Film Studies Department Develops Interactive Learning Materials

Jane Feuer is developing educational materials that will help students in film, television, and mass communication courses to identify the ways in which audio-visual stimuli combine to shape a viewer's response whether to an informational or to a narrative presentation. The courseware will enable students to experience this learning interactively. Instead of just viewing films or videos, students will actively manipulate them, using technology originally developed for entertainment purposes but which is being adapted to educational ends. By re-editing and re-mixing news stories, students will obtain hands-on experience with material previously capable of being taught only in a more passive manner. Eventually, an entire course in Television Analysis will be adapted to this approach, providing a CD Rom- or Web-based interactive media textbook for the course.