate in 2 Imovie tutorials at Jones Media Center (during class hours), in which you’ll learn video-making techniques.
  5. Participate in 1 30-minute session in JMC before your group checks out a video camera.
  6. Put together a shot list (storyboard). This is optional. (Template provided.)
  7. Once footage is shot, participate in 1 or 2 editing sessions (depending on need) at JMC, with RWIT tutor.
  8. Complete video!
  9. Put together, as a class, pertinent criteria for evaluating the videos.
  10. Participate in a special showing of your videos.
  11. Write and hand in evaluations (both formal, based on class criteria, and less formal) (500 words).

Example of a Final Project

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Spanish 61



Course: Spanish 61 – Spanish Literature and Film: Filmic and Literary Modulations in Contemporary Spain

Instructor: Prof. Txetxu Aguado

I am sure my students will derive their project from the main topics covered in this course. These are: The Spanish Civil War (violence and its representation), tourism and emigration (travels, stereotypes about the other and their representations), Postmodernity (Pedro AlmodÛvar and his visual ideas about sexuality, homosexuality, traditional values, religion, etc.) and Identity and Terrorism (representation of the other/of difference) within a national culture.

I am also showing my students clips from other movies (classical movies besides the ones they are required to watch for this course) to make them aware and give them ideas about how to translate feelings, ideas, situations… into images. For example, one day we will watch the last scene from The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Wells 1948) with the purpose of showing them how the director portrayed the split personalities of the woman character in the movie.

Before having the iMovie workshop, I will give my students time to think about their projects so that hopefully the will have a draft-script by that time. I want them to take a scene from one of the movies or from one of the novels and to figure out how to make it into images of their own. Don’t worry, I will tone and narrow down their projects and first ideas. Let me give an example. In one of the movies, there is a scene where the fascist police comes to arrest a republican fighter. He is able to escape before the police arrives. The whole movie, its ideas and notions, it position, the point it is trying to make, is contained in the dialogue and images of this approximately 2 minute sequence. I am expecting something similar from my students.
Their group project will not exceed 5 minutes.

The students really enjoyed the project and they only wrote positive comments about it in their evaluations. All of them remarked that it has been a wonderful experience. From my point of view, I am convinced that through this hands-on activity they have become more aware of the ways images construct meaning and more sophisticated in analyzing a film.

Chinese 3

Course: Chinese 3
Instructor: Justin Rudelson
Assignment: simple sketch in Chinese

Each group of five students will be writing and performing a skit based on the vocabulary, scenarios and grammar structures of our text. The skits are to be filmed in a linear progression so that editing will not be extensive. I would like to make this as simple and even crude as possible, even if it means doing only one rehearsed cut per scene. In the past, these have been performed in class live, taped and then placed on the server. We would like to have the students perform and tape the skits themselves in appropriate locations.