Documenting the COVID-19 pandemic student experience through film: exposing opportunities for a blended online/face-to-face teaching practice

Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Kate Hennessy, associate professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

Project team: Doenja Oogjes, research assistant, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

Timeframe: September 2021 to December 2022

Funding: $5,000

Course addressed: IAT344 – Moving Images

Final report: View Kate Hennessy's final report (PDF) and appendix (PDF)

Description: 

This project explored how pedagogical innovations developed during the COVID-19 pandemic could inform future blended and flipped teaching practices in a university-level filmmaking course. IAT 344 is a production-based course in which students create short narrative or documentary films. In response to pandemic restrictions, the course was fully redesigned in Summer 2020 for asynchronous online delivery using at‑home, accessible media technologies. Over four semesters, the course evolved across online, hybrid, and in-person formats while maintaining a strong emphasis on flexibility, student creativity, and documentary storytelling.

A major component of the project involved a partnership with the Museum of Vancouver to support its #IsolatingTogether initiative. Students created films documenting their experiences of the pandemic, resulting in over 90 short films that were premiered online and later exhibited physically at the museum. These films capture three distinct moments in students’ pandemic experiences: the initial lockdown period, the “new normal,” and the transition back to in-person learning.

The project had two primary goals: (1) to investigate learning challenges and opportunities that emerged during pandemic teaching and how these could inform future flipped or blended course designs; and (2) to create an online archive that documents students’ experiences and pedagogical practices during this unique historical moment. The research employed participant observation, iterative course redesign, and student surveys administered each semester. Survey results highlighted students’ development of self-directed learning, adaptability, and creative problem-solving skills, as well as their appreciation for pre-recorded lectures and flexible scheduling. Challenges such as motivation, Zoom fatigue, and limited peer interaction were also consistently identified.

An interactive website was collaboratively designed as both an archive and a research-creation output, organizing films using instructor- and student-generated thematic tags. The archive represents an important pedagogical and cultural record, with many films accessioned into the Museum of Vancouver’s permanent pandemic collection. Insights from this project point toward the need for more structured blended learning designs, including shorter, modular pre-recorded lectures linked to in-class activities in future course offerings.

Questions addressed:

• How can the online course be adapted as a “flipped classroom” model for in-person learning, building on pedagogical innovations that were necessitated by the pandemic shift to online learning? 
• How can we draw from our teaching adaptations of the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 and apply it to the Fall transition semester and possibly the Spring 2022 semester?
• What will the website with tagged/categorized films reveal about online teaching and the COVID experience more broadly? 
• How has remote teaching and new remote filmmaking tools supported the documentation of the pandemic experience?

Knowledge sharing: Findings were shared with colleagues through a School of Interactive Arts and Technology faculty meeting presentation. The project website serves as a public-facing archive and teaching artifact. While no formal publications have yet resulted, the project informs ongoing experimentation with blended learning and contributes to discussions of media arts pedagogy and research-creation.

Keywords: COVID-19, filmmaking pedagogy, blended learning, flipped classroom, online teaching, research-creation, student experience, media arts education