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September 23, 2024
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Helmut Baer left and Oleg Timoshenko right smile at the camera

from left, Helmut Baer and Oleg Timoshenko

Elevating Teaching & Learning in the Jones Media Center

If you’ve never used audio or visual equipment in a dedicated studio space, it can be intimidating. But thanks to the team in the Jones Media Center (JMC), whether you’re new to recording or a wizard of the craft, you’ll find the space and equipment you need. That seamless experience is one that Helmut Baer, Creative Learning Spaces and Technology Manager, Jones Media Center, and Oleg Timoshenko, Technical Project Coordinator with Learning Design and Innovation, have strived to ensure since they started collaborating in September 2021. 

Oleg brings a deep passion for educational technology and media, which includes online learning, media production technology, and expertise in Panopto, Zoom, and Canvas for teaching. Helmut strengthens their partnership with his digital media expertise, built on two decades of developing and managing the equipment and software programs at JMC. “Both are not just technologists, but educators. Their work aligns with learning and scholarship through that education lens,” shared Laura Braunstein, Head of Digital Scholarly Engagement.

Together, they’ve designed, built, and facilitated spaces and learning experiences that are welcoming and accessible from point of entry to final production. The spaces include the Virtual A/V Lab and Podcast Studio, both located in JMC. Knowing that every user has a unique demand, the two have designed and built these resources to be mostly universal and self-service. They adapt to others’ workflows to ensure that the spaces do what the users need, and how they need it, regardless of the technical or videography skills.

two students use the Audio Visual Studio in the Jones Media Center

 Audio Visual Studio in the Jones Media Center

“The A/V Lab is a technical marvel, sort of like the holodeck in Star Trek. It’s also easy to use: I just press a few buttons, and I’m recording a high-quality video or starting an online class. Because I don’t have to worry about the technology, it allows me to focus on the students. In addition, the lab is being continuously improved.” - Robert Shumskey, Tuck faculty

Helmut and Oleg have been deeply inspired by the spaces’ popularity. The work is incredibly fun and fulfilling for them, and the collaboration is a massive part of that joy.

The brightest spot in my job is having the freedom and creativity to work with Helmut to imagine how we can better the student and faculty experience.

Oleg Timoshenko

At Jones Media Center, that’s the mission: to equip students and faculty with a welcoming environment and to empower them as users of technology, resulting in a first-rate experience. Oleg and Helmut built dedicated audio and video recording spaces housing the highest quality equipment to best meet any student, staff, or faculty member’s production needs. 

John Pfister, Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Brain Sciences, expands on this sentiment. “The A/V Lab has allowed me to provide resources to my students that I would have never dreamed of when I started teaching 30 years ago. I can introduce them to a concept by video before they even enter the classroom, so our in-person conversations are richer and more productive. The team in the A/V Lab helped me produce very professional material and has made me a better professor to my students.”

Helmut Baer helps a community member use the podcast equipment

Helmut Baer providing assistance in the Jones Media Center Podcast Studio

Digital storytelling and, in particular, podcasting, aren’t new modes of expression. But neither of them are necessarily what faculty think of first when assigning alternatives to the traditional term paper. But faculty do think of media assignments now. The Podcast Studio alone had 89 bookings in its first term open. As the spaces have grown in popularity, Oleg and Helmut have scaled to create flexibility and to suit the community’s needs. 

 

Collaborating with Oleg has been an extremely rewarding experience on so many levels. I am already looking forward to our next brainstorming session. The best part? We not only get to test and implement our ideas, but witness the creation of projects by faculty, students, and staff that would not be possible without these spaces.

Helmut Baer
Helmut Baer prepares an audio kit in the Jones Media Center

Helmut Baer prepares an audio kit in the Jones Media Center

Responding to community needs can look like small-scale innovations that end up making a massive impact. When Robert Shumskey expressed concern about a distracting aspect of teaching on Zoom, Oleg knew just what to do. In the A/V Lab, he rigged up a system with a one-way mirror so that instructors can look directly at the screen and the camera at the same time. That, Robert says, was “a simple and powerful change in how I can interact with remote students during class.” Sophie Crane, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, shares a similar experience using the Podcast Studio for her broadcasting class. 

I was thrilled when the Jones Media Center [Helmut and Oleg] created the Podcast Studio. It allowed my students to get valuable experience operating a professional set-up. And when a student needed to record a remote interview, Helmut took immediate action and installed an online studio interface to guarantee top-quality sound recording. - Sophie Crane

We sat with Helmut and Oleg to chat about what inspired them to design these spaces. We were joined by Laura for a deep conversation about why this work matters. They shared the impact of partnering and co-designing courses with faculty; and how creating fun and meaningful learning experiences for students aligns with how vital it is for students to learn how to make arguments and present perspectives in emergent media forms while critiquing and critically analyzing the emergent media ecosystem. That outcome empowers students and scholars to better communicate the results of their research to the world. As Oleg states, “This work is important. The world talks through media. It’s another language of communication.” 

The following are excerpts from the conversation, including the team’s hopes for the future. 

Why does providing the technical equipment and spaces like the Podcast Studio and the A/V Lab matter?

  • Oleg: Anyone can record a video and post it on YouTube. So, how can Dartmouth, with its 250 years of reputation, compete with the ease that social media platforms provide? And how can Dartmouth do that efficiently while applying a critical lens as a liberal arts institution? These studios are how. We borrowed ideas and best practices from gaming communities and cinematography, and used evidence-based research to help users produce high-quality, engaging instructional content. Doing so means our designs and the tools we offer are more robust and provide an easy-to-use environment with the training and equipment to produce a better user experience [than the social media platforms] at Dartmouth.

  • Laura: For students to have an impact on the world, they have to know how to use these modern tools in their lives, their communities, and as leaders after they graduate. These spaces, and the learning students engage with while in them, act as a way to critically think about the tools and what the tools can do. That also includes students understanding how stories are created, how the media works, and being able to critically engage with both. It’s a way to foster more engaged citizenship through better media literacy.

What inspired your work and making these studios a reality?

  • Helmut: Over the past several years, there's been a dramatic rise in faculty and students coming to JMC to produce an audio recording assignment. A key event for me happened a couple of years ago. An instructor in the English Department reached out to inquire about support for a class on broadcast and podcasting. This inspired the purchase of a set of mics and audio recorders, packaged into traveling kits, for students to capture their radio stories. The class and culminating event were hugely successful. Since then, the support of audio projects has become a priority at JMC, with one of our learning spaces now a dedicated Podcast Studio. Looking forward, I'm excited to explore ways JMC, in collaboration with Oleg and the AV studio, can further support a diversity of audio and video projects.

  • Oleg: In 2021, the Learning, Design, and Innovation team was tasked with designing digital learning experiences for the Coursera platform and online programs at Dartmouth. These are video-heavy courses, so I knew we would have many video lectures to produce in a short period. We needed to expand our existing resources and add dedicated space with a professional yet user-friendly set-up, allowing busy faculty to create video content independently on their schedule. That’s when I was connected with Daniel Chamberlain (Associate Dean of Libraries, Research and Digital Strategies). We put together our two teams and resources to collaborate and make these projects possible. These cross-team connections continue to be where some of the best collaborations are born from the ground up, leading to exciting and creative work that moves Dartmouth’s learning experience forward.

What do you hope comes next?

  • Oleg: My dream is to build a “Learning Media Lab” that would serve as a hub for innovation and media that would attract students, faculty, and staff. It would allow for experimentation and act as an incubator for new, great ideas. It would be great to keep the spirit of these spaces, and have the resources to expand and make more sustainable, like DALI Lab and its experiential learning. A place to experiment with media. 

  • Helmut: I would like to see fully supported spaces, both in terms of technology and staff expertise. That will enable users to produce audio stories, interviews, and podcasts with added video and live-editing capabilities. Oleg and I are currently working on introducing cameras to the Podcast Studio, and the main challenge is to keep the spaces sustainable. Every time we introduce new technology, we attract new projects, which require more support time. I do see potential for making advanced media production spaces more sustainable with the Libraries' redesign of the second floor of Berry Library.

two people using the Jones Media Center Podcast Studio

Dartmouth community members use the JMC Podcast Studio

*****

Thanks again to Helmut, Oleg, and Laura for sharing their perspectives on these much-needed, and now incredibly popular, spaces. As they all agree, the student and faculty experience is at the center of what they’re striving to achieve, and they’re excited about their success now and for what the future holds. Predicting that these spaces will grow evermore popular, the duo put together a set of recommendations for anyone at Dartmouth who may want to set up a dedicated space where they are. 

Email Oleg (oleg.timoshenko@dartmouth.edu) or Helmut (helmut.baer@dartmouth.edu) for more details.

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