INQ Midterm Video Project

“Show Off Some SCSU School Spirit”

Your midterm video project assignment is to create a short video (5-6 minutes long) that showcases some positive aspect of Southern in a fun and lively way. The projects are vehicles to both express school spirit as well as inform viewers about what makes Southern a good school to attend.

Brainstorming

What makes Southern special? Why do students choose to attend school here? What is the draw? Once here, what does SCSU have to offer? What do students participate in and create in order to make college at SCSU a remarkable experience for themselves and others? What do first-year students think? What about upperclass students? What about the faculty and staff of SCSU?

Think about how to answer the above questions and how many different avenues/perspectives you might explore in answering it. Some preliminary ideas might include…

1. the academic side: majors, departments, professors, the FYE program, the peer mentor program…

2. the social side: the students themselves or makeup of the student body, dorm life, clubs and organizations, activities like the Day of Service, New Student Orientation…

3. the athletics: varsity sports, intramurals, the culture of student athletes…

4. the arts: the theater groups, choral groups, bands or other musical ensembles, the Lyman Center, visual arts…

5. the location: city of New Haven, an hour and a half from NYC, medium-sized campus community…

6. other Southern specialties…

Narrowing Down a Topic

Your video will only be 5-6 minutes long, so you will not be able to cover all of these topics. Instead, you will need to focus on one topic only so you can go in-depth and be informative. For example, you can make a whole video about the SCSU Day of Service or about Greek Life or about the Nursing Major or about the First Year Experience Program or about the Women's Soccer Team, but maybe not one video about all of the varsity sports or about all of the majors in the School of Education because that would be too much. If you choose a topic that is too broad, you will struggle with incorporating all of the requirements and organizing the information.

Exploring Your Topic

Once you choose a topic and get it approved by me, begin gathering as much research as you can, both online and in person. Start by visiting the SCSU website for information, then go to the appropriate places on campus, talk to people, pick up flyers and other promotional materials, take photos or video and/or find photos or video you can use.

As part of your research, you are required to interview at least 5 students (both first-year and upperclass students) and at least 2 faculty or staff members. You can take in-person video or audio interviews, hand-write them, conduct phone interviews, or even use email. In the final draft of your project, you need to use clips or quotes from at least 3 student interviews and at least 1 faculty or staff member interview.

Creating Your Video

This project requires you to create a short video, not a set of PowerPoint slides. It is not a presentation project; your video needs to stand alone and run on its own. It is possible to create such a digital video project using PowerPoint, but it is much easier and more professional if done in iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or other video creation software. In past experience, iMovie has provided very good results and is available in any Mac Lab on campus. Windows Movie Maker has worked well for students too, but it can sometimes be harder to navigate, depending on your experience level.

If you have never used a program like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker before, budget plenty of time to allow yourself to learn how to use it, even before you start to make the video. Watch tutorials, play around with the program, make a sample video just to acquaint yourself with the process. Also allow enough time for you to make mistakes and fix them.

The project should have a clear beginning, middle, and end that moves through the following elements:

1) framing the question and providing some context for the project,
2) exploring answers to your question from multiple perspectives,
3) providing some closure from your perspective, some “so what?” or “what have we learned?” to leave the viewer with at the end of the video.

Just like in blogging, be creative! Use music, photos, skits, a storyline, humor, etc. to make the video engaging and entertaining. Don't just lecture us and don't make us read a textbook! Also, be sure that everything is slow enough to be watchable and readable. Make sure you include an original title and out your name on it as well.

Other Details

The final video should be 5-6 minutes long and needs to be uploaded to your blog; it can be first uploaded to Youtube, Vimeo, or some other video sharing site and linked to on your blog. Be sure to make it available for public viewing and test out that it works. Also, include a works cited listing all of the people you interviewed and their titles, if appropriate.

The final draft of the video is due posted to your blogs by midnight on Thursday, Oct 24.

A first draft is due posted on your blog by midnight on Monday, Oct 14.

Three possible topics are due to me (handed in to me in class) next Thursday, Oct 3. By Friday, Oct 4, I will select one of your three topics and give you approval to create your video around that topic. Find a unique angle so all of the videos are not exactly alike!

Bonus

Here is a video created by one of my INQ students last Fall. Hers is a problem/solution assignment, a different topic from your assignment -- but you can watch this to see an example of what your final video project might look like: #CommuterProbs