Technical Communications and
Media Production Program

Ursuline’s Technology Program is founded on the principles of Technical and Scientific Communications. These principles involve developing print or multimedia products for an intended audience, either a service-learning client or a client in industry. UA offers two tracks that students can take courses in: Technical Communications and Media Production.

In both tracks, students learn how to analyze their project’s audience by researching the project’s purpose, the information the audience needs to know, and the educational backgrounds and experience levels of the audience. Once they have identified the purpose and audience for a project, the students collect information, study design principles, organize and outline information, draft their project in either a multimedia or print media format, test their projects on a sample audience, and produce a final product for their client.

Technology Curriculum

In the News!!!! 
Highlights on the Media Production Projects

Last Spring, students taking a Senior Capstone class in Technical Communications at Miami, developed a six scene master script for the film, shot all the video, recorded the soundtrack, and logged all captured footage. Picking up the project from there, 47 UA Multimedia students each worked on editing one of the six scenes using Miami’s script, narration, music, and video footage.

 

At the completion of the project, each of the UA girls’ scenes will be edited together into final films. As a result, Miami University will receive eight different versions of the same film. Miami plans to use the films to educate students taking their Technical Communications courses on the purpose of and process for conducting a usability test. The film will be shown in all English 313 classes at Miami as well as core Technical Communications courses.

 

 

UA Commercial—The  Introduction to Multimedia class is currently working on creating a 30 second commercial that tells the story of Ursuline Academy and its students. Look for the commercial on our website sometime in December. 

 

 

Public Service Announcement—The  Introduction to Multimedia class created a 60 second Public Service Announcement (PSA) on the values of the teaching profession. The purpose of the PSA was to get graduating high school students interested in entering the field of education. As part of the project, the students recreated an actual PSA that was filmed by the Ad Council in 2004. The students used the director’s original storyboards to recreate each scene and shoot the PSA here at Ursuline. The cast included members of the UA faculty, student body, and staff. This project  provided the girls with a great opportunity to learn about the PSA film type, location and setting, directing, filming, editing, and adding narration to a finished project.

 

 

To learn more about the INTERAlliance of Greater Cincinnati and its mission, visit its website at www.interalliance.info.

 

Ursuline Students Selected to Film Documentary—The INTERAlliance of Greater Cincinnati selected Ursuline students to write, film, and edit a documentary film about their annual IT camp, which was held at the University of Cincinnati during the summer. The documentary team is currently working on editing the film.

• March 2007

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  Cappies Project—The Motion Media class began work on a Documentary film for the Cappie’s, a national, peer-critiquing program for high school drama productions. The documentary will be used to help the Cappie’s in their fundraising efforts as well as to promote their programs.
  
  
• December 2006

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  Mayerson Foundation Project—The first semester Motion Media Class completed a documentary film for the Mayerson Foundation’s High School Service Learning Program. For the project, 15 students spent a day filming at the Mayerson Foundation’s annual High School Service Learning workshop, which was held in October at St. Xavier High School. After the conference, the students studied the history and format of the documentary film, logged over seven hours of film footage from the workshop, wrote a script for the documentary, illustrated the script through storyboards, and edited all film, still images, and music into a five minute documentary that the Mayerson Foundation will use to promote high school service learning projects at conferences throughout the nation.