By Angelina Lambourn

Exeter College TV Production students and their American counterparts at Central Washington University are using video conferencing to produce a series of TV programmes for each other as part of a unique project.

Students at Exeter College are producing a series of TV programmes for the students at CWU, and in turn, students in the Applied Video Production course at Central will produce programming for Exeter College.

Video conferencing is being used to help manage the project. Every two weeks the groups meet for an hour. Because of the time zone differences, the meeting takes place at 5pm UK time, when it is 9am in Ellensburg.

Course leaders Dr Michael R. Ogden at CWU and John Fitzsimons at Exeter College are organising the new project, supported by the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and learning at The University of Plymouth, the Film and Video Studies Program at CWU, and the Multimedia Technology and Instructional Support personnel at CWU.

The respective end result will be two magazine style productions incorporating shared programming, with the CWU group making a version of “Ellensburg Extreme”-a monthly TV variety show-and the Exeter College students compiling a similar half-hour magazine programme.
Exeter College students will create a programme looking at local history, music film making, sport and comedy.

Mr Fitzsimons said: “This project is totally unique. It is the first time that students have been involved in creating TV programmes for another audience on the other side of the world, using video conferencing to manage the project.
“Most video conferencing is used to link experts or schools in joint projects that have cultural benefits as their main focus – not production management skills.
“This way of setting up a joint media project with TV programme outcomes shared on both campus – one in the UK and the other in the USA – with the conference used to develop project and enterprise skills, is is totally unique.
“In fact the whole area of developing these skills is somewhat divorced from the arts/ media area, where projects tend to focus on developing cultural awareness or technical skills, or simply sharing information.
“I think this will give our students a wider sense of the global TV industry, and help them to learn about project management in an exciting way.”

Dr. Michael R. Ogden, director of the Film and Video Studies program at CWU, said: “Central’s students are excited about the prospects of sharing programming with students from the UK, with reaching an international audience through this experience. Likewise, they are looking forward to seeing the programs that the Exeter College students are producing and incorporating them into the student shows here at CWU.”

The TV Production Foundation Degree is a University of Plymouth course that runs each year at Exeter College.