The assignment was daunting: Students in PR 475 and DTC 335 had six weeks to create an animated 3D public service announcement about the dangers of energy drinks that would eventually become part of a WSU video library on health-related topics.
Along with an extensive checklist of necessary components that covered both the message and the medium, students needed to create something both educational and entertaining, submit it to a focus group and then analyze the effectiveness of what they had created.
“They rose to the occasion,” Stacey Hust, assistant professor of public relations in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, said last week, just days before the culminating Animation Showcase. “From a pedagogical perspective, this has just been an incredibly rewarding experience.”
Hust’s colleague in the collaboration was Suzanne Anderson, whose digital animation students have been creating public service announcements (PSAs) for WSU’s Alcohol and Drug Counseling, Assessment and Prevention Services (ADCAPS) for four years.
”It’s amazing the journey they take on,” Anderson said of her students, most of whom had never worked with digital animation software before taking her class. The class was successful when her students were responsible for both the message and the animation, she said, but now that the public relations students are part of the project — helping to craft the message, write the script and then research their PSA’s effectiveness — the quality of work has improved even more.
“That has just raised the level again,” she said. “They want it to be even better.”
Daniel Larsen and his partner Kenichi Shimoda said they spent at least 100 hours outside of class working on their project, “The Final Countdown,” about the danger of combining energy drinks with physical exertion.
Working with a team of five or six communications students who were depending on them to bring a certain vision to life on the screen was stressful, several animators said, but a good experience.
“I felt really compelled to finish it,” said Joel Brown, whose team created “Don’t Burn Your Grill” to warn of the connection between energy drinks and tooth decay. “I wanted to give up so many times because it was so frustrating,” he said, but he and his partner, Ben Watson, persevered.
According to Hust, requiring students from different disciplines to work together to create a project for a client (ADCAPS), which will be used in various venues around the university and perhaps beyond the university, was a powerful learning environment.
“By teaming up with DTC (digital technology and culture) we created this microcosm of the real world.”
Kimberly Adams, a public relations major who graduated this semester, agreed.
“The PSA creation has been really beneficial to me,” she said. “All of the skills I’ve been learning in my other PR classes I’ve finally been able to apply.”
Hearing the focus group feedback was particularly gratifying, she said: “It was great to see how my PR group was able to reach people.”
Patricia Maarhuis, coordinator of ADCAPS, said that’s the beauty of the program. Students in both classes become educated on health-related issues of particular importance to college students, they create the PSAs that educate other students and the message goes out to an ever broader audience.
Joel Brown, the student who worked on the animation about tooth decay, laughed when asked if he still drinks energy drinks.
“I switched to coffee,” he said with a bright smile.
Videos should be on the ADCAPS website by mid-December. See them ONLINE @ www.adcaps.wsu.edu.
