Centre for Digital Media students learn new technologies to solve problems

Most people have heard of virtual reality, which involves wearing a pair of goggles to enter a completely new world created through computer wizardry. Visitors to the Vancouver Maritime Museum, on the other hand, are able to experience something called “mixed reality”.

It’s part of an interactive exhibit created by the Vancouver-based Centre for Digital Media and Haley Sharpe Design to add a more realistic dimension to stepping into the St. Roch display. Centre for Digital Media director Richard Smith told the Straight by phone that there’s a real steering wheel and a real cabin at the museum.

“But when you look out the windows [of the ship], you’re actually looking at video screens,” he said. “And when you’re turning the wheel, you’re obviously not turning a rudder. You’re turning a thing that controls the screens on the computer.”

The display simulates what it must have been like to be on the RCMP schooner as it travelled through the Northwest Passage. The popularity of exhibits like this in museums is just one of many examples of how the digital revolution is transforming the world around us.

Techies can become caught up in designing software or video games, driverless cars, wearable devices, and artificial intelligence. But according to Smith, digital technology is also bringing about huge changes in conventional industries such as transportation, construction, health care, and banking.

It creates fertile employment opportunities for students in the Centre for Digital Media’s master of digital media program. Smith said that 95 percent of the graduates find jobs in their fields “almost immediately”.

He pointed out that many digital-education programs focus on “production techniques”, including coding.

“We recruit students who have those skills but we’re trying to add the management, the creativity, the team participation and leadership, the communication, and the conveying of ideas,” he said. "It provides way more opportunities for gender balance and for equality and inclusion." 

Smith noted that this year, there are more women than men enrolled in the master's program. That's because the Centre for Digital Media doesn't just recruit techies. Moreoever, the faculty isn't just a boys' club, either.

Created along Great Northern Way as a partnership between UBC, SFU, BCIT, and Emily Carr University of Art + Design, the Centre for Digital Media offers a hands-on program. Students work on interdisciplinary teams, learning new technologies to solve problems for small and large businesses.

Smith described the Centre for Digital Media as “the research and development department that you can’t afford” because its students perform this work as part of their studies.

“Students who come to us really need to be interested in making things more than writing about them,” Smith said. “Getting students involved gives them a great experience because they’re not just building something that already exists. They’re building something that never existed.”

All students must have a bachelor's degree to be admitted. According to Smith, one-third of the program is along the lines of traditional graduate seminar work and two-thirds involves working on big projects in teams for "clients", which are really more like "mentoring clients".

"They take an active role with the professor in making sure that the student experience is a learning experience," he said.