Abstract:

Digital media is an inherently interdisciplinary area of study with links to computer science, art, film, music, communications, and design.
Creating and assessing a digital media curriculum is a challenge because of the difficulty in making the connection between concepts and applications.
This paper describes an assessment experiment recently conducted in UAE University by Mass Communication Program to help us gain insight into students' input and feedback. Students are observed, questioned and videotaped in a closed lab ( Abu Dhabi TV) designed to help them understand concepts and to help in assessing how they relate concepts to activities. Their input and feedback was compared with another group of students who were not enrolled in the same internship course.
We attempted to respond to the challenges of digital media curriculum development by dividing the material into four modules, two concerns the concepts and the other two modules relate the concepts to activities as shown below:
1. A computer science module explaining the mathematical and technical underpinnings of digital media. The module includes specific application programs for example Photo Shop, Adobe Premier & Flash.
2. A module presenting concepts and techniques important to media students
3. A field module focusing on both observation of how television programs are produced and participation of intern students in the production processes.
4. Group or team field work trying to relate concepts to practical activities. Students are asked to produce a final visual project which will be evaluated by a jury committee composed of two external evaluators in addition to the instructor of the course.
This internship course is offered to television students and typically has between 10-15 students.
Digital media courses involve an integration of concepts and applications, and thus a proper assessment of digital media curriculum involves evaluating the student's understanding of concepts and their application of concepts in hand-on activities. Thus, one way to assess students' performance is to look at the students' finished work in projects assigned in a digital media course, but this alone is not an accurate assessment tool.. Also, traditional tests and quizzes are not enough. What is needed is an assessment strategy that evaluates the students' understanding and application of concepts. So, this paper is an attempt to develop an appropriate strategy for assessing the value of the curriculum material.