Collaborative Creativity in New Media

Undergraduate course

Course description

Objectives and Content

This is a joint course, including students from UiB digital culture or related disciplines, and students from American partner institutions including the University of West Virginia, Temple University and the University of Minnesota at Duluth. The core activity of this course will be collaborative development of creative new media work in the field and the lab. The aim of the course is to provide students with practical hands-on experience in developing multimodal new media artifacts, involving text, image, audio, and video in a creative production environment. The course will further serve as introduction to theories and practices of collaborative creativity in interactive media.

The main component of the course will be an intensive weeklong course. Students and faculty from the USA will join UiB students and faculty during this work, and will also work together remotely during the semester to develop, finish, and report on the projects they initiate during the week of face-to-face meetings. Students will use video and still digital cameras and other recording devices to gather source material from the Bergen environment and then work together to develop narrative experiences for the networked computer, employing both multimedia production techniques and distributed networking environments in the creation of collectively authored works. Each team will involve both Americans and Norwegians, and will involve students with different disciplinary backgrounds and skill-sets.

Note: During 2015, the intensive part of the course will take place from Tuesday July 28th until August 7th. Students will develop projects from July 28th through to August 3rd, and then will take part in the Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Festival from August 4th to August 7th.

Learning Outcomes

After taking the course the student should have:

  • basic knowledge of the history and context of creative practices in digital environments
  • basic knowledge of new media production techniques
  • experience of integrating multiple modalities into one digital artifact
  • project management and reporting experience

After taking the course the student should be able to:

  • collaborate with international team members who have different disciplinary backgrounds
  • reflect upon different ways of teaching and learning in the US and Norway
  • produce expressive artifacts in new media

Level of Study

Bachelor

Note: Master's students may also enroll for MA credit.

Semester of Instruction

Irregular. The course is currently not being offered.

Place of Instruction

Bergen
Required Previous Knowledge
30 ECTS in Digital Culture or related studies.
Teaching and learning methods

Lecture, workshop, and practical project work.

Class sessions during the intensive week will involve course meetings will include one short informal lecture or presentation from one of the participating faculty focused on collaborative creative production in their experience or field (including interactive hypermedia, design, creative writing, and film). Each meeting will also include one creative workshop activity or game -- trying to reference all of the different modalities or disciplines concerned (for example one day a writing game, the next a design challenge, the next a creative video improvisation, a code writing experiment, etc.) After these sessions, the bulk of the day will be dedicated to small group work on their projects. During the week, students will draft a collaborative creative work, and will present the work in the final face-to-face session. During the fall semester, students will continue to meet at least twice via videoconferencing with their collaborators in the USA and will meet locally to workshop their projects, reports, and presentations.

Compulsory Assignments and Attendance

Participation in the one-week workshop is compulsory. In addition, during the autumn semester, students will meet for three workshop sessions. Course participation is approved by the course leader.

The course will have limited enrollment. If there are more applicants than there are available places, students will be prioritized on the basis of grades in digital culture course. Some places will be reserved for M.A. students in digital culture.

Forms of Assessment

Assessment will be based on the collaborative digital media project, a project report, and an oral presentation. The digital project will count for 40% of the grade, the report will count for 40% of the grade, and the presentation will count for 20% of the grade. All involved institutions grade their students individually.

In the assessment of the group project, all members of the group will get the same grade.

The collaborative project will be assessed only during the semester the course is offered. There will not be a later opportunity to resubmit this part of the exam grade. The individual project report and oral presentation can be submitted via mid-semester exam if necessary during the following semester. Completed obligatory activities are valid for two semesters.

Grading Scale
Grade scale A-F.
Reading List
About 1000 pages of assigned reading.
Course Evaluation
Course evaluation: Evaluation will be conducted in accordance with the University of Bergen's quality assurance system.