In this last stretch of the Fall 2018 semester, one Missouri State assignment has gone viral! Dr. Andrew Cline of Media, Journalism, and Film challenged his MED 130 students to go viral, and boy, did they deliver.
One group created, directed, produced, and posted a video to Twitter with the caption, “My professor threw a party instead of having a final and no one showed up .”
My professor threw a party instead of having a final and no one showed up😢💔 pic.twitter.com/knwS3xDfmM
— Sydney (@sydneyarlt) December 5, 2018
Millions of internet users fell for it. As of the writing of this post, the Tweet from student Sydney Arlt’s account shows 7.89 Million views, 344,000 “likes”, 70,000 retweets, and 2,000 comments. Even Buzzfeed news posted an article about the assignment.
As soon as we saw that this assignment had gone viral, our first thought was about the awesome way he had incorporated student learning into a real-world experience that would stick with his students long after the buzz of this video dies down. This morning, Dr. Keri Franklin and I met with Dr. Cline to get a first-hand account of the project and the student learning associated with it. As he mentioned to BuzzFeed, Dr. Cline told us that this is an assignment designed to fail; that’s not to say that he expected his student to earn a failing grade, but he wanted them to learn that it’s not as easy as it seems to make a viral video. “It’s more than cute and funny” he told us, “there has to be an emotional element.”
Dr. Cline pointed out that most viral videos don’t contain much in the way of cinematography, but student Sydney Arlt brought that element into her group’s production, which certainly didn’t hurt their chances of achieving their goal.
Throughout a semester in MED 130, Dr. Cline and his students discuss and study videos that have gone viral. One example Dr. Cline gave me was the “Charlie Bit My Finger” video from 2007. “It’s a tragedy” he said, “he’s complaining that Charlie bit him, but then he goes in a second time. That’s what made it a sensation.” These discussions and examples are what fuel the students’ knowledge as they attempt Dr. Cline’s assignment. “I don’t tell them they have to trick people,” he said, ” I just tell them to go viral.” The students have to come up with and present a defense of a plan before he gives the go ahead. He told us that when Sydney’s group approached him about acting in the video, they had everything planned out already.
As fascinating as the viral aspect of the assignment is, we were interested to ask Dr. Cline about what he learned. He said going viral had a learning curve, which made us ask, “what is it?” He told us that this group of students was approached by an aggregate company with a contract to buy rights to the video, which is prompting him to add a unit on digital property management to his MED 130 course. “I’m not qualified to coach them through that process; I’ll bring in an attorney,” he said. Though this is the first product of Dr. Cline’s assignment to go organically viral, he did have a group hit a million views about five years ago, but it took some coercing from one of the students to his vine followers. Dr. Cline has also had students approached for rights to their videos in the past, but they were far less complicated contracts.
Dr. Cline’s “learning curve” is assessment of student learning at its finest—What can I do differently in the future to better prepare my students for situations they may encounter? We approached him about writing his assessment up and receiving an Assessment Grant for the project, but he had something different in mind. The Media, Journalism, and Film department is in the process of designing a documentary certificate program. Journalists and cinematographers come at film-making from two different directions, and with documentaries, the two sides need to meet. Dr. Cline wants to develop some educational tools, which can be used across disciplines in the department to help bridge that gap. B-roll, for instance, is a familiar concept to journalists, but it’s not an element often required in the controlled atmosphere of cinematography.
We suggested to Dr. Cline that he could use the funds to pay students to help him develop these tools. While Dr. Cline is interested in writing on this viral learning opportunity, he said he would like to wait to see the impact it has on incoming MED 130 students before he does. The Office of Assessment is excited to help him with both projects.
Know of another awesome student learning project on campus? Tell us about it via email at assessment@missouristate.edu.