The Interactive Documentary as a Project-Based Coding Class

In lieu of an abstract, here is the chapter\u27s first paragraph: Interactive documentaries offer the opportunity to integrate the traditional media form of film/video with coding and other skills related to new media production, including usability analysis and information architecture. Interactive media production is dependent on not only technical skills, but also design and storytelling; an effective website designed for a company or non-profit not only conveys information but also weaves together a narrative about the organization. Given this overlap between storytelling and new media texts, introducing interactive documentaries into the new media classroom is an effective pedagogical approach. It provides media students with the opportunity to take video skills possibly learned in another class—although my version below doesn’t assume that—and apply them to the new media environment, introducing the important concept that content can be divorced from a particular medium and distributed through a variety of platforms. This paper will describe how the process and requirements of creating an interactive documentary can be used to structure an intermediate web design course