Marta: Hi, and welcome back to another episode of our Student Affairs Podcast series. I’m your host, Marta, and today I’m joined by Jason, our Program Manager with the Delphi Center. Hi, Jason!
Jason: Hi, Marta. Thanks for having me today.
Marta: Thanks for being here. So today we’re going to talk a little bit about the Digital Media Suite in Ekstrom Library. So, just a quick introduction, what is the Digital Media Suite?
Jason: So the Digital Media Suite is an academic resource and support center that is available to all students, faculty, and staff, whenever they’re working on any kind of [digital] media creation project. So we work with a lot of students doing video projects, audio projects, image/graphic design, anything that kind of goes beyond [Microsoft] Word or PowerPoint. We can step in and provide computer resources, studio recording locations, recording equipment to check out, and then support for all of those.
Marta: Awesome! And how does this benefit the students that you are trying to get this information to?
Jason: A lot of classes are adding media projects to then, and in a lot of places that you probably wouldn’t expect. We work with students across every single unit, across every single level at the University. We work with introductory English classes all the way through to the upper level medical and doctoral level courses, with students that are creating a wide variety of pretty straight forward, like, memes or images, or TikTok videos, through to full video essays, infographics that are used for publication, and a wide range of other resources. And so the Media Suite provides access to the computer hardware and the software that’s necessary to do that, we provide you access to the recording equipment that you might need, so that you have the high quality information to put into those audio and video and image projects. And then, if you don’t know how to do that, our support staff is here to help you move through that process, which is a pretty involved process sometimes, if you’re unfamiliar with it, where you don’t even know where to start. And so one of the most common questions that we address is, “I don’t know how to do a video. Where do I begin?” And then walking and helping the students through the design, the actual recordings, and then that actual working at a computer to create those new projects. We can step in anywhere along that line.
Marta: Okay, well that seems like a great resource. And, in fact, we’re actually recording this episode in our Digital Media Suite. So, what kind of technology and, you said programs, what kind of programs can we expect in the Digital Media Suite?
Jason: So, the Media Suite, we specialize in supporting the Adobe Creative Cloud software, which is the collection of programs, that you probably know some of like PhotoShop, or maybe InDesign or Illustrator, but a lot of other programs that you maybe have never heard of, like XD, Dimensions, Substance, and a lot of others. And between all the desktop programs on Mac and Windows, and the mobile applications on iOS and Android, there’s over 60 different programs available through the Adobe Creative Cloud. And so, the Media Suite, we specialize in, kind of like, five or six of those, the video and the image and the audio editors, but we provide you access to all of those on our computers, and then support resources, through our website, for any of the others that you might have questions or curiosities about.
Marta: Okay, and so, what kind of technology is provided, or equipment I guess, what kind of equipment is provided with the Suite? And how can we become a little bit more familiar with the equipment?
Jason: So the best place to find information about our equipment and all of our resources is on our website, so if you go to the Louisville homepage and search for Digital Media Suite, or honestly if you just Google “Digital Media Suite,” you’re gonna pull up the University’s DMS website. And on there is information about everything that we do, and links out to so much more. You’ll find information on there about the different kinds of recording equipment in our studio, so for example we’re in our audio studio right now, with two professional microphones connected to the computer, we have students working in our video studio right now who are recording on our green screen with a teleprompter to work with a script and the flexible lighting set-up that we have there. There’s a student working in our self-service studio, recording totally on their own right now, we didn’t even help them. They came right in and started recording without any support necessary from us. And, on all of our computers then, we just finished two different classes with different students who are working on video production projects where they had access and we’re playing and doing some workshop time, with those programs, to do some video editing for the first time. So all of that information is available through our website, again, just search the U of L page to find it. There’s a link on BlackBoard, if you got to the “University Resources” section of all BlackBoard courses at the University, you’ll see a Digital Media Suite link there. And, we’re in Ekstrom Library. So, on the first floor of Ekstrom, when you’re leaving Starbucks to head back over to the Humanities Building or to the BAB, if you get to the elevator doors on that first floor, look to your left and you’re going to see a glassed-in area that says “Digital Media Suite”. We welcome walk-ins, just stop on in if we’re open. Then you can use our studio spaces or our computers, or you can make reservations on our website as well.
Marta: Okay, yeah. That sounds like a lot of awesome resources for our students, and staff, as well. So you mentioned a little bit about Adobe Creative Cloud, and that’s the program that you guys are mostly working in, so how would a student start to access it, if they were just beginning?
Jason: Yeah. So the Adobe Creative Cloud is provided to all students and faculty and staff at the University of Louisville for free. That is a huge opportunity. We are the only school in the state of Kentucky that provides the Creative Cloud to all students, faculty, and staff. We’re actually what they call a “Creative Campus”, is the terminology. It sounds great, but what it means is, you have access to all of those 60 different programs to do whatever you want to do. To access those, it’s active and ready for you from the moment that you become a student at the University. If you go to louisville.edu/adobe, you’ll find information about how to sign in, but the sign in process is actually pretty easy. Just go to adobe.com, click the sign in button, you’re gonna use your University email and password to sign in, and once you’ve done that, you have free access to the entire collection of programs, on whatever computer that you want to use it on.
Marta: Okay, cool. As a grad student, I didn’t know that any of these resources were available when I was starting out, so happy to get this information out to people that could really be using it, especially for classes and their own personal creative projects. I heard that you guys have a Cardinals Create Showcase coming up kind of soon? Would you mind telling us a little bit about that?
Jason: Yeah, so this is a new initiative with the Digital Media Suite, where… we know that there are a lot of subset groups, like A & S has a show and Fine Arts and some of the other different programs, but there’s not really a wholesale digital media showcase gallery opportunity for students. So, Cardinals Create is a new initiative to kind of fill that gap. And what this means is, as you’re making digital media projects, for classes or for your own personal kind of activity, if you want to submit that into the showcase, you’re gonna get an opportunity to have that posted in our online gallery, all work submitted to the Cardinal Create will be posted online to our website, you’ll have a chance to be selected by a group of faculty and students to be hosted on the TVs and computer screens in the Digital Media Suite, so you’ll be physically shown as students are walking by in Ekstrom, they can see your work highlighted there. And then at the end of the spring semester, we’re going to again bring that group of faculty and students together to select the best, or most interesting, original works from the year, and we’re gonna have a recognition event in Ekstrom Library to highlight and showcase those great works. And give away some prizes, for some of those top categories and top winners in that field. So this is a really exciting opportunity, already gotten some submissions, and we really look forward to highlighting and showcasing all of the work that’s going on in these classes.
Marta: That sounds like a great opportunity. What timeline should we expect for the Cardinals Create Showcase?
Jason: Yeah, so that’s live now. So if you go to our Digital Media Suite website, you’ll see a Cardinals Create link there, and you can submit your works today. The timeline for that process… we’ll have a soft close date in early December just so that everybody has, kind of a submission timeline for the fall semester, but, if you miss that, totally when we reopen in the spring, submit it. And then, right after spring break, will be the hard close for this year, where we will go through and select the best of those works for those recognitions, the hosting in our galleries, and the prizes. So, just after spring break is the deadline you’re kind of holding in your mind.
Marta: Alright! You said that any kind of digital media would be accepted, can you give us some examples of what those might be?
Jason: So we already have some creations by students working in PhotoShop, so they took some photography and then edited and worked on those – PhotoShop, that’s the word for that – we have a video that was produced by a group of students, and we’re also looking for infographics, we’re looking for any of the video assignments that might have been done in your classes, where you were asked to tell a story or explain a concept, we’re looking for podcasts, and just audio recordings, we’re looking for music production, if you’re in any of the music classes, if you’re in film production, we’re looking for any of those types of works, just about anything that is digital, so if you made it on a computer, we’re looking for that type of project. We have three main categories, just dividing up for video, audio, and then image/graphic design, but if yours kind of overlaps or doesn’t quite fit, you’re still more than welcome to submit it, we’ll just figure out where we can kind of fit that in so that we can give that recognition for those that deserve it.
Marta: That sounds amazing, and even better. So you heard him, if you are a tech-savvy artist, go ahead and check out that link, it is louisville.edu/digitalmediasuite/cardinals-create. And if we had any questions about the DMS (or the Digital Media Suite), resources, or other Cardinal Create questions, who would we go to, where would we ask those?
Jason: Yeah, so we have an email address, it’s dmsuite@louisville.edu, you can also check out our website, it is linked there. We have our phone number, and also, again, on the first floor of Ekstrom Library, just to the left of the elevator doors, just stop in. Any time we’re open, we welcome walk-ins with random questions, specific questions, if you just want to be here and work in a space that is dedicated to media creation, that’s what we’re here for. And we look forward to having you here.
Marta: Awesome, and thank you. It’s been great to have you here today. Thank you for listening today.