Rideout Project – Kirk and Saeed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhasWStC_pU
Flexible learning funding helped this project get created for a flipped classroom course. One takeaway lesson was the importance of having a dedicated instructional designer on the project, to work on finessing the scripts and making them more concise. Zac suggested creating tighter deadlines for scripts, as it helps encourage the person writing the script to focus on the most important elements and information.
Distribution – Jamil
http://www.ubc.ca/stories/2015-winter/synapse-of-discovery.html
Jamil suggests that it is easier for people to consume media in smaller pieces, using the example of the brain research pieces that were created and disseminated through social media platforms in small pieces, with links and a call to action to watch the extended interview. These are conversational pieces intended to make the challenging world of brain research accessible and focus on the human impact behind the research. Jamil’s team took a similar approach to the Wade Davis pieces that were distributed in one minute chunks through social media venues as “trailers” with links to the longer videos.
Jamil emphasized the importance of timing of releasing videos for example time of day or day of the week to ensure highest video viewership. This plan should be created in pre-production as a goal for each piece.
Something else that was mentioned was to curate content specifically for certain platforms, Jamil used the example of removing fade in/out and tail slides from Facebook videos because videos start when scrolling and provide their own end slide. If other digital media practitioners want their content on the larger UBC channels that is done through the department communications team of each department (e.g. IT communications team for UBC Studios).
Learning Tech Rovers – Sharon
The Learning Tech Rovers are a CTLT initiative, they are students who are hired by a faculty (one per 50 FTEs) to assist faculty in any media or web needs from connect to video creation. The appeal of the tech rovers is that the student goes to the comfort of the faculty member’s office and can work with them through an issue. Each tech rover is given CTLT training but is generally provided on the job training as well. Sharon found that her department poured a lot of time into training their first tech rover, but from there they were able to provide some overlap time between new and existing students so that the existing tech rover could provide training. Something that Sharon’s team has found increasingly important is to really outline the duties of a tech rover and to tailor the training to the department’s specific needs. Tasks can be varied and include things such as verifying MOOC transcriptions and creating YouTube channels for classes. One issue that is still being worked through is the high turnaround for tech rovers who are hired in four month blocks. It is challenging for the tech rovers to build a relationship with faculty and leave after a relatively short time period.
Soils – Saeed
http://www.soilx.ca/?login
What Saeed really enjoyed about this project was for the opportunity for our team members to collaborate on motion graphics, graphics and live action video production. The website is publicly accessible and intended for multiple institutions and the public to learn from the content. This project was a good opportunity to create accurate, but simplified content that is accessible for a wide audience while still having academic merit. This project was given permission to not follow the UBC brand guidelines as it is intended to be more outward facing, this process was made easier by moving it to the LFS server.
Possible future topics: exceptions from UBC look and feel
Tool Jamboree – Zac – Videoscribe
https://slack.com/
Zac’s video on basic hospital safety was made over the course of a day to introduce students to basic hospital safety protocols. This was required by work safe BC and labeled as an urgent project. Zac was able to use video scribe to quickly create a product with a good look and feel to convey his project in an interesting and upbeat way.
Discussion venues – for keeping in touch between meetings we would like to use Slack or the dm-cop.sites.olt.ubc.ca