Media School team lands grant for immersive multimedia course
IU is one of 13 schools to win a $35,000 grant from the Online News Association, the group announced last week.
ONA launched the competitive Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education last year to encourage journalism programs to experiment with new ways of providing news and information.
The IU team submitting the plan includes Media School lecturers Steve and Bonnie Layton, who sponsor IU’s chapter of the ONA; Kat Carlton, BAJ’13; and visiting lecturer Erika Biga Lee, MA’04, who was in attendance for ONA’s announcement at the University of Missouri April 24.
The grant will fund equipment and development for a new course that will examine news coverage of Indiana state forest logging. The Herald-Times will serve as a partner in the project.
Students will enroll in an immersive multimedia class that will teach them how to gather data, create interactive graphics, capture video using a 360-degree camera and work with Arduino, an open-source computing platform.
Students will attempt to answer the question “Can data-driven, immersive multimedia better frame the conversation around the increased logging of Indiana’s state forests?”
The IU team’s was one of 53 entries for the 2015-16 academic year. Submissions were judged on their ability to create student-produced local news coverage, bridge the professor-professional gap, use innovative techniques and technologies and learn from digital-age news experiments, according to the ONA website.