I did all my research, checking out schools and different programs that appealed to me after completing a 3 year E-Commerce Management course at Sheridan. More importantly, I was looking at what was affordable to me. Once again Sheridan seemed like the winner over Humber or Mohawk which both had similar programs but were charging more than Sheridan’s.
Funny enough, at that time there was no courses for Web Design at any college.
When I had first signed up to Sheridan for E-Commerce Management, I had wanted a course specifically to teach web design. Although I was self taught since I was twelve, I knew there was much more to learn. Funny enough, at that time there was no courses for Web Design at any college. I looked and looked and was disappointed at every corner. A year after, there were plenty of them, but I was already on my way in E-Com at that point. While E-Commerce did have web design courses, 3/4 of them were teaching my classmates what I had already learned years before. After I completed E-Com, it was my web/programming teacher that suggested that Interactive Multimedia would be a good place for me to learn new things beyond what she was allowed to teach me in her courses. That pretty much sealed the deal for me; I applied and was accepted for the September start of Interactive Multimedia.
The Breakdown
IMM is a two semester course that runs from September to April, with first semester courses being: Web Authoring 1(WA), Application Development 1(AD), Web Design 1(WD), Multimedia Pioneering 1(MP), Audio Video 1(AV), Project Management 1(PM) and Visual Design(VD). With second semester courses being the second year version for each course and Visual Design being replaced with Motion Graphics (MG). Now all courses are not created equal and they aren’t weighted as such. WA 1 & 2 and AD 1 & 2 are all weighted higher than the others, with WA being more than double at 5 credits.
But before we go any further, let me explain what my classmates were like. The class was pretty much split down the middle with half being programmers and the other half being designers, with a few people that were more specialized in one area like Audio/Video. Everyone was pretty much looking to be more well rounded, with programmers wanting to learn how to make things look pretty and designers wanting to learn the programming back end to the design programs they had used for years. With the courses listed above, it seemed like that’s exactly what we would learn.
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
For designers, learning a programming language is difficult, made worse by the fact that you are learning multiple languages at once. It’s too much packed into too little time. Web Authoring in semester 1 & 2 teaches the back end of Flash, Action Script 3, while Application Development 1 & 2 teaches SQL, PHP, Asp.net and C#. Teachers also factor in. One programming teacher was great, but never available, while another was just plain odd.
There is an odd instructor, he is a unique individual and he teaches in a unique way. He jumps around the room, sings, sometimes does acrobatics…and you would think, “Wow that sounds cool, I bet he’s really entertaining”, except that you have to learn complex programming techniques from him. His teaching style sometimes makes it difficult to learn from him. Although he was always around to offer help, since his courses were weighted higher than any others, you needed to do well in them.
Another quirk that our class found frustrating was that one teacher only wanted new ideas for projects. Take for example our phone application, our teacher would not accept any ideas he had previously seen before. This meant he said no to helpful applications that now actually exist like a Tim Horton’s Finder, Transit System Maps, Level and Voice Memos. I went through 6 different ideas with him before he finally accepted one and I know other class mates went through even more trials with him. The end result was a lot of cell phone apps that no one would ever use, like “The Chocolate Milk Finder”. Something else to point out, none of our cell phone applications would actually work on real cell phones because we designed them in programs that cell phones didn’t support.
I think the most telling moment in Audio Video was when our teacher got one of our own class mates to teach for him.
Then there was AV; I think the most telling moment in Audio Video was when our teacher got one of our own class mates to teach for him. Cory was our year’s video master; he could do crazy and amazing things that impressed everyone. He also knew both video programs inside and out, something that was clearly not the case with our teacher who wasn’t familiar with the latest versions of the programs. After a few weeks of Cory offering tips to him from his seat, he took the podium and taught us how to create different effects with text in After Effects. I’m sorry to say that Cory was a better teacher in this instance, because he listened to the students and went slower when we were getting lost. He also went around the room and helped everyone with their projects, something that I appreciated since I had never used any video program before.
Multimedia Pioneering is the B.S course that every program seems to have at least one of. This course was broken up into guess speakers, field trips and “assignments” aka blog posts. Speakers included Wayne MacPhail: Social Media Guru, James Eberhardt: Cell Phone Technology Guru, Simon Conlin from Flash in the Can and Vincent John Vincent: President and Founder of Gesturetek. Some of the guest speakers and field trips were interesting and showed us where technology was heading.
However that wasn’t always the case. One field trip took us to the ROM. Our speaker explained that as charities, Museums use out dated technology because that is what is available at a cost they can afford and we spent as much time in the dinosaur exhibits as we did with our speaker. The other part of that field trip was a visit to Steve Mann’s workshop. Steve is an inventor who was very interested in cyborgs and technology for years until recently when he decided to create musical water sculptures. At the end of the day we all wondered where the “Multimedia Pioneering” part came in. To me, listening to a speaker and then writing a blog post about it for marks seems a little bit like a waste of time. Maybe once or twice a semester but it certainly shouldn’t have been full course that lasted two semesters. Most of the students would have been happier having a work period for one of our other courses.
Web Design, Visual Design, Motion Graphics and Project Management were all great courses. The teacher was excellent and always available to offer help if we needed it. He taught us useful tips for making our work look more professional like altering the curve of our flash animations and how if you keep text moving even in tiny ways the viewer’s eye will follow and stay drawn to it.
Project Management was unique in that your final projects were to create something for a company in the real world.
Project Management was unique in that your final projects were to create something for a company in the real world. It can be a fantastic opportunity, like one group who developed a desktop video player for TVO, who hired a few of the group members at the end of the year. Or it can be a waste of time, like the website that my group developed for a Midwife company, who stopped communicating with us half way through the project. It’s unpredictable…some companies will say one thing and do another. Everyone gets two companies though, one in each semester and the teacher makes sure that everyone gets at least one portfolio piece out of it.
In terms of the work environment, our class room was excellent. Everyone had their own dedicated machine with all the latest Adobe Creative Suite Programs installed on it. We also had a smaller private lab room to use and a green room. Our primary classroom was always available to us, 24/7 with our key cards. Our class size was approximately 25 at the beginning of the course and down to 21 by the start of second semester.
What It All Comes Down To
Currently I’m working in the same job that I had before I took this course. Only now I’m full time and the job has grown to include more design elements than it previously had before. The problem I found was the industry is looking for people with more of a programming background than I have and more than I personally learned in IMM. Some of my classmates are struggling to find jobs while others are flash programmers and are doing amazing things for themselves.
But 90% of those people looking to hire are looking for flash experience, both front and back end.
One thing that IMM does do to help you get a job is hold an open house at the end of the year. Industry insiders, companies and IMM Alumni are all invited. What you show people at the open house could get you a great job. But 90% of those people looking to hire are looking for flash experience, both front and back end. To do incredible things in flash you need both aspects and it is very difficult to learn the back end of flash in this course without the proper experience in programming.
One other caution to you, make sure you are prepared to work your butt off. In second semester especially, it’s not uncommon to have 16 hour days. We even had a few people who slept in our classroom over night because they too exhausted to drive and were afraid of not being to wake up the next morning.
It all comes down to what previous knowledge the student had before coming into the class. If you have a programming background then this course could launch you into doing some pretty incredible things. But if you’re a designer, or your skills are specialized in Video or basket making, this course isn’t for you.
(3 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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