Week 2 - Serial Killers, Creative Connections, and the RUM Rule
I was chatting with my friend and colleague Michael Goldberg about his career as a graphic designer. And when I say career, I mean that my man was on the design team for the video game FROGGER. For those who remember dropping quarters into arcade games, that is saying something.
Beyond FROGGER, Mike told me about the RUM Rule in creating ad and other content. When creating branded content (an educational content), your content should be:
Luckily, we had this conversation shortly before I was going to my SO264 class, and it got me thinking about what they identified as the top topics they wanted to cover.
While not the complete list, it does show the two favorites: Celebrity Criminals and Serial Killers. It was nice to see discrimination placing a somewhat distant third, renewing my hope a bit in today’s generation.
And who could argue with celebrity criminals and serial killers as favorite topics? As topics, were they “Relatable?” Yes, especially since they may have heard about the celebrities, and stories on serial killers are typically heavily narrative and compelling. Are these two topics “Unexpected?” In an academic class, perhaps. I have to admit I did not consider them as primary topics before this exercise. Finally, are the topics “Memorable?” You betcha. Given that, starting off the course with something more sensational made more sense than just diving into the text book and talking about the “criminal justice system” writ large.
Fortunately, I had just started watching a documentary series on Netflix called “The Confession Killer.” This is a story about convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. Lucas at one point confessed to over 300 murders. It is pretty tough to describe all the incredible moment and content in the documentary, and you should definitely check it out. Suffice it to say, the story is complicated, and touches on a lot of themes that I was hoping to cover during the semester anyway. Following the RUM Rule, it then made sense for the class’s first assignment to involve watching The Confession Killer. Because Netflix is a paid service, I also gave the free option of watching the PBS documentary The Confessions about the Norfolk Four false confession case. Not a serial killer, but still memorable.
The students were not only to watch one of these documentaries, however. In addition, they had to record all of the “WTF” moments that the documentaries inspired in them. By “WTF” moments, I mean moments in the videos where they stop and think “WTF is going on here??? Why is that happening??? How is this happening??? How is that possible???” And in both videos, there are plenty.
The reason for this is to get to students to engage in watching such films from an active perspective, analyzing and thinking critically about all of the content that is related to the course. Additionally, it was to provide a relatively easy entry into taking in course content. Learning without them realizing they are learning. Also, this fits in with their recommendations of what kinds of materials best facilitates their learning. Television shows and movies ranked among the top three methods of learning. Thus in this one assignment, we have combined their top topics with their top learning methods. We just reinforced that the recommendations they make in the course matter, and hopefully encourages them to participate more in the co-design process.
Another vital part of this first assignment is the ability to extract larger topics and themes from any materials they are experiencing. As part of developing this ability, I engaged the class in what I refer to as an Extraction Exercise. I ask the class at the beginning of the period what have they heard about happening in the world that is related to the course. For this class, the story of the day was NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown being arrested (but not before barricading himself in his house) for assaulting a moving truck driver and denting the truck with rocks after refusing to pay him for the delivery of his personal items. Great topic to explore the inner workings of the criminal justice system.
In asking the students, “What are the larger topics or themes we can extract from this story?”, it gets them to connect current events with macro-institutional features. Even though this is some weird story about a (former) NFL player having a confrontation with a moving truck driver, the students started to see the larger issues in the story:
And there are undoubtedly more. This is not to say that ALL of these themes were front and center in this story. But, like we discussed in class, it is better to start with having the right questions than the right answer.
The goal for the Extraction Exercise (you can download instruction here) is to have students actively and consciously engage in stories that they are naturally drawn to, getting them to connect those stories to larger course topics Additionally, we can see how some topics are more pervasive than others, as well as how we might be biased toward seeing certain topics in stories, but missing others. It is a way to directly connect what they are experiencing in their daily lives with what we are trying to learn through the course. And a fun way to do it at that!
Have other ideas or thoughts, please make sure to share them with the broader co-design community!