Abstract:

In 2011 the Television Department of Columbia College had a website with 15 videos on it and less than one daily visitor on average. Just one year later, the website has over 700 examples of student work and a thriving community of creators who treat it as a place to showcase their work, but also network, meet other creators and form teams of likeminded media makers.

This presentation will cover the best practices in building an online community that students want to be part of. It will discuss the successes and failures of the ongoing redesign.

Columbia College Chicago’s Television Department teaches the art of telling, and delivering the stories that shape, inform, entertain, and inspire people’s lives every day. From initial concept to final broadcast (or podcast), Columbia students work in front of the camera and behind the scenes in a highly collaborative community of writers, producers, directors, effects, and post-production teams, They learn to make drama, reality, sketch, news, documentary, and comedy shows for viewing on multiple canvases.

The Internet and Mobile Media concentration emphasizes the writing and production of emerging forms of episodic and stand alone content including mobisodes, webisodes, interactive and viral video. Students in this concentration produce both individually directed and collaborative projects which are distributed through web and mobile devices.

Born and raised in Poland, Wojciech Lorenc is a supporter of independent, entrepreneurial approach to creating television and an advocate of using emerging technologies in both distribution and visual storytelling. He has worked in the television industry as a producer, director, shooter, and editor and his teaching focuses on directing and producing as well as internet and mobile media.
He has screened his work in over 80 festivals in 15 countries and he won awards both in the US and internationally. Wojciech's work in the areas of online delivery and exploring social media for content distribution has allowed him to reach over 20 million viewers worldwide with various projects.

Keywords:

Online community video e-learning community building.