12-03-03
NEW VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS FIRST-YEAR COLLEGE EXPERIENCE
The transition from high school graduate to college freshman can be daunting, but a new video produced by two faculty members at Penn State Behrend is helping to ease first-year college students into their new-found freedoms and responsibilities. Titled "The First Year Experience: Are You Ready?" this thirty-minute video is a professional production that focuses on experiences common to first-year students in colleges and universities around the world.
"This tape has become a hot item among college admissions counselors and high school guidance counselors," said John Kerwin, assistant professor of communication and media studies, who produced the video with Dr. Clare Porac, professor of psychology. "We've had requests for this video from forty-five colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, from the University of California at Los Angeles to Rutgers, to Trinity Western University in British Columbia. We've even had requests from Goteborg University in Sweden and the University of Auckland in New Zealand."
To get the full sense of a student's first year, Kerwin and Porac taped interviews with fifteen Penn State Behrend freshman at four separate sessions during the 2002-2003 academic year. The students, selected from the college's First-Year Seminars, include males and females, both commuters and residents, representing a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds. Incoming students talked about their expectations and, as the year progressed, shared thoughts on their personal changes. Finally, each student shared advice for the first year experience and mistakes to be avoided. Twelve hours of taped interviews were edited to reach the final thirty-minute finished product, which includes music, graphic animations, and special effects.
The idea for the video began with Porac, an internationally published psychologist and researcher, who came to Kerwin with the idea of taping students in her first-year seminar group to record their development during the year. Kerwin, an Emmy Award-winning producer and director with years of broadcast television experience, took the idea to the next level. He was able to involve communication and media studies students in taping and editing the production, so it became their project, too. The video garnered financial support from the college's dean and his associates, as well as the director of admissions, the director of student life, and the director of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
"We began taping fifteen students, expecting some of them to lose interest in the project," said Kerwin, "but all fifteen stayed with us through the final interview session. I'm glad they did, because the resulting insights were wonderful."
"We have used 'The First Year Experience: Are You Ready?' in our admissions presentations this summer and fall," said Mary-Ellen Madigan, director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Penn State Behrend. "It gives students a very realistic picture of the challenges and opportunities of their first year." Madigan has fielded requests from more than twenty-five high school guidance counselors in northwestern Pennsylvania who want to show the video to their college-bound seniors.
Another group weighing in on the value of the video is Penn State Behrend's 2003 freshman class. Students viewed the video during orientation, discussed it in small groups, then completed a survey created by Dr. Ken Miller, director of Student Affairs. Miller concluded from the survey that the video was a valuable tool for presenting issues relating to college life. Eighty-eight percent of the respondents agreed that "the students in the video gave good advice about success as a freshman, and 85 percent agreed that "the video expressed my concerns about starting college." Seventy-eight percent agreed that "the video made me think about my academic transition."
"The First-Year Experience: Are You Ready?" made a tremendous impact at the two conferences where it has been presented. Porac presented it in July 2003 to an audience of 400 at the 16th International Conference on the First-Year Experience in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her only mistake, she said, was not having enough copies of the video on hand to distribute to an eager audience who wanted to use at their own colleges and universities. Kerwin presented the video in November 2003 at the 10th National Conference on Students in Transition in Orlando, Florida.
"Reaction to the video among higher education professionals has been very positive," said Porac. "Many of our colleagues want to use it, but are still developing a context for its use. We've had first-year seminars for five years at Penn State Behrend, and the video fits well into our program. Other institutions are just beginning to develop a first-year program, and they are still experimenting with ways to use it."
Kerwin sent a copy of the video to a friend in the electronic media in New York, who was sufficiently impressed to nominate the video for a Telly, the award given to high-quality broadcast commercials and non-broadcast television. Win or lose the Telly, Kerwin and Porac remain pleased with the impact of their project.
"The right students, the right equipment, the right software, the right skills, the right support, everything came together to make this project a success," said Kerwin.
Dr. Porac is available at 814-898-6440 or at cvp4@psu.edu. Mr. Kerwin is available at 814-898-6056 or at jik3@psu.edu. Please contact Mr. Kerwin to receive a copy of the video.
Contact:
Loretta Brandon
814-898-6063 (O)
E-mail: lzb6@psu.edu