Interactive Media Group: New Mission for New Media

Team gets a new name and broadens its scope to take on a variety of teaching-related projects

Joyce Winslow
jwins@uoregon.edu

Since its inception in 1995, the UO's New Media Center has evolved from a specialized multimedia team supporting a few intensive academic research projects, to a broad-based operation encompassing a full range of new and traditional media support services.

The group, which moved from its original home in the Riverfront Research Park to join forces with Knight Library's Media Services nearly two years ago, also has a new name: Interactive Media Services, or IMG.

In addition to taking on leading-edge, large-scale multimedia development projects, IMG now also assists faculty with smaller project proposals—particularly in the areas of web and multimedia courseware and research.

IMG Manager Kellie Ann Garsed-Donnelly in a rare moment of repose. Garsed-Donnelly, who has a deep background in telecommunciations and multimedia, also serves as president and principal of Electrum Studios, Inc., a multimedia design firm based in Seattle.

At the helm is a diminutive woman with a big name: Kellie Ann Garsed-Donnelly. As IMG's manager, the energetic Garsed-Donnelly oversees a full-time professional staff of three (two project developers and one project manager) and a crew of five students. On the day of our visit, all eight workstations in 31 Media Services Center were cranking as the team hustled to get four of its current projects out the door.

Two of these projects, "UO [v] MOMA" and "BEAM," are prime examples of the kind of innovative instructional enhancements IMG can provide.

For UO [v] MOMA, a collaboration with Assistant Professor Lars Bleher for his Architecture 222 class, IMG is using Flash and other advanced media tools to create a virtual modern art museum online. This virtual museum, completed just in time for the start of classes in April, allows architecture students to browse interactive galleries of past and current assignments, access student and section information, and witness the development of their ideas into larger, collaborative works.

BEAM (Building and Environment Analysis Modules) is another ambitious project with the Department of Architecture. With the aid of Educational Technology Funds, IMG and Assistant Professor Ihab Elzeyadi are building a complex Internet application using data

loggers and webcams to capture real-time environmental information about interior spaces. The system is being designed to display data such as temperature, humidity, and light levels in searchable format on the web, so that students may access, interact with, and download them for studying energy-conscious heating and cooling, solar building design, electrical lighting controls, and the effects of daylight within a space.

Not all IMG courseware projects fit into the BEAM-UO [v] MOMA mold, however. The group welcomes a variety of assignments, whether it be creating interactive Flash modules for a class website (as they did for Robert Madrigal's Marketing 452 class), developing logotypes, designing promotional websites (UO Art Museum), or multimedia CD-ROMs (School of Music, NASA).

The integration of computer-based instruction and interactive courseware is still in its early phases of adoption on campus, but Garsed-Donnelly intends to work closely with faculty and departments to identify areas where technology might be an appropriate teaching tool. "Although we understand that the use of technology is not the answer for all instructional situations…our goal is to provide campus-wide support in identifying and developing interactive learning environments which improve instructional outcomes and motivate students to learn," she says.

For more information about IMG and its services, visit them online at http://img.uoregon.edu/ or call 346-1458.