Submissions for the Center for Learning and Technology’s (CLT) student video contest were due this past Monday, March 31. The videos are aimed to showcase life at the university, from showcasing faculty, departments and clubs. The winners will be announced on Tuesday April 15 at a viewing party in the Center for Sciences and Innovation (CSI), with various prizes going to the best videos. The first place video wins $2000.
With various instructions set in place, the contest asked students to explore themes of their choosing. According to the contest website, the money will be “awarded to those who submit the most creative and inspiring videos describing their college or university experience. Each winner will be determined by the judges in their sole decision.”
The contest was organized by CLT in conjunction with the Digital Marketing Team, who are looking to add some new content to the strategic planning campaign from the new website to web advertisements. To Gregory Longoria, instructional support manager for CLT, the contest will showcase student creativity while utilizing the material of the university in a unique way.
“The idea behind it is to grab some content for the new marketing push, from students’ perspectives,” Longoria said. “We wanted to see students’ own stories and their lives at Trinity.”
The “Life at Trinity” contest aimed to get submissions around various themes, and is open and flexible about how students approach the variety of topics.
“We are looking at themes like life here in general; what it means to get a liberal arts education, showcasing various clubs, frats, athletics, majors, departments, faculty, anything really,” Longoria said. “We tried to put themes in place so that students could grab different aspects of Trinity life but in reality we are looking for something really creative [and] we have flexibility on what we get in terms of submissions.”
Students were allowed to rent and use the wide assortment of cameras and other recording devices offered by CLT for different and unique ways to approach the contest.
“We’ve set them up to have a lot of different cameras that can do a lot of different things,” Longoria said. “For example we have Go-Pros, for adventure type shots, or nice DSLRs for depth of field.”
The contest was an opportunity for all students, regardless of major, to get involved in a creative endeavor, something Luis Martànez, director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and adjunct professor of chemistry, sees as a great opportunity for students at Trinity. Martànez made the contest a required portion of his first-year seminar class, allowing students to work individually or in teams to accomplish submissions for the contest.
“I’m currently teaching a first year seminar on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial behavior in which we have built into the class nontraditional assignments,” Martànez said. “So that the fact that the video contest was at the same time that I was teaching this class worked out really well.”
For the class, which is aimed at developing entrepreneurial skills and creative thinking, the contest was a great way to apply the ideas of the class to a real hands-on experience.
“Since the class is about thinking outside of the box and fostering creativity I wanted to give students a real assignment where there could be a real benefit associated with it,” Martànez said. “It wasn’t just “˜turn in a video and we’ll evaluate it in class’ type project; this could be something potentially very exciting.”
The chance to participate in the contest is an opportunity to explore things and experiences that students might not otherwise have the chance to get involved with or be exposed to here at Trinity.
“My class has a heavy portion of students who are engineering science majors so the contest is providing them an opportunity to do something that they might not have seen or done as a first year at Trinity,” Martinez said.
To first year Kylie Moden, a member of Martànez’s seminar course who used Google Glass to film her submission, the project had its share of difficulty, but the chance to be a part of this unique experience was certainly enjoyable.
“I enjoyed filming and getting my friends to record their lives through my Google Glass,” Moden said. “But as with every video project, the editing is the hard part; we spent over 10 hours editing our submission “Trinity #throughglass” but we are proud with the end result and excited to share it with the community.”
