Small College in Iowa Offers Big Digital
Media Experience
In order to offer a more comprehensive degree in Communication Studies and greater job opportunities for its graduates, Iowa-based Dordt College recently expanded its Communications department to include a Digital Media Production component. A small Christian college located an hour from Sioux City, Dordt College offers a variety of
academic programs to about 1,300 students each year. In addition to providing a Christian education, the four-year college prides itself on preparing its students for careers in their chosen fields.
Mark Volkers, coordinator for the Digital Media Production program, joined the faculty at Dordt in 2005 to help get the Digital Media Production program up and running. Volkers, who has an extensive background in photojournalism and documentary filmmaking, had been editing on Avid systems since 1996 and knew that they are used in professional settings worldwide, so he advocated for using the
industry-standard systems in the college’s new Digital Media Production lab. “By building our new lab around Avid software, we ensure that, when our students graduate, they will leave here with truly marketable production skills,” he explains. The cost-effective pricing of Avid systems for the academic community, including Avid Xpress Pro Academic and Media Composer Academic solutions, provided added incentive.
“By building our new lab on Avid software, we ensure that, when our students graduate, they will leave here with truly marketable production skills.” - Mark Volkers, Instructor and Coordinator, Digital Media Production, Dordt College
Equipping the Learning Environment
The staff at Dordt was careful to design its new Digital Media Production lab to offer students a flexible and professional learning environment that would help them gain the job skills needed to be competitive upon
graduation. With those requirements in mind, they set up a lab with Windows-based computers, all running Avid Xpress Pro software with Avid color-coded keyboards and dual monitors. Each of the workstations is connected to an Avid Unity LANshare system with 4 TB of shared storage.
One of the lab’s interesting design features is the location and placement of the instructor’s computer. By placing the instructor’s computer on a podium with monitors connected to a ceiling-mounted projector that projects onto a 14-foot screen, the students are able to watch the instructor working on an Avid timeline in real time and mimic the movements at their own editing stations.
In addition to the editing stations running Avid Xpress Pro software in the lab, Volkers has his own separate studio with Avid Xpress Studio
software running on an HP xw8200 workstation with Avid Mojo
hardware. The integrated Avid Xpress Studio setup offers an all-in-one solution for video and audio editing, 3D animation, visual effects, and DVD authoring in one convenient package capable of handling both SD and HD projects. Volkers uses this system to access and review student projects that are stored centrally on the Avid Unity LANshare setup. “The [Avid] Mojo is great for real-time rendering and output to the client
monitor. It also makes inputting of a variety of formats easier,” says Volkers.
He also uses the full-featured setup to handle editing work for corporate and non-profit clients. Some of the revenue generated by this work is used to fund new equipment for the program and other capital
purchases. While he is not working on any HD projects now, he plans to in the near future. “Having HD [capabilities in] the Avid Xpress Studio only makes sense,” he says about the high-def format, which is gaining wider acceptance at most educational institutions.
Because the Avid interface is uniform across the entire family of products, students can easily transfer their skills from one Avid editing system to another when they enter the workforce. Says Volkers,
“Because the Avid editing systems are built on a consistent architecture with the same interface, our students who have mastered Avid Xpress Pro software will easily be able to work with other Avid editing software such as Media Composer.” As a result, graduates can walk into any production company or post studio worldwide and be productive right away.
“In addition to the fact that the Avid system is stable, effective, proven, and reliable, it is also the best system for organizing massive amounts of media.” - Mark Volkers, Instructor and Coordinator, Digital Media
Production, Dordt College
Practical Education
All of the editing stations in Volkers’s studio and the media lab are connected via Ethernet to the lab’s Avid Unity LANshare shared-storage solution. According to Volkers, the Avid Unity LANshare system plays a vital role in his teaching and the students’ learning. From the students’ perspective, the Avid Unity LANshare system enables a level of creative cooperation that would not be possible otherwise. Explains Volkers, “Instead of each student being tied to a single hard drive and
workstation, their work is much more fluid and collaborative.”
An advantage of using the Avid Unity LANshare system is that students can save time by capturing material once into a shared workspace. Audio and other multi-use items, for example, can be saved in a shared-media library. Students can bring the centrally stored material directly into their projects from the LANshare system at any time, utilizing the system’s sophisticated media-management capabilities. Says Volkers, “In addition to the fact that the Avid system is stable, effective, proven, and reliable, it is also the best system for organizing massive amounts of media. For the students, this means that even finding media is easier than with other nonlinear setups.”
Students work on semester-long projects in groups of four, with two students at each editing station. So, while one pair of students works on an intro or audio, for example, the other pair can create titles and credits. Each team gets 200 gigabytes of drive space. However, if they fill that up, Volkers can easily add another workspace on the LANshare system or reallocate storage capacity, as required.
At the end of the semester, when all the projects are done and the students have left class, Volkers simply deletes those workspaces on the LANshare system and sets up new ones for the incoming group.
Sharing for Better Teaching
Volkers interrupted his own doctoral work in communication at Wayne State University in Detroit to come to teach at Dordt College. These days, rather than attending seminars as a student, Volkers teaches Intro to Film and Video Production, Intro to Mass Media, Advanced Film and Video Production, Advanced Video Editing, Documentary Filmmaking, and Speech and Listening.
Says Volkers, “I am a strong believer in learning by doing. I could talk about editing all semester, but the students won’t really learn until they get right in and do it.” By taking advantage of the media and project sharing capabilities of the Avid Unity LANshare system, Volkers is able to give his students a good deal of learning freedom while still being available to offer assistance when needed.
“From a pedagogical point of view, the LANshare [system] opens up exciting possibilities. Students work on projects alone or in teams, and I am able to pull up their timelines in my studio. Using locators on the timeline, I can critique and assist as they work,” he explains.
Volkers introduces his students to the digital nonlinear editing
technology using Avid Xpress Pro software during the Introduction to Film and Video Production course. After spending a few weeks learning how to shoot on the lab’s Panasonic DVX100B cameras, the students must take a certification exam to ensure their proficiency with the cameras. Once they have passed their exam, students move right into editing.
The Future is Bright
Volkers points out that this program is still in the development stages. “There are courses being taught, but the program is currently being offered to students only as an ‘emphasis’ within the Communications Department,” he says. It is Volkers’s hope and the college’s plan that, by the beginning of the next academic year, students at Dordt will be able to register for a major in Digital Media Production.
The administration feels that the skills required to communicate effectively though film and video will be crucial for graduates from the Communication Studies program, and they expect this new area of study, built around Avid’s industry-standard technology, to be a real draw for future students. They know that, when the new major comes online in September 2007, a lot of current Dordt students will be pleased
-especially those still on the waiting list to get into Volkers’s Introduction to Film and Video Production class.
As the program grows, its educational goals will remain constant: to teach students how to use video-based media as part of a well-rounded communications program. Volkers explains, “The biggest challenge for the entire Digital Media Program is helping students learn not just the technology - which buttons to push - but why they are doing it, what the impact of media is on society, and what difference they can make as Christians, as future filmmakers, and as leaders in media.”
* CREDIT: Courtesy of Dordt College
challenges
- Give students at a small college the skills and experience necessary to work in digital media production upon graduation.
- Expand the Communications program to add a digital media component that teaches students the communications differences related to video-based media.
solution:
- Build a state-of-the-art teaching lab and instructor’s studio centered on industry-standard Avid editing solutions, including Avid Xpress Pro software and the Avid Xpress Studio Complete solution. - Share projects and media among all editing workstations throughout the school using the Avid Unity LANshare shared-storage solution.
