Professor Deborah Brooks
Department of Government
Dartmouth College
Using video projects within a competitive campaign simulation was an invaluable component of my Political Communication seminar. Beyond the study of campaign advertisements in scholarly articles and books, my students also created their own political ads. Through the process, they learned just how much information can be included in 30-second ads. They learned that “information” in that context goes well beyond words, and includes potentially powerful music, sound effects, voiceovers, text, colors, photos, and video selections. Students had to react to the ads of other teams in a dynamic campaign environment, and grapple with the implications of those decisions for longer-term governance. As a result of this exercise, we were able to debate the roles of emotion, information, partisanship, strategy, the increasing professionalization of campaigns, ethics, and voter knowledge within democracy in a far more dynamic manner than would have been possible otherwise.

Few of the students in the class had ever worked with video equipment or editing prior to this class, and all emerged from the course with near-professional level work by the end. The quality of their assignments was truly impressive, and was only possible with the training and support provided by Jones Media and RWIT.

Professor Txetxu Aguado
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Dartmouth College
“The students really enjoyed the project and they only wrote positive comments about it in their evaluations. All of them remarked that it had been a wonderful experience. From my point of view, I am convinced that through this hands-on activity they have become more aware of the ways images construct meaning and more sophisticated in analyzing a film.”

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