The midterm video assignment was purposely somewhat open-ended (causing some students to feel anxious or complain that it was "hard to know what you wanted"). It was designed as such not to make students feel nervous or frustrated, but because many assignments in college are purposely open, giving students a lot of choice in how to approach the question, what topics to focus on, how to craft the final product. Like many aspects of college, these assignments don't have one right answer, but instead give students the chance to explore the many strong, interesting, unique answers. That freedom can sometimes feel overwhelming or unsettling, especially if you aren't used to completing that type of assignment. Here are a few things to think about in creating a positive experience for yourself within the parameters of an open-ended assignment:
1. Choosing a Productive Topic: The topic you choose or inquiry question you pursue can immediately raise the bar of your project if it is one that will inspire a lot of creative and critical thinking, if it gives you places to go in your thinking. The natural instinct for most people is to choose the easiest topic, the one you feel you already understand and know a lot about so you will have a lot to say. However, the more interesting and exploratory your topic is, the more engaging it will be for you to complete the project and the more engaged your audience will be. Take as an example, the topic of time management, which many students chose to focus on in their projects. This is a fine topic as long as you can find something to say about it that we don't already know, that we haven't already read or talked or thought about. Conversely, imagine sitting through 7 videos that all provide the same tips about time management. If you start with a relatively simple question, you will have to work very hard to make your final product creative and engaging (you will have to raise the bar of the technology you use or the format in which you present your work.) But if you start with a more complex question or topic, you will have to add less "bells and whistles" to your final product because the concepts themselves will grab the attention of your audience.
2. Refining your Ideas and Highlighting your Voice: Once you have collected your information and done the required interviews for this project, you will need to think about how to narrow the focus of your work since the final video is only supposed to be 5-10 minutes long. Instead of simply thinking about where to cut, you should consider how to make your ideas more refined, more specific. Instead of trying to say a little about everything, think about what smaller piece you can explore in an interesting and more in-depth way. Take your audience deeper into your topic rather than giving them more general information. Why is that a better strategy? Think again about sitting in the audience watching a talk, presentation, or video. When the speaker takes time to tell us what we already know or what seems like common sense, we tend to zone out or feel as if we are wasting our time. But when the speaker can take a concept to a new level, connect it to something specific we haven't thought about before, or get us to see a new perspective, we come away from the experience feeling energized by the topic.
One way to make your ideas more specific and interesting is to foreground your own voice, your own experiences, your own ideas about the topic. That doesn't mean that you should have your life story take the place of giving good information or reporting on your research. However, the research should serve as evidence, background information, a springboard, for your own "thesis" about your topic, just like in Composition where writing works to foreground you as the writer and doesn't ask you simply to report on others' ideas. Again like many aspects of college, you need to do the research to have a basis for your ideas and to add authority to your voice, but ultimately what you have to say about that topic is more important...and having something interesting and informed to say (whether in class discussion, your writing, or this video project) is probably the main goal of college courses in general.
3. Presenting your Ideas in a Way that Stands Out: Putting the finishing touches on your project is a crucial step to making sure your ideas are clear and that the presentation of your ideas is professional as well as unique. This requires setting aside time to self-assess, get feedback from others, build on your strengths and bolster your weaknesses, get help with the technology, revise, retune, and polish. This week in class, we are going to talk more about where to go with these projects, but in the meantime, start thinking about what you can do to make your project more professional, more creative, more informative, more unique. What is it that will make your project stand out from the other 18 or 19 videos we will see?
