Students in the Faculty of Arts have long benefited from digital tools in the classroom. And over the past ten years or so they’ve had a growing range of program and course options to develop their skills as digital makers and users.
The suite of digital media-related programs for Arts undergraduates includes six plan options: Digital Arts Communication minor; Digital Media Studies specialization; Global Business and Digital Arts bachelor’s program; Rhetoric, Media and Professional Communications major/minor; Studio Art major/minor; and, Visual Culture major/minor.
The proliferation of digi-programming is bound to be both exciting and overwhelming - if not occasionally confusing - for our students.
“We don’t promote just a single view of digital media,” says Doug Peers, dean. “Like the Faculty as a whole, our teaching and research in digital areas excels because of the diversity of our perspectives.”
Many of us on campus may appreciate the strength of diverse perspectives, but that is a tough sell for undergraduate recruitment where future students are looking for their ideal university program and career path at the same time.
Launched as a pilot project, the Faculty just rolled-out a fun and meaningful online quiz to help undergraduates and prospective students find the program that most closely matches their interests and goals. The BuzzFeed-like quiz takes three-to-five minutes to complete and results in a suggestion for the user’s ideal program, as well as prompting them to learn more about all six digital-related programs in Arts.
The Your ideal University of Waterloo digital media program is... quiz is the outcome of more than a year of interdepartmental meetings, working group discussions, prototype building, and user testing. Faculty and staff members who worked on the project focused on creating an engaging quiz that would give prospective students a sense of the strengths and multiple applications of digital media learning within the Faculty – while also helping them hone in on their own interests.
Since the Ontario Universities Fair (OUF) a few days ago, when the quiz was announced on UWaterloo social media channels, it has been taken over 443 times.
What’s it like? Do the quiz now.