2022 Q2 ICT-DM Newsletter

The BACCC’s ICT Digital Media Team extends its appreciation to all of our partners and stakeholders (ICT-DM program faculty and administrators, employers, industry partners, community-based organizations, and especially our students). Without your collaboration and participation in our work, we wouldn’t have these exciting outcomes and promising opportunities to report. The BayICT Partnership is modeling collaboration across the ICT-DM career education ecosystem. WASTC has announced the Summer 2022 vFDW’s with faculty professional development opportunities that span the entire sector. An increased focus on our digital media programs has resulted in new regional projects that prepare students for high-demand jobs in that half of the sector. Industry partnerships with Intel and Alteryx along with forward-thinking college partners have fueled the AIDA Regional Project. Last, but not least, we have more inspirational partner and student profiles to share – the “why” that keeps us excited about the sector and our BayICT Partnership.

Enjoy!

Key Takeaways

• We’re missing opportunities to connect mentors with students. We need a better mechanism.
• The annual cycle of internships vs. a year-round approach is more conducive to CC students’ ongoing need to work and study. We need a blend of internship/apprenticeship for paid OJT.
• There is a need to raise non-tech employer awareness of CC programs and talent
• Collect internships data and establish partnerships metrics

Next Partnership Meeting

The next virtual BayICT Partnership meeting is scheduled for June 9th, 4:30-5:30pm. At this last meeting for the 2021-2022 academic year, the objective is to set priorities for 2022-2023. We’ll share our current plans for the coming year and seek partner feedback to help us determine what will have the most positive impact on equitable student success.

BayDM Update

Virtual production is a game-changer for the film and television industry and is blurring the line between the Digital Media and the ICT (Information Communication Technology) sectors. Virtual production (VP) includes multiple phases and technologies covering film development/pre-production, production, and post-production with the goal of creating a real-time virtual scene using a game engine and real-life physical props and actors in front of a green screen or an LED wall. Virtual production creates the illusion that a scene is being filmed in a real-life location. By combining computer graphics (CG), motion capture, and real-time rendering with traditional techniques, production teams are already discovering they can achieve the director’s vision faster than ever before, and this is only the beginning. Think Disney’s The Mandalorian.

Bay Area community colleges are recognizing that virtual production is fast becoming an integral part of film, video, and broadcast pipelines, unlocking new doors for our students studying game design, animation, XR/VR, video, IT, and project integration and management.The BACCC ICT-DM team, with support from digital media faculty at six colleges, has submitted a Regional Joint Venture (RJV) proposal to design and implement a Regional Virtual Production Academy. The participating colleges will design a  Virtual Production model curriculum, based on the existing curriculum and make it available across the region through a collaborative program. The curriculum will include stackable credentials leading to an associates degree, and possibly a baccalaureate degree. Most importantly, collaborative programs require all curricula be offered online, allowing students within the entire Bay Area region equitable access and the flexibility to take required courses where and when they are offered to expeditiously complete their desired credentials.

Keycode Media Assistant Assistant Video Editor Curriculum Pilot

The BACCC has engaged KeyCode Education to support colleges with film/video production programs to help prepare students for those opportunities. KCE and the BACCC will pilot a capstone curriculum that teaches novice editors the soft and hard skills needed to become an Assistant Video Editor or a Post Production Coordinator using a Canvas-ready curriculum based on industry-standard practices and editing software, AVID Media Composer. 

This pilot program begins with the opportunity for Bay Area faculty to participate in a dedicated KCE Train-the-Trainer (T3) Certification Course, a week-long training program designed to prepare you to instruct and proctor KCE courses and the certification process. Faculty who participate in this training are also eligible to audit any of the courses on the KCE calendar to gain more insight on curriculum delivery or other areas of personal interest, excluding the engineering course.

Faculty who complete the T3 training can then apply to be one of the three pilot colleges to integrate the KCE ED201 Assistant Editor Essentials curriculum in its film or digital media programs. The program is limited to 3 colleges, for which the BayICT team will cover the annual license fee for the curriculum. Pilot success will be measured by enrollment during AY2022-23 and if goals are met, the BayICT team will begin to plan and support expanding and sustaining the program. 

To register for the T3 training, complete the interest survey and commit to attending before May 27th… 

Timeline

• Registration Closes: May 27, 2022
• T3 Registrants Eligible to Audit KCE Courses (online): May 31, 2022 – August 19, 2022
• T3 Course (synchronous online): June 6-10, 2022
• Post-T3 Survey: June 10, 2022
• Selection of Pilot Colleges: June 17, 2022
• KCE Support for Curriculum Integration: June 27, 2022 – August 19, 2022

For additional information or questions, please contact Olivia Herriford (olivia@baccc.net) for more information.

Digital Media Tech Talk

Be sure to catch out May 19th Tech Talk featuring A Deep Dive into Bay Area Digital Media: How DM Programs are Preparing Students for Hot Jobs! For this BayICT Tech Talk, we will be speaking with Visualization + Cinematics Artist / XR Lab Founder and Faculty Lead at Laney College, koina freeman, and Chief Academic Officer of Key Code Media, Johnathon Amayo, to share their experiences, advocacy, and contributions to our digital media programs.

AIDA Regional Project for the Bay

Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics for our students

Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (AIDA) technologies are a cornerstone of current systems design and implementation. There is a significant labor supply shortage projected in AIDA, especially at the entry level. The Bay ICT team has submitted an RJV project to fill this gap, leveraging industry-supported community college efforts in Arizona, Florida, and Southern California to create a model curriculum and professional development available for adoption, in whole or part, by Bay Area colleges.

This project will establish (1) a flagship college as an industry-supported AI Center of Excellence complete with stackable certificates and an AS degree for other colleges to model;  and (2) DA model curriculum to help colleges update their existing DA programs.  This approach will ensure programs teach what employers are looking for, and will include AI/DA professional development, model curriculum, support resources, and K12 / CSU pathway alignment.  Here is a great article that frames our challenge:  Forbes Blue Collar AI Article.

Participants and Roles

Flagship College: The flagship college will serve as a regional hub for AIDA curriculum and professional development. Laney College, with strong support from its faculty, deans, instructional vice president, and college president, is ideally suited to serve this role. Located in Oakland, California, Laney is the largest of the 4 colleges in the Peralta District. Laney is highly regarded regionally for the strength of its technical and career programs, and serves around 17,000 students per year.  Laney Dean Angel Fuentes was instrumental in developing the AI programs at Maricopa College  District in Arizona, one of the college programs we plan to model. We are happy to have him here with us now in the Bay Area!

Bay Area Community Colleges Consortium (BACCC): BACCC is comprised of the 28 California community colleges, in the 17 districts of the San Francisco Bay Area, serving over 400,000 students, 76% of whom are non-White. While each district is independently governed through a locally elected board, BACCC is focused on initiatives that have a regional scope, including the virtualization of labs and curriculum to enable remote learning at scale.

Participating Colleges: To date, there are 9 additional Bay Area colleges that currently offer, or plan to offer within the next year, AIDA instructional programs. These colleges will be invited to participate in the project and adopt a model curriculum, developed and maintained by the flagship college, for their own programs.

Activities

Curriculum adoption: Although standard curriculum approval processes can take over 2 years to fruition, model curriculum development and implementation can dramatically shorten that cycle. Laney has the first AI course in the program sequence well along in their process and anticipates catalog listing and pilot enrollment in Fall 2022. Full adoption of the Maricopa model AI For Workforce curriculum at Laney, combined with regional licensing through BACCC and virtualized deployment using Netlab, will expedite adoption by other regional colleges, and by our K-12 guided pathway partner districts.

Equity & inclusion:  There are many concerns with current AI technologies not being developed with equity in mind, consider facial recognition, and other biases like gender in AI!  We plan to implement an ethical AI curriculum to ensure future AI creation is responsible, ethical, and equitable.  This foundational curriculum will be designed for adoption across all disciplines, not just ICT.  We also will target non-traditional tech students via our marketing efforts.

Faculty Development: Professional development for faculty will be delivered through WASTC, our regional faculty training organization hosted at Diablo Valley College. WASTC produces major workshop events each January and June, along with additional workshops in between. 

Employer Engagement: BACCC is staffed with sector-specific teams to focus on employer engagement. For information and communication technology (ICT), the BayICT Partnership is the platform for this engagement. AIDA-specific activities will be included in BACCC’s ICT Sector Regional Director’s plans.  Intel, IBM, Google, Amazon, Alteryx, and AIEDU are partners currently involved.

Community of Practice: As an extension of faculty resources on BayICT.org, an interactive Google Group was created and linked. There are now around 300 participants, and AIDA topics will be seeded and promoted within the community.

Marketing and Recruitment: BayICT.org includes resources for students to better understand careers in ICT, and the instructional programs available at Bay Area colleges that will prepare them for these roles. This project will extend these materials for AIDA, similar to what was done for cloud computing, and will also include social media efforts that help propagate this content.

We are extremely excited about the AIDA project and what it means for the future of tech education in the Bay Area. Here is a link to the AIDA RJV . If you have questions or would like to discuss further please contact Wendy Porter at wendy@baccc.net.

Upcoming BayICT Partnership Events

Tech Talks

• May 19 – Tech Careers: Taking a Deeper Look
• July – Community College Professional Development (Faculty and Professors)
• August – BayICT-DM: The Student Experience

Cyber Security Summer Camps Jun 13, 2022 – Jul 29, 2022

INTRODUCTORY, INTERMEDIATE, AND ADVANCED CYBERSECURITY CAMPS

The Bay Cyber League (BCL), in conjunction with the Bay Area Community College Consortium (BACCC), is so excited to be back and offering IN-PERSON CyberCamps again this summer! 2022 Summer CyberCamps will be offered in-person for our Introductory and Intermediate level camps, and virtually for our Advanced camp.

https://www.baycyber.net/2022-summer-cybercamps