Media Arts students on the set at Southern Oregon University.
For the past decade there has been increased interest in addressing industry demands for the perfect mix of producing content across the mediums of print, video, audio, and the web.
Many universities across the country have already embraced a more interdisciplinary and intergated approach to preparing students for the Brave New Digital Universe that awaits them. However, at smaller educational institutions creating new opportunities for students may present challenges.
Why do students need to be competent across the mediums of print, design, video, audio, and multimedia?
The answer is becoming increasingly clear. Potential employers may no longer just consider how well a candidate can tell a story with a still or video camera alone. What people are looking for now, and will increasingly in the future, are innovative and creative visual storytellers that are capapble of working across a variety of mediums.
The demand for knowledge in the areas of digital photography, design, audio editing, video production, video editing, and interactive web programming/design is on the rise.
Two weeks ago when the National Press Photographers Association announced a four-day intensive multimedia seminar in Portland, the program sold out in less than 24 hours. Convergence media in the arts and information sectors of society today refers to the cross-disciplinary practical and theoretical application of digital and technological literacy in the areas of arts, journalism, video production, multimedia, and computer science.
For Saltzman (2001), “Convergence, multimedia, media synergy. The idea of the new century comes with a variety of innocent labels conveying a single conspiratorial idea: One media company sending out its collection of news to the public through a variety of media 24 hours a day."
A growing body of literature suggests that media content is increasingly moving online and that educators must do a better job preparing students for the broadband, high definition, multiple platform world of the future.
Convergence media education merges existing disciplines in the digital arts, art history, journalism, video production, computer science, information technology, and applied multimedia into a single focus.
Educators must continue to push for ways to understand the processes and institutions involved that creating and disseminating information in a digital culture today. We need to know more about how emerging technologies impinge upon the rights and rituals of media practice in cyberspace. We need to understand how technologies are transforming cultural expression and cultural identity within a global context.
The idea of developing curricula aimed at increasing technological and digital literacy is as relevant today as traditional literacy in reading, writing, and math is. However, digital literacy should not only be concerned with content production and vocational enterprise but needs to find its place in the liberal arts and hard sciences. Students must be competent in the skills of converging cross-platform mediums such as digital arts, video, audio, and web production, but they must also have a solid foundation of understanding why things work the way they do in society.
For smaller educational institutions who have already established disciplines in a given medium can be challenged by this need to create new integrated and synergisitc learning opportunities for students. At the same time, the potential benefits for students remains very exciting.