vogwurk + werdwurk
glimpsed: [] melbourne time

in the media studies program at rmit we're busy navel gazing to redefine what how and why we do what we do. the emphasis is slowly moving (well, it feels slow, it's been about 18 months of dogged lobbying to date) towards process based teaching with a dash of problem based learning with a healthy collection of projects to boot.

but it is hard to keep your eye on the ball around the numerous quotidian sorts of things that go on in the day to day of teaching in a university. not the admin nonsense just the institutional dash ideological assumptions that we bring to bear that keep things in their boxes.

this happens in production fields (we're one of the few media studies degrees in victoria that combines media theory with a robust vocational production stream in tv or radio) but also in things like cinema studies, literature and communication studies.

an example. our current first semester first year is made up of 4 subjects. one is a compulsory communication studies intro (mass media in australia), one is a production stream (so students have to have already decided if they're radio or tv dudes), one is their humanities major (so again they have to decide if their film theorists, lit theorists, historians, etc), and the other is sort of free choice but pretty much comes from a grab bag of generally humanities options.

now if we recognise that media is now more a soup than discrete channels, and so we add html to the mix, then it seems to me that thinking about 'cinema', 'radio', 'tv' and the like is just, well, boxes that don't work any more. so in its place we have 4 themes (which can be subjects or just themes that run across subjects, these days i'm so bloody process orientated i don't care that much about what shape it comes in) which are (again, names don't matter a whole lot at this stage) reading, sampling, joining, and publishing.

reading is about reading film, radio, music, tv, and words. an intro to how to think about these things as texts.

sampling is how to record stuff. and again, outside of boxes. so instead of recording 'radio' or 'video' it might be learning how to record 'interviews' which includes things like being on mike, etc.

joining is all about editing. sound, image, moving image, and probably words. it isn't about software, it isn't about tools, it's about learning what a good cut might be and why.

and publishing is learning how to write, how to get stuff onto cd, dvd, tape, paper, and the web.

in none of these things is it about software. it is about generic skills, any tool will do to learn about, for instance, editing. just like any tool (biro, pencil, felt tip marker) will pretty much do to learn how to write. the next part is then learning generic competencies in digital environments. which is still not specific bits of software, but the sorts of competencies that let's you realise that if you can select a word and copy it, then you can do just the same thing with video, audio, or an image, in any program that lets you choose these things. (i am so tired of students who have no idea that you can copy the video you've selected in any application of your choice because they have never been taught the basics of how to read a graphical user interface - a good interface always tells you what you can, and can't, do.) finally, and only then, do you bother with specific software products.

and a first semester should only be an introduction to the processes of reading, sampling, joining and publishing. just getting the idea that it's a soup and the only fixed forms are those that you choose to give it. and that's where the problems enter. not from students, from us academics. because we just presume and assume a form already. it's radio, or tv, or cinema, or literature, or the press. whatever. it is an ideology parading as an institutional practice and as soon as you do that you can't see what is common, or relevant (or irrelevant) or is just a process that is relevant across disciplines. so instead of teaching how to interview and cut an interview for radio, and of course for tv, interviewing should just be taught. the same with recording sound. and when you move to, say, http and streaming, it isn't about product x,y, or z but is about what is a codec, what is the difference between progressive and real time streaming, why is there a difference, and how do you manage that.

but what really gets my goat is the way the ideological instutitional thing is in no way about learning outcomes (it always misjudges a tool as a learning outcome) and can only ever look backwards. we train (and i mean train) students to look backwards at what is, not forwards to what could, should, or ought to be. that sucks and i'm sick of it. (peter finch here i come.)

i'm rebuilding all of what and how i write and do in this here tinderbox file come vog and so for a while there might be some lumpy 404s or just oddments. mostly should be the same old same old (keep on keeping on). big change for me, be a little change visibly here.