Feedback November 2002 (Vol 43 No 4)

DIGITAL PRODUCTION TOOLS:A SNAPSHOT OF WHAT COLLEGEPROGRAMS HAVESteven A. Esposito, Capital Universitysesposito@capital.eduCURRICULUM“Why don’t we have more digital equipment?” “I can’t get my hands on the digital stuff.It’s all checked out!” “Why am I’m spending all this money on tuition? We had moredigital equipment at my high school!” Does any of this sound familiar? If you’re like me,these are just a few of the complaints lodged by students on a seemingly daily basis.With digital production quickly becoming the standard in industry, educators inaudio and video production (as well as film and digital arts) are faced with the difficultproposition of preparing our computer-savvy students to work with this rapidly emergingmedium.Although the costs of digital technology continue to become more affordable, manyprograms continue to be confronted with difficult decisions about how to best allocatescarce resources for the acquisition of these still rather expensive digital tools. There’s alsothe issue of staffing. Once the equipment is purchased, who teaches the course? Shouldthe instructors be full-time faculty members who may have limited digital experience oradjuncts who currently work in the field (or both)? In addition, how does a departmentdecide which tools are best for its program? Each year it seems there are more and moreoptions to choose from.All of these decisions greatly impact a program’s curriculum and require faculty totransform pedagogical approaches (Buck, 1997). The digital age is here and anyradio/TV/film program that is unable to provide its students with the necessary toolswill likely not survive. Easier said than done, however.As Director of University Television and program head of the radio-TV major at myinstitution, I find every year to be a challenge in terms of updating and upgrading ourequipment. We have purchased a non-linear editing system each of the past three years.In that short time, the cost has gone down almost three-fold, while the speed of thecomputer has tripled! In two years we’ve added three digital camcorders and four digitalplayback/record decks. Still, the students—fresh from production house internships—and, more importantly, professional colleagues in the media, tell me it’s not enough. Trytelling that to the administrators who already feel like they’ve given your program morethan its fair share of money!Speaking of administrators, every year we’re asked to justify our requests for moredigital hardware and software (among other things). “Don’t you already have enough?”was a question posed to me this year. I was informed that future equipment purchaseswould likely not be approved unless I was able to “prove” a need for more digital “stuff.”BEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 7