A few weeks after Northwestern’s new Media Works computer lab opened in the basement of University Library, students gathered at the high-tech workstations, checking their e-mail and writing papers.
“I don’t see many people here using it for media projects,” said Colin Tan, a McCormick sophomore and NU Information Technology consultant who works at the lab.
The labs are not being used the way IT officials intended, but they say students have yet to be educated about the new lab and its resources — nine new workstations equipped with two large monitors and the latest high-end video editing and audio software.
“Not too many people are using the lab for its full capabilities,” said Joe Hoy, Media Works project manager. “What we’re trying to do right now is get the word out.”
To achieve that goal, IT will hold lab seminars the week of Nov. 4. All of the seminars will include a presentation detailing computer features, followed by a daily workshop about different lab applications such as digital video editing, cleanup of audio tracks and other media projects, Hoy said.
IT also will construct a Media Works Web page so students can check for open workstations and get step-by-step instructions about the available software, Hoy said.
Hoy said that in the future IT will establish guidelines for how the lab should be used, assuring those who need to use resources specific to the lab will not be pre-empted by a student surfing the Internet.
Although the facility never will be reserved for a class, four of the undergraduate schools helped design the Media Works project, so students shouldn’t be surprised if an assignment takes them to the lab.
Administrators from the schools of Music, Communication, Education and Social Policy and the Medill School of Journalism collaborated with Academic Technologies, a division of IT, to create a workspace that would help schools meet changing technological needs, said Bob Taylor, director of AT. According to Taylor, although AT serves all of NU’s graduate and undergraduate schools, these four had the most experience and the most at stake with digital media services.
Each school had its own suggestions, but a common theme was a need for digital-video editing resources, Hoy said. Video is playing a role in everything from broadcast journalism to music projects that chronicle traditional dances of foreign countries, he said.
“AT asked several schools what they thought their greatest needs were for a new computer lab,” said Rich Gordon, Medill’s New Media Department chairman and representative for Media Works’ planning committee. “My goal was to ensure that there is a room that’s open late, so a Medill student could go use the same tools available in Medill’s facilities.”
For Medill, this access is important because multimedia is becoming commonplace in the field of journalism, Gordon said.
“Some are thinking that over time, we will want to introduce video news gathering and production into all courses,” Gordon said.
Gordon said he is teaching a multimedia journalism course that will require students involved with all kinds of journalism to work together to create a multimedia project.
Those projects are the kind of work administrators eventually hope to see in the lab, but until students learn more about the facility, workstations will continue to be used by the occasional e-mail checkers or paper-writers, such as Bart Chwalisz.
“I like to come here for paper writing,” said Chwalisz, a Weinberg junior. “I can have an online reference on one monitor and a draft on the other. And I can listen to music, too — the sound system is pretty good.”
