New SLC production house provides real-world jobs,
accelerates college hybrid learning
Advertising Marketing Communications
student Jason Manuge, Spark’s creative
writer.
By Brent Goff
O
n any given weekday, you’ll find
a team of St. Lawrence College
students working away in a
bustling, small classroom off a narrow
hallway at Kingston campus earnestly
editing videos, excitedly discussing new
electronic media projects, or writing creative
content for those projects.
They’re not working on homework, however,
but something much cooler; it’s paid, clientbased, experiential learning at St. Lawrence
College’s new student-run production
house, called Spark.
“Before I started at St. Lawrence College, I
never expected that I would be doing real
client work while still in college, never mind
doing it in my first year,” said first-year
10 SA Voice February 2014
Spark is a media production house pilot
project that provides faculty with e-learning
solutions to supplement traditional
classroom learning. It is one of many
projects at the college made possible by
a Ministry of Training, Colleges and
Universities $497,011 Productivity and
Innovation Fund grant to accelerate the
college’s drive toward hybridized education,
which combines classroom and online
learning.
The push toward more hybridized education
recognizes that students require more
independent and flexible learning for their
busy lives. It also acknowledges recent
research that has found that both students
and teachers respond well to hybrid learning
experiences.
One of the first services Spark is developing
is a series of short video clips in which
professors introduce themselves and their
courses online to potential students before
the semester starts. There’s also a series of
mini workshop videos coming that faculty
will use to show students how to develop
and maintain a professional online presence
through platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter,
Facebook & Google+.
This will hopefully be only the tip of the
iceberg for Spark, which has received pilot
funding till April. If successful, it will start
offering external, for-profit services to
organizations off campus.
Spark comprises seven students from diverse
programs with a variety of roles. Currently,
there is one videographer, two graphic
designers, one creative writer, one accounts
person and two placement students. Spark
is overseen by two faculty members: School
of Business graduates Ricardo Giuliani and
Mike Kusters.
There are many beneficiaries to the Spark
production house.
Faculty benefit by finding new ways to
engage and relate to students, familiarizing
themselves with new technological
developments, and furthering their own
learning, all while fulfilling the college’s
mandate to accelerate its transition towards
a world-class hybrid learning environment.
The major beneficiaries of Spark are the
St. Lawrence College students. For starters,
Spark’s student creative team members have
been given the rare opportunity to be paid
Student Association of St. Lawrence College | www.SAvoiceSLC.com