Graduate students’ winter fly- in projects couple professional experience with social action.
In January, iMedia graduate students at Elon University took the course COM 570 — Interactive Project for the Public Good, during which they worked in teams to create an interactive media project for the common good in a foreign country.
“The students get a chance to put the skills they’ve learned to date in the program to use in an accelerated project, one that’s far greater in scope than anything they’ve worked on so far,” said Phillip Motley, assistant professor of communications, who led one of two Costa Rica programs. “They get the opportunity to find out just how much they know, what they’re good at and how sophisticated their current knowledge of interactive media is.”
The iMedia students divided into five different groups that traveled to either Costa Rica, Iceland, Mexico or Panama. Each group worked with a nonprofit organization, including Proyecto Campanario, a Costa Rican conservation effort dedicated to preserving tropical ecosystems, and Citizens Foundation, an Icelandic nonprofit that aims to develop tools for citizen democracy.
[quote]It’s one of the most meaningful experiences in the program for the students -Phillip Motley[/quote]
During the fly-in, iMedia students worked on projects that included interviews, audio clips, video clips and photography. For one week, the students worked in their assigned country before returning to campus for the rest of the term to make their footage and information into a publishable multimedia package.
“My fly-in group spent nine days in Reykjavik, Iceland learning about Your Priorities, the Citizens Foundation’s web service used to promote online, democratic debate to improve communities,” said Lindsey Huston, an iMedia student. “Our goal was to clarify the nonprofit’s mission and promote their success, in order to reach a larger international audience. After our nine days in Reykjavik, my group worked 10 days on Elon’s campus in order to achieve this goal.”
The project involved several aspects of the iMedia curriculum, from web design to social media.
“We created a social media strategy, six promotional videos, a mission statement, new English copy and a redesigned WordPress website,” Huston said.
Each fly-in experience had different challenges and experiences, Motley said.
“Our main challenges were how much time we spent traveling from place to place and meeting the high expectations of our client,” Motley said. “(Our main client) was highly ambitious and wanted a lot of work done for her in terms of the website we created. The main challenge was managing her expectations and making sure that we could complete the project and at the same time address her needs and solve her problems.”
According to Motley, the fly-in experience allows iMedia students to gain tools and experience useful for a future career.
"They get a lot of exposure to professional issues such as client management and education, working in a large group towards a common goal, using technology to create appropriate outcomes for a client and the opportunity to work in an international context, something that will be possible for many of them once they graduate," he said.
The winter fly-in has been a part of the iMedia graduate program for the past three years, Motley said. Due to its success, he said the winter fly-in will likely continue in years to come.
“It’s one of the most meaningful experiences in the program for the students,” he said. “I’d like to see us exploit the opportunities for pedagogical research more. That’s happening now with some of the faculty who teach the course but could be expanded in a way that we could learn a lot about the service- learning aspect of the course.”
To Huston, the work she and her teammates did was both personally and professionally rewarding.
“Not only were my seven classmates and I able to help spread the Citizens Foundation’s dream, but also we were able to take one step closer to our dreams by fostering our skills,” she said. “I am proud that my group was able to contribute to the dream of the Citizens Foundation, and thankful that they allowed us to take a step closer to our own dreams.”