Creating with WeVideo

Project Title: Creating with WeVideo (https://www.wevideo.com/)

Long Title (if desired): Creating With WeVideo: Supporting Student Innovation Through Collaborative Cloud-based Video Editing

Project Lead's Name: Mark Dahlquist

Project Lead's Email: dahlqumj@MiamiOH.edu

Project Lead's Phone: 513-529-8494

Project Lead's Division: ULB

Other Team Members and their emails:

  • Mike Bomholt; bomholmm@MiamiOH.edu
  • Jody Perkins; perkintj@MiamiOH.edu

List Departments Benefiting or Affected by this proposal:

  • English
  • Media, Journalism, and Film
  • Art
  • The Armstrong Institute for Media Studies
  • Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program in the Department of Global and Intercultural Studies
  • All departments offering Advanced Writing courses under the Miami Plan
  • This has the potential to benefit other departments as well, since video is a ubiquitous form of communication

Estimated Number of Under-Graduate students affected per year (should be number who will actually use solution, not just who is it available to): 1,800

Estimated Number of Graduate students affected per year (should be number who will actually use solution, not just who is it available to): 5

Describe the problem you are attempting to solve and your approach for solving that problem:

  1. Problem description:
    • Only a small percentage of college courses incorporate digital video as a means of making arguments and creating narratives, despite the widespread use of video in public and professional use as a means of entertaining, informing, and persuading
    • A difficulty factor that at present limits the use of video in classes is the prevalence of numerous incompatible video editing tools on college campuses today such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, iMovie and many others. Instructors do not know which tools their students will able to conveniently access. Furthermore, this abundance of tools poses a challenge to anyone seeking to support students across multiple changing video editing platforms. Different file formats and a lack of collaborative features in traditional desktop-installed video software further hinder projects in which students might collaborate in creating video narratives.
  2. Approach to solving problem
    • WeVideo is a simple but feature-rich cloud-based Video Editing tool. It can be used to create, edit, and combine video taken with phones, video cameras, and from online sources. Unlike traditional video editing products, videos edited using WeVideo are uploaded to the cloud and can therefore be edited from any platform.
    • With WeVideo, instructors can ensure that all their student have access to a powerful shared platform for working on videos together, instead of having to share a master copy saved to one particular computer. Whether working with Macs, PCs, or Chromebooks, or using high-end or modest computing hardware, WeVideo will permit all students in a class to create compelling narratives and arguments in digital video form.

How would you describe the innovation and/or the significance of your project:

  1. Removing obstacles - By removing obstacles to assigning individual and collaborative video-based assignments, the Creating Video Together project encourages new forms of student creativity, in classes that emphasize video production, and in classes where the creation of a video project might be offered as an option or a small part of the large course. For example, while departments such as English, Media Journalism and Film, Art, and the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies might make extensive use of WeVideo, any department offering advanced writing instruction could make use of this tool. It could also be used in classes where video documentation of subject interviews or lab procedures is important. We imagine that some teachers will discover uses for video in the classroom that we would never have anticipated.
  2. Checking out licenses in the Libraries - As part of this proposal we would like to reserve some percentage of the licenses to be circulated at the libraries and assigned to students as needed. In this innovative model, a student could go to the library and check out a license which would then be assigned to their Miami ID. After that they would have access to the full version of WeVideo until their loan period expired and they could either renew the software with the library or continue with the free version.
  3. Cost effective - In this way the University Libraries seek to support student creativity through WeVideo at a reasonable cost, providing access to video editing tools that students can use with their own devices or with high-grade video and audio equipment provided by the library.

How will you assess the success of the project: WeVideo provides detailed use and assessment data, which can be used to evaluate this service. In addition, we plan to survey instructors regarding their use of this tool. Specific measurements include.

  • Total number of students making use of a WeVideo account
  • Total number of courses using WeVideo
  • Number of library checkouts of WeVideo accounts
  • Teacher evaluations of WeVideo

Total Amount Requested: $15,428

Budget Details: One year subscription: $6,428.50; Three year subscription (prepaid): $15,428.00

Is this a multi-year request: No

Please address how, if at all, this project impacts any of Miami's BCSAE, 2020, or divisional plans: This product could provide assistance into BCSAE proposals.