Ten new students started attending Tribeca Flashpoint College Sept. 2 — not at its downtown Chicago campus, but wherever it’s convenient for them — via a new online degree series designed to upset the online class status quo with tried-and-true movie maker storytelling tricks of the trade.
The new TFC courses are Digital Marketing, designed for the real world of how business is done, the newest technologies and trends driving digital marketing, and Digital Art, to prepare artists for extraordinary new career opportunities in a vast range of industries.
Both courses began with a student body of five students each class, who are located on the east and west coasts, the Chicago area and Indiana.
They will be attending three hour classes, twice a week, said David Dunworth, director of Online Education at Tribeca Flashpoint College.
“Our goal was to make the courses engaging, a natural extension of what we’ve done in the classroom,” Dunworth said. “And since we are a film school, interactive video seems like a natural fit to deliver material and enable communication across the entire online campus community.”
Online instruction was initiated six months ago by TFC’s board of directors, who assembled a team of 10 on-ground teachers at the school, to design the lesson plans in conjunction with department chairs.
“We use interactive movies and games to present the work in a more exciting fashion than listening to instructors talk for an hour at a board,” Dunworth said, “so we approached the entire project as a storytelling experience, like we’d approach the development of a film or TV show.”
Each piece of the curriculum was considered as a short film in a series that unfolds to tell a larger narrative, he said. “So the online courses’ directors, writers, production and editing staff are able to coordinate and create a student-focused narrative that grips the audience and keeps them on their toes from the start to the final exam.”
He noted there are even studios where students can share their work, desktops and whiteboards, that offer an opportunity for peer review, and even a virtual “coffee house” where students can hang out like they would on a traditional college campus.
Each interactive video course are three credits per class and a total of 120 credits for a degree. The bachelor’s degree online may be earned in less than three years, or an associate degree in about 18 months.
Tuition is $625 per credit hour, which averages $9,375 per semester, not including fees.
The school expects to create additional online degree programs.
