Digital journalism class focuses on virtual reality


 

Professor Robert Hernandez’s classroom is a unique, innovative space where digital journalism comes to life, immersing students and audiences alike with technologies like 360-degree video and augmented reality.

“Hands on Disruption: Experimenting with Emerging Technologies” is a course at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism taught by Hernandez that creates an innovative and collaborative space for students to engage with one of the newest journalism technologies: virtual reality. To abbreviate, the group of students enrolled in the class call themselves the JOVRNALISM Team.

“For this class, I needed students to know and be comfortable with trying to figure out what the unknown is, where the professor doesn’t have all the answers and no one does because it’s brand new,” Hernandez said. “What you need is that curiosity and that commitment, that work ethic, to work with a team of folks who are as dedicated and passionate as you are, to figuring this stuff out.”

The Salton Sea Project, the JOVRNALISM team’s third and largest production to date, was nominated this summer as one of the finalists for the 2017 Online Journalism Awards under the Pro-Am Student Award category.  In 2016, Hernandez’s class created an interactive project on Houston’s vulnerability to coastal storms, foreshadowing the destruction of  an event like Tropical Storm Harvey.  

Every year, students are assigned a collaborative project with a media partner. Their nominated Salton Sea Project was produced and finalized in May 2017 in partnership with The Desert Sun. Students were divided into multiple video teams to create a seven-part series that virtually displayed the history, environmental disasters, visuals and possible future of California’s Salton Sea.

“The goal visually was ‘How do you capture this beautiful, breathtaking place and capture the story in 360 video?’” Hernandez said. “We also incorporated drones because it’s just breathtaking to view it from above. We put a camera underwater to do a background for an infographic to explain the environmental issues that are happening in the water.”

Hernandez explained that the Salton Sea Project’s goal was to fully immerse the audience into the setting, allowing viewers to understand the stories of those affected by the dying sea.

Photo courtesy of Robert Hernandez

Prior to working at USC and creating this course, Hernandez’s professional career revolved around discovering how digital technology and other forms of media can advance today’s media coverage. He was interested in experimenting with 360-degree videos, mobile devices and coding.

In 2013, Hernandez started off by introducing augmented reality and Google Glass courses to Annenberg and eventually created the VR class in 2015. He originally formed the JOVRNALISM team to prepare students for the professional world by providing opportunities to work with developers, designers and storytellers.

As an elective, Hernandez welcomes any student — regardless of their major — who wants to practice and have a hands-on experience with different journalism platforms. For the 15-week instructional period, Hernandez created a basic framework focused around stories, technology and partner-based media projects.

“We’ve covered the Women’s March on Washington, done work for The New York Times, the Trump inauguration,” Hernandez said. “We’ve done work with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — two amazing, award-winning investigative journalism organizations.”

The students work with a basic guideline, pitching and creating ideas on how to use technology for storytelling. Throughout the semester, a variety of technological skills and methods such as video production, computer graphics and game development are taught.

“Robert really teaches the class like a startup where he really lets the students run the class with our ideas,” Cameron Quon, former JOVRNALISM student and USC graduate, said. “Every class, we start off with a blank slate, and he asks us what we want to talk about and we throw out ideas. He tries to adjust the class to our interests so that’s pretty different compared to other campus courses.”

Because the class is not restricted to students within the journalism major, the JOVRNALISM team has a range of people from different grade levels and colleges.

“It’s diverse in every sense of the word,” Hernandez said. “While Viterbi may skew more male or Annenberg may skew more female, my classes are about 50-50. I would lean back and see how a student from Viterbi was joking with an Annenberg student, giving each other nicknames … just respecting each other’s craft and trying to develop how this [VR] could work for journalism.”

Kaitlyn Mullin, a former JOVRNALISM student and USC graduate, emphasized the importance of the class, as there is always new technology being integrated into newsrooms.

“Visual journalism is expanding rapidly to include AR and VR as part of the everyday reporting process,” Mullin said. “Students should take advantage of the resources and knowledge Robert has at his disposal to experiment in these fields … and start pushing the boundaries of what developing technology could mean for the future of journalism.”

In addition to his goal of informing the USC community of the advantages of VR in today’s journalism, Hernandez hopes that his course will teach his former and future students how to work with others of diverse backgrounds and talents in their respective career fields.