Student Videos Capture the Big Picture

The light from the video monitor flickers and then fades to black. In the darkened classroom, stu dents begin to laugh and applaud. Jason leans over the back of his chair and says, Good one. Gripp's supposedly the last man on Mars, but a bus drives past his window! Give us a break, Mark replies. We shot that scene three times; the first two, people walked by and waved! More laughter follows, and the class room lights are turned on. Kristy adds, On top of that, we had to tape most of the indoor scenes at 3:00 a.m. to make sure no one walked in on us?you try that with an 8:00 cale class. Such was a scene after a recent video project screening for three sections of a world literature course at Ball State University. In most respects, these classes were typical of other sections of the same course: their aim was to intro duce students to short stories and novels from varying time periods and of vari ous national origins. However, these three sections had one highly unusual feature: the main project for the course was not a research paper. Instead, stu dents were expected to plan and create video projects. Each one was based on what the students deemed a significant scene from one of the short stories or