Journalism students media education within the framework of a film festival

The problem solved in this article is a description of the Ural Federal University Journalism Department students’ practical media education training for future professional work in the field of documentary filmmaking not only in the classroom, but also in a real media education environment - at the Open Festival of Documentary Film Russia (Yekaterinburg). The results of this activity are obvious: some graduates of the Journalism Department have become real professionals in the field of both journalism and documentary filmmaking. The article aims to describe the methodology of a pedagogical designing of a media educational program (in its practical plane - within the framework of university journalism education) targeted at teaching students the technologies of creating and analyzing screen documentary films. The aim is reached via describing the media education module “The Process of a Documentary Film Creating”; revealing the role of the film festival as a media environment that provides students with the opportunity to acquire new knowledge during observation and practical participation in festival events, as well as analysis of films and self-expression through media. Hence, the object of our study is the pedagogical design of the educational program for training documentary filmmakers at the Journalism Department, and the focus is the educational classroom sessions program implementation, on the one hand, and students’ participation in the Open Documentary Film Festival Russia events as a media environment for applying pedagogical design technologies to the above-mentioned program, on the other. Research methods are observation, analysis, synthesis, and description of practical procedures set. In the course of the research, the program of the module “The Documentary Film Creating Process” was examined. Its methodological novelty consists in a combination of traditional lecture forms and practical classes with independent media students’ creativity. All work was built in accordance with the ADDIE model of pedagogical design with its successive stages: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation. As a result, the described methodology allowed divorcing the template, monologue lecture form of communication “student - teacher”; replacing it with preliminary students’ preparation for work at the festival both within the framework of theoretical classes and in the course of their practical assignments related to writing scripts and filming of typical documentary films-sketches; establishing team work directly in the media educational environment; carrying out polylogue communication with festival participants, guests, and spectators; receiving new cinematic impressions; organizing the students’ individual media creativity; practicing new forms of activity so that each student can discover real prospects for their professional growth. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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