Streaming Student Media

By James Baratta ’22, June 30, 2022

Students create a Roku channel for the Park School.

Professor Edd Schneider (pictured) taught a capstone course that allowed students to work on a Roku channel for the Roy. H Park School of Communications.

(Photo by James Baratta '22)

A group of communication management and design (CMD) majors embarked on a months-long project to create a Roku channel for the Roy H. Park School of Communications during the Fall 2022 semester as part of associate professor Edd Schneider’s Communication Design Lab course where a team of students used their design skills to develop professional plans that bring clients’ ideas to life.

Roku, a popular streaming app that boasts 60 million active users, has become popular among members of the IC community. It offers a variety of digital media players on devices compact enough to fit in a dorm room or communal den area.

Abigail Moore ’21, a CMD major who designed the channel’s logo and branding materials, expressed that she and the rest of the class had the flexibility of choosing what project they wanted to work on.

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You can download the Roy H. Park School's Roku app here.

“My team and I chose to develop the first-ever Park Roku channel given the rise in streaming popularity,” she said. “This project will always hold a special place in my heart.”

One of the reasons a channel made so much sense is the plethora of ready-made content. Each semester, students in the Park School produce hundreds of shows, films, and other projects. As a result, the channel features content from student-run media organizations and viewers can stream ICTV shows like “NewsWatch,” “Fake Out,” and “Next Player Up” along with browsing VIC Radio’s podcasts.

“I really like students to make things that last so they can come back five years from now and say: ‘That thing I made is still here.’”

Associate professor of strategic communication Edd Schneider

Jeremy Menard, manager of television and radio operations in the Park School, applauded the students for the hard work, energy and enthusiasm that they’ve put into the project.

“The channel is a great way to share their work with a much greater audience,” Menard said. “As ICTV's adviser and general manager, I'm excited to see the station's shows on a streaming platform, allowing more people to tune in regularly.”

Schneider, who is an associate professor of strategic communication, explained that although the channel is nearly finished, he and his students have been working to implement closed captioning (CC) to improve accessibility and hopes it will be completed soon.

“We have a student who has a Deaf Studies minor and is really interested in closed captioning, and he has been helping us,” Schneider said. “It’s an added bonus that the Roku channel has made opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration.”

And it was no easy task. The students created social media support, motion graphics, logos, installation guide documents, communications, and profiles of potential users. Some students wrote code while others designed graphics or applied for grants to cover expenses.

“Working on the Roku channel was meaningful to me because as a student and soon to be alum, being a part of something that showcases the immense talent that is coming from IC and sharing it with others in an easy and accessible way is pretty special.”

Chloe Choe ’22

“The fact that they did as much as they did in one semester is truly remarkable,” Schneider said. “I really like students to make things that last so they can come back five years from now and say: ‘That thing I made is still here.’”

Chloe Choe ’22, a CMD major who is interested in design and technology, remarked that her work on the channel gave her great experience for her future career.

“Working on the Roku channel was meaningful to me because as a student and soon to be alum, being a part of something that showcases the immense talent that is coming from IC and sharing it with others in an easy and accessible way is pretty special,” she said.