Course opportunity in Spring 2009:
Video interviews of computer scientists at work

Are you looking for a different type of course? are you interested in doing interviews? making videos? editing videos? working in a small team? You can get this all by participating in the project described down here in Spring 2009.

Most students have only an approximate idea of what computer scientists do in their jobs. Because of misconceptions about jobs many students decide not to study computer science. This project is intended to change this perception by providing video interviews with computer science professionals on what they do in their jobs.
For an example of what we would like to do look at http://www.cs.washington.edu/WhyCSE
Sounds simple? It is, but we want to do it in a professional way, so we need to start with some training from experts in interviewing and in making videos.

Here are the details:

1. attend a session on successful interviewing (3 hours) Feb 6, 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., Walter 210 Susan McKinnell, the host of the Talk Tech TV show will teach this session.
2. attend a session on basic iMovie skills (3.5 hours). Feb 13, 1:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m., Blegen 90
3. work in a small team of 2-3 students to plan interviews with computer science professionals to talk about their job and their academic prepraration. Each team will be given names of professionals to contact for interviews, but you might also consider contacting friends or other professionals you know. You'll have to schedule the interviews, conduct them, and videotape them. Video cameras will be available for checkout from the Student Commons.
4. edit the videos to produce some short professional looking videos ready for posting on the web. You can use NetFiles for storage of the videos and use video editing equipment in the Student Commons.
5. Each team will share the videos with the rest of the class, criticize each other, until the videos are ready for posting. Awards will be given to the best videos.
6. Write a short report on the experience, what was most useful, and what you would do differently, so we can improve the process for the future.

You can receive academic credit for participation to this project by registering for 2 credits of CSci 5991 - Independent study. If you do not want academic credit but are interested in the project, you can participate as long as you commit to devote sufficient time to the project.

Space is limited to 20 students maximum, so if you are interested do not delay!

Contact Maria Gini (gini@cs.umn.edu) for additional information and for magic numbers.