For years I have struggled with the answer to a very common question: What do you do? I tend to tailor my response based on the person asking the question. If I want to keep it simple, I say I teach ESL to graduate students. There tends to be a confused reaction: Don’t graduate students speak English? Sometimes I say I work at a teaching and learning center at a university, and the usual response there is pretty blank. What? Don’t teachers just teach? And sometimes I decide to try to explain properly: I teach language, communication, and pedagogy classes and develop programming for international graduate students struggling to hold teaching positions and be successful in their graduate programs here in the United States. But what does that mean? We understand as ITA professionals that the general public (and even some members of the university community) have no real idea what graduate school is about, how many nonnative English speakers are studying here, what TAs are, and what is really involved in helping international graduate students learn how to be successful. I mean, they got accepted to go to school here, right? Shouldn’t that be the end of the story?

As we all know, the story is much more complicated than that, and what we do as ITA professionals is rife with complexities related to university politics and organization, oral English language proficiency, and cultural and pedagogical differences. When I started my PhD program in education, ready to explore such issues, I attempted to explain my professional work to my advisor and committee members. Again, I was surprised by their confusion. Even faculty may not easily understand our work. I don’t believe my dissertation committee fully understood my professional work until they viewed the video created about the course I develop and teach at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University. The video is featured in this issue of the ITAIS Newsletter: Please see Pamela Pollock’s Course.

In this article I share thoughts on the power of video that may help those of you struggling to showcase the value of your programs, or to make your programs and their services clearer, as well as some important ideas to consider when you set about creating a course trailer or an informative video about your own programs.

THE IDEA

Video is a powerful tool. It shows what cannot be easily explained. It gives voices and images to ideas that must otherwise be written. It makes the issues personal and brings them to life; real people can talk about their struggles and triumphs in a way that makes what they are saying much more accessible than simply listening to a talk, looking at PowerPoint slides, or reading text on a Web site.

The video we created at the Derek Bok Center originated for two reasons. The first is that the Division of Humanities was sponsoring a Harvard Shorts Film Festival and competition for scholarly shorts, and Marlon Kuzmick, one of the associate directors of the Bok Center, thought that such a competition might be the perfect venue to showcase a new initiative, the Oral Communication Skills Course for International Teaching Fellows (ITFs). In addition, the Bok Center was looking for ways to both advertise and build support for the new course. Virginia Maurer, also an associate director, and strong activist for the course as well as for the growth of resources at the university dedicated to ITFs, thought the course trailer was a great idea, and the three of us embarked on the project together under Marlon’s technical leadership.

THE PROCESS

The key to a successful video is a compelling narrative, which Marlon artfully pieced together. We realized that simply showcasing the students or the class would not be enough. As you can see from the final product, the video flows through several main segments that form a narrative arc: the context and general need for the course, how the course addresses the need, and what makes the course unique. In such a way the video tells a story, not only of the individual students featured, but also of the course as a whole.

To start the process, Virginia and I chose the students we thought might be the most articulate about the course, and I opened a general call for participation with current students. We brainstormed a list of questions, which included everything from the issues students face as nonnative English speakers to what they find helpful about the course. Another important item to keep in mind here as you think about creating your own videos is the follow-up question; when the students hit upon an idea that Marlon knew would fit well into the narrative, he was ready with a follow-up question to get them to discuss it in more detail. The interview with me was then used to tie all of the student comments together and integrate the narrative. After completing the interviews, Marlon began the long process of assembling and editing. We then showed a draft of the video to several deans, who were thrilled with our work. We got some feedback, added and changed a few segments, and then were able to debut the final product.

TIPS FOR VIDEO CREATION

Marlon, a talented multimedia specialist, handled the issues with creating the video. He had all the necessary equipment and spent countless hours shooting, viewing, assembling, and editing it. Though it may be possible to make your own video in-house with the equipment you use in your ITA programs, when you consider issues of quality and time, it may make more sense to solicit help on the project. Consider the skills and resources you have access to within your program, as well as your institutional resources. Whatever the situation, seek out the advice of a multimedia specialist on campus. You could forge an important connection and working relationship for future projects. Similarly, see which courses at your university focus on teaching video production, and make connections with the instructors. An undergraduate may be willing to help you with video creation for experience, a course project, or minimal compensation. Look for ways to make those connections in your specific institutional context.

CHALLENGES

One main issue we encountered was making sure we showcased a diverse group of students. It was very important to some of our stakeholders that as diverse a population of students as possible be represented. We had to specifically seek out students who fit different profiles to be in the video, though all the students in the video did take the course. Another main challenge that we faced was keeping the video concise. It was difficult to consolidate the essential information; ITA courses and programs are ambitious and there is so much that can be included. Moreover, nonnative English speakers do not always get to the point quickly when they speak. As they learn in our classes, it takes practice to be clear and concise, but at the same time, overly rehearsed speech is not effective. Given such a contrast, interviewing students was challenging, since video usually works well with short sound bites. It was difficult to get quick clips; even when students were telling a great story or making a strong point, it often took them a while to get to it. Marlon had to view a lot of unusable video and edit quite a bit because students struggled to express their ideas concisely. Don’t be discouraged; continuing to probe students and conduct more interviews will eventually yield useful footage but may be more time-consuming that you had planned. Because of both the scope of the course and the way the students spoke, the final product is much longer than we intended; a typical course trailer is much shorter, and is on our list of future projects.

CONCLUSION

Though the video was not completed in time for submission to the Harvard Shorts competition, it did prove successful in a variety of ways. Most important, people started talking about the course and support for the program began to grow. It quickly became clear that video simply has more impact than traditional ways of conveying information. It was viewed with great interest at a meeting of directors of graduate studies; eight faculty members contacted the Bok Center about training for teaching fellows/ITFs as a direct result of the video. It received an enthusiastic reception from several deans who began thinking of other audiences for it and wanted to put it on the Web site for the Office of Undergraduate Education as evidence of their attention to issues facing international TFs. It was posted on the Bok Center Web site to share information about the course. It began to circulate in the ITA community and, at last year’s TESOL convention, you all began to develop ideas for how to use it, tailor it to your programs, or create your own videos. And finally, for all of those people who never really understood what I do, I think they finally got it.