Pajka, Sharon, and Jane Nickerson. "Engaging Students with Videos in Integrated Learning Classes." The HUIC Arts and Humanities Conference. January 8, 2012. Ed. Derek Leong. Honolulu Hawaii: Hawaii University International Conferences, 2012. Print.

1. Engaging Students with Videos
in Integrated Learning Classes
2012 Hawaii University International Conferences
On Arts and Humanities Honolulu, Hawaii
January 8, 2012
Sharon Pajka, Ph.D.
Jane Nickerson, Ph.D.
Gallaudet University
Washington, D.C. USA

2. Focusing on Videos in Classes
• We plan to lead an interactive workshop that
focuses on videos students create in American
Sign Language that support the reading and
writing activities we do in our integrated
learning classes entitled, “Vampires: Their
Historical Significance in Literature, Film, and
Pop Culture” and “Multiple Lenses: Grappling
with Reality and Illusion.”

3. Experimenting with Engaging
Pedagogies
Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, and Whitt's (2006) "unshakeable focus
on student learning" encourages us to reflect on our
teaching strategies to ensure that we are
experimenting with engaging pedagogies and
challenging students to perform at high standards.
Gallaudet University –
• is located in Washington, DC
• is the only Liberal Arts university in the world for Deaf
and Hard-of-Hearing students
• allows teachers and students to focus on visual literacy

4. Enriching Student Learning in
Interdisciplinary Courses
• Newell writes that
the lens through which a discipline views the
world is its most distinctive feature, as the
incorporation or integration of disciplinary
perspectives into a larger, more holistic
perspective is the chief distinguishing
characteristic of interdisciplinary studies
(1992).
• We focus on literature, film, history, pop culture,
and other disciplines in our courses.

5. What is Visual Literacy?
• Teachers strive to communicate effectively to their students.
• Effective communication focuses on creating accurate messages
and interpreting those messages. Visual literacy plays a role in
communication.
• Visual literacy is the ability –
 to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information
in any variety of form that engages the cognitive processing
of a visual image.
• People “negotiate meaning by interacting with
messages” (Hobbs, 2008).

6. Visual Literacy

7. Reflection
• In what ways do you make your curriculum
visual?
• What do you add to your classes that inspire
your students?

8. Creating a Vampire Course
• Our first integrated course which is part of the
school’s Identity and Culture Learning
Outcome focuses on enabling students to
understand complex social identities, including
the deaf identity in the 1975 film Deafula, and
the interrelations within and among diverse
cultures and groups.
It is never just about the vampire!

9. Vampires & Critical Pedagogy
•Engages students in analyses of the unequal power
relations, and it aims to help students develop tools that
will enable them to challenge this inequality (McLaren
163)
•Classroom as a site for social change

10. Vampires- our focus
• Vampirism in verbal and visual culture
– Various historical periods and cultures
• Vampire lore-->rich focus for textual analysis
– Themes--death, disease, social class, & sexuality
– Reading & Film selections focus on vampires from a
variety of critical perspectives
• contextualize the works in the cultures that produced them, and
understand their influence on society at large

11. It is never just about the vampire!

12. Vampires & Student Engagement
Literature – Student lead discussions
– From Demons to Dracula
– “Carmilla” Sheridan Le Fanu
– “Dracula’s Guest,” Bram Stoker
– I am Legend, “Drink My Red Blood,” “No Such Thing as a Vampire,”
and “The Funeral” Richard Matheson
– “The Master of Rampling Gate,” Anne Rice
– 30 Days of Night (graphic novel)

13. Film Studies
– Nosferatu, 1922
– Dracula, (Bela Lugosi), 1931
– Deafula, 1975
– Shadow of the Vampire, 2001
– 30 Days of Night, 2007
– I Am Legend, 2007
– Let the Right One In, 2008
– “Hush” Buffy The Vampire Slayer

14. Reflection
• What texts do you use in your classes?
• What other materials do you use to enrich
your classes?

15. Deafula (1975)
• Peter Wechsberg writer, director, and lead actor
• Deafula is a film about the character’s two
identities: a Deaf man and a vampire in
disguise.
• After 27 people in town have been killed,
two detectives focus on the murders and
determine that Steve Adams is the killer.
• All of the characters in the film are Deaf and
use American Sign Language (ASL).

16. “I personally noticed a pattern of mirrors and
reflections in the movie. There are many shots of
these so I can’t help but feel it connects to Steve’s
identity as a vampire. My argument is that many
cultures have superstitions about mirrors, but often
one common theme among mirrors is that they
reflect our real souls, which includes identities”
(Craig).

17. “The thing that had the most impact on me was
Deafula. It is a cool film that shows how Peter
Wolf envisioned a Deaf vampire. Some of the
ideas in that film were clever such as the
religious aspects” (Baldwin).
(Amir)

19. Student videos - Deafula
• After students analyzed and discussed Deafula
in class, we ask them to remake one scene
from the film. Students have created some
interesting and new ways to look at Deafula,
including students in our most recent class
who created a prequel to the film, Deafula:
The Early Years, and had a young toddler play
Deafula. They posted it on You Tube for
everyone.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOMI5sBoaV8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOMI5sBoaV8

20. Student videos - Deafula
• Students in other groups created the following
videos and posted them on You Tube:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF5ZYKOjVR8, http://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=rua9A5k2SNM, and
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIeYEvVxYII.

21. Graphic Novel Assignment
• One other assignment for this class
engages students as it requires them
to create a graphic novel.
• After they read the graphic novel, 30
Days of Night (Niles and
Templesmith), and watch the film of
the same name, students create
their own story and illustrate it.
• One student utilized his graphic
design talents to use his scene from
Deafula for his graphic novel.

22. Deafula as a graphic novel

23. Writing scripts for
their short films
Students wrote short
scripts and created
“Interviews with a
Vampire.”
Randi pictured at
Gallaudet’s coffin door

24. Jan interviewed her “vampire” and created an
old time look for her film.

25. Doug is introducing his vampire interview.

27. Script writing, Producing & Filming
Making connections of current vampire portrayals to
those depicted in the past.
- Nod to the old
Produce short films using vampire themes
– Deafula Remake
– Interview with a Vampire
Analyze various forms of media with vampires
– Create Commercials

28. Achieving our Course Goals
In our course students who are engaged learners
– Understand complex social identities, including the
Deaf identity
– Examine the phenomenon of Vampirism in verbal and
visual culture
– various historical periods
– contextualizing the works in the cultures that produced them,
and understanding their influence on society at large
– Critically think about how they can create short films
using vampire themes

29. Reflection
• What kinds of films do students create in your
classes?
• What other interesting projects do your
students create?

30. Multiple Lenses: Grappling with
Reality and Illusion
• In our second integrated course, students
examine how people look through various
lenses as they view events. This course
focuses on the Ethics and Social
Responsibility student learning outcome
which asks students to make reasoned ethical
judgments, showing awareness of multiple
value systems and taking responsibility for the
consequences of their actions.

31. Different Perspectives
• After people witness events, what are
their interpretations of what
happened? Are we looking at reality or
are we seeing our own illusions?
• We focus on
– the Bystander Effect,
– the Rashomon Effect,
– Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950), and
– Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954).

32. The Bystander Effect
• Students in our class
– analyzed what the Bystander Effect means.
– created short videos about the Bystander Effect
which provide a look at how they view this effect
and how people who did not know they were
creating films, became part of the Bystander
Effect.

33. The Bystander Effect
• Washington, DC’s Union Station – Bystander
Effect Video – you have to see it to believe it!
• Their video can be seen on You Tube at –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPh_1Li9iEg.

34. The Bystander Effect
• In two situations, women stopped our young
male students from going into the wrong
restroom and in the last frame viewers can see
that the woman plans to lead our student to the
correct restroom. This confirmed their
hypothesis that women would be more likely to
help. Of course, this would have to be replicated
many times to be sure, but our students were
proud that they had created a situation in which
they could test on a small scale.

35. The Rashomon Effect
• We discussed the
Rashomon Effect, named
after the short stories by
Ryûnosuke Akutagawa and
the 1950 Kurosawa film in
which several people
witness a horrific event
and later when
questioned, all of them
had different versions of
what they had seen.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_em
bedded&v=xCZ9TguVOIA

36. Crash
• Students in this class also watched
several films that focused on ethical
decisions people make.
• Crash (Haggis) – is a film that forces
people to think about how a decision
made by one person can affect decisions
made by others. The situations in Crash
were all caused by a single car crash in
the beginning of the film which led to
viewers examining multiple situations.
• Racism and abuse of power – two main
themes

37. Main characters in Crash

38. Crash
• Detective Graham Waters (played by Don Cheadle) and his
partner are in a traffic accident at the beginning of the film.
The story then goes on to relate events that happened to
Detective Waters, his younger brother, other policemen, the
district attorney in Los Angeles and his wife, a television
director and his wife, a Persian store owner and his
daughter, and a Hispanic locksmith and his daughter. Each
of these characters would not have met had it not been for
the original car accident. The film’s twists and turns provide
lots of themes that students can discuss related to ethical
decision making.

39. Possible videos for future classes
• Crash is a great illustration of the domino
effect. What happens to one person, ends up
changing the lives of others. We may want
students to create films based on this movie.
• Voyeurism

40. Voyeurism
• Short story, “Rear Window”
(Woolrich)
• Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kCcZCMYw38
• Disturbia (Caruso, 2007)
• http://www.disturbia.com/flash_index.html
• Students love focusing on
voyeurism because they can
discuss lots of ethical dilemmas.

41. Rear Window and Disturbia

42. Caché (Hidden)
• Another powerful film
about voyeurism is
Caché (2005).
• A couple is terrorized
when they receive
videotapes of
themselves. They focus
on who has them under
surveillance. It’s a
thrilling film that
students never forget.

43. Learning Communities
• Focusing on various themes that look at concepts
from a variety of perspectives.
• Students at Gallaudet University focus on
– language and communication
– critical thinking skills
• First course -- students also focus on identity and
culture as they learn vampirism.
• Second course -- students focus on ethics and
social responsibility as they explore the themes of
racism, voyeurism, the Bystander Effect, and the
Rashomon Effect.

44. Reflection
• For our courses, we incorporate moviemaking
and focus on topics in which our students
already have a vested interest. Through this,
students enjoy learning while continuing to
improve their language skills.

45. Reflection and Discussion
What assignments do
you use in your
classes to make them
more student-
centered and
interesting?
How do you use films
in your classes?

46. Questions? Comments?
• Please feel free to contact us at –
• Sharon.Pajka@Gallaudet.edu
• Jane.Nickerson@Gallaudet.edu
We would love to hear from you!