DLS-CSB Admin Blog

MMA Roller Coaster Ride

It was a roller coaster term, 1st Term SY 06-07.

MMA Curriculum Review
MMA had to review its program offerings by asking each track within the program to present their track objectives, best practices, problems encountered, and proposed solutions.

It was a long climb in that coaster ride which started 2 terms ago and ended last term. 15 tracks all in all presented:

• Art Foundation
• Art History
• Natural Sciences and Arts
• Photography
• Computer Aided Design and Visualization
• 2D Animation
• 3D Animation
• Video
• Graphics Design
• Interactive Authoring
• Web Development
• Sound Design and Production
• Multimedia Business
• Multimedia Production
• OJT

Each track has a volunteer leader that coordinates the curriculum development in the program. What have we learned in the review?

1. We must aim to provide focus for the students as they go through the many (multi) disciplines in communication (media). Focus is provided during the last 3 trimesters in the students' stay in MMA. This is done by way of doing a 2-term multimedia production project of their interest coupled with 3 elective courses that will enhance their skills and knowledge in that discipline. With the development and eventual approval of the new programs in SDA, namely, Animation, Photography and Digital Film Production, MMA will try to focus on interactive authoring and graphics.
2. Since not all of the students who enroll in our program are good in freehand sketching, we must create a program that will make our students like drawing (some of them hate it). Hand drawing is still a great skill that all artists and designers should try to hone. Drawing skills takes time to develop and as such, MMA need to introduce this course early on in the curriculum; 1st Term 1st Year. This should give the students time to enhance their sketching skills that was not fully-developed during their elementary or high school days. This means that the design foundation courses of MMA would need to be mixed with the General Education subjects for the first four terms.
3. A lot of our students are weak in their writing, speaking skills. We need to work on this more, any suggestions?
4. Our Academic Advisers met also and identified the need to create an intervention program for our students who need some “clinic” sessions for their courses. We are going to tap our MMA teachers to help in this program which is similar to what the College is doing for some General Education subjects. We hope to lessen student failures in this manner starting next term.
   

There are a lot more which MMA is trying to address which might not be the concern of the whole College. These are uphill struggles we are trying to work on for MMA to become a program we can all be proud of.


MMA Winners and Program Milestone
On the top of the coaster ride, we have had several winning sprees with the animation short of Nelson Caliguia Jr. and Jayson Confesor’s “Doodle of Doom”.

Emerson Reyes, director of the award-winning short video 'Ikot' (produced by Gian Mayo), won 3rd Prize for the Gawad CCP’s Experimental Video Category,

Love Nakagawa's short video 'Ngiti' won 2nd Prize at the Cinemadali National Competition sponsored by the Committee on Cinema (headed by Dr. Doy del Mundo and Director Peque Gallaga).

Ryan Vergara got the First Prize "Ako 1". This is his third time to win in the same competition after his double win last year (two First Prizes).

Our graduate, Jeff Tan, had his directorial debut with the film “White Lady”.

It was a milestone for us to be able to get Mr. Ronnie Del Carmen (Pixar’s story animator) and Mr. Tony Gloria (Producer and Director, UNITEL Pictures) to become part of our “Board of Advisers” in the program. We are hoping that they can help us in the coming terms as we push forward to becoming a world class program.


Some Downhill Battles
In the roller coaster ride we just had last term, we did have downward plunges we are trying to arrest.

It is still difficult to look and maintain MMA teachers for the program. New teachers had to be loaded the same 9 units as those seasoned teachers with very satisfactory evaluations both from the students as well as their peers.

We do need more space to move around and be more creative. Since the move to the new SDA building has been reset to next school year, we are now trying our best to squeeze in new ideas in small spaces. Our students and several of the faculty members of the program went to Singapore to attend the CG Overdrive Convention (http://www.cgoverdrive.com/) where we listened to computer graphics giants: Shuzo John Shiota, Ikuo Nishii, Carlos Baena, Andrew Gordon, Dayne Cowen, Robert Chang, Feng Zhu, Stephen Unterfranz, Michael Conelly, Daniel Martinez Lara, Daniel Gregoire, Marc Tan. We likewise visited 2 schools; Temasek Polytechnic (http://www.tp.edu.sg/) and First International Design School (http://www.fids.sg/ceo_message.htm) while in Singapore and saw how Multimedia Arts programs are being run in Singapore. We are eagerly waiting for the opening of our very own SDA building.

The downward motion only prepared us for an upward thrust. I hope you enjoyed MMA’s roller coaster ride.

posted by Unknown @ 1:59 PM