Faculty Development on Video Projects	Print Issue
March 24, 2009, Volume 55, No. 26

The national MERLOT ELIXR initiative has funded Penn Libraries to create faculty development materials on nurturing student creativity through video projects. Awarded in January 2009, this is one of seven projects selected nationwide. Materials will be developed in consultation with Penn’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

This project builds on the Thinking Creatively about Video Assignments video released by Penn Libraries in September 2008 and involves the same five participants: Regina Austin (Law School), Peter Decherney (English and cinema studies, SAS), Louise Krasniewicz (anthropology, Penn Museum), Andrew Lamas (urban studies, SAS) and Jacqui Sadashige (Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, SAS). Web materials under development will include examples of student-created videos, interviews with faculty and students and reference resources for other colleges to replicate activities conducted successfully here at Penn.

The number of Penn classes exploring video and multimedia projects has grown rapidly in recent years with support from the Weigle Information Commons. Student video projects, especially those inspired by the Commons’ annual Mashup Contest, have attracted national attention. Faculty and student perspectives on video projects have been given a spotlight by the annual Sparky Awards (a national video contest organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition and the Association of Research Libraries), Educause and the New Media Consortium.

MERLOT ELIXR develops collaborations among faculty development centers and online resource repositories. Funded by the US Department of Education and managed by the California State University system, its goal is to create innovative models for the development, sharing and use of discipline-oriented resources which illustrate exemplary teaching practices. Developed in an online authoring software called Pachyderm, the project will integrate video, audio, multimedia and text, and will be available via the web for faculty development centers.