ISU Professor: Changing student television class to online will be a “huge challenge”

Posted on March 19, 2020
Students at Illinois State Universities’ TV-10 is meeting through Zoom. (Photo courtesy: TV-10/Facebook)

By Blake Haas

NORMAL – From on-air to online, one Illinois State University professor’s class will be a lot different in the coming weeks.

“The process of going to online classes is something that I’m honestly right in the middle of and still struggling with a little bit,” said TV-10 News Director Laura Trendle-Polus. “Teaching people how to do news stories in the video world you need cameras, you need editing equipment, you need a studio and a control room and that’s the way that we do it and that’s a challenge that’s a huge challenge.”

TV-10, ISU’s student-run television station, allows students to anchor, produce, and report on news stories, but moving to virtual classes will be a unique challenge.

“They (students) will be shooting (news stories) on their phones, they will be editing on their own laptops or computers at home. They will be sending the stories to someone who will then put them on our website or Facebook page. We are really going to ramp up our social media… We are just having to change everything that we did. Honestly, a week ago, I didn’t think that we could do it. I hope we can; I’m a lot more hopeful now.

For students like ISU Senior Grace Barbic, it’s frustrating to not be able to work with other students in hands-on experiences.

“Honestly, when I first heard that this was going to be happening, it was heartbreaking because I have worked really hard to get in the position that I am at right now,” said Barbic, who is an anchor and producer at TV-10. “Learning that we are going to go online is pretty frustrating being a journalist because a lot of stuff that we do is practical and requires interaction and face-to-face, so its frustrating right now.”

ISU will be only online classes for the remainder of the semester due to COVID-19.

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected]. 

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