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Back to Transmedia Storytelling: Narrative worlds, emerging technologies, and global audiences

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Transmedia Storytelling: Narrative worlds, emerging technologies, and global audiences by UNSW Sydney (The University of New South Wales)

4.7
stars
887 ratings

About the Course

Transmedia storytelling is the practice of designing, sharing, and participating in a cohesive story experience across multiple traditional and digital delivery platforms - for entertainment, advertising and marketing, or social change. Have you ever read a book, seen a movie, watched a television show, or played a game that centred around different aspects of a larger story or universe? You may be familiar with popular examples of such universes like Star Wars, Marvel, and The Walking Dead (to name a few). How do the professionals develop such expansive narratives? How do they ensure that each element stays true to the original story? How do they innovatively use different technologies to share the stories, grow audiences and create an active and involved community of fans? More and more, we are also engaging with elements or franchises of larger and more complex stories across a much more diverse range of platforms like interactive web experiences, social media communities, mobile devices, theme parks, and even augmented and virtual reality. A major challenge that current and future storytellers face is being able to engage different audiences in a story that is seamlessly told across all of these different platforms. WHAT WILL I LEARN? This course will help you to design a strategy for developing and telling your own transmedia story. You will learn about what it takes to: • Shape your ideas into compelling and well structured narratives and complex story worlds • Identify, understand, and engage different audiences in your stories • Create cohesive user experiences across different platforms • Evaluate existing and emerging technologies to share your story with the world, and help your audience participate in the larger storyworld you create The course provides you with a unique, authentic, and industry relevant learning opportunity. You will have access to current theory, industry examples and advice and undertake learning activities that will equip you with the tools you need to start developing your own ideas. WHO WILL MY INSTRUCTORS BE? You will learn effective transmedia design strategies from leading UNSW Australia Art & Design academics. You will also examine case studies that demonstrate how amazing ideas, technology and audience contributions can be brought together to create dynamic storyworlds. You'll see examples of major, successful transmedia storytelling projects involving movies, digital entertainment, gaming, virtual reality and more. In collaboration with our industry partner X Media Lab, the course will give you inside access to the personal stories, insight and advice of the following innovative transmedia storytelling professionals from Hollywood USA, Canada and Australia. • Susan Bonds, 42 Entertainment, Los Angeles, USA • Flint Dille, Screenwriter, Game Designer and Novelist, Los Angeles, USA • Cindi Drennan, Illuminart, Australia • Tom Ellard, UNSW Art & Design, Sydney, Australia • Catherine Fargher, Dr Egg Digital, Sydney, Australia • Hal Hefner, 3AM Creative, USA • Brian Seth Hurst, StoryTech, Los Angeles, USA • Henry Jenkins, School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, USA • Mikey Leung, Digital Storytellers, Sydney, Australia • Alex Lieu, 42 Entertainment, Los Angeles, USA • Geoffrey Long, Annenberg Innovation Lab, University of Southern California, USA • John McGhee, UNSW Art & Design, Sydney, Australia • Joseph Narai, Transmedia Entertainment, Sydney, Australia • Jeff Nicholas, The Uprising Creative, Los Angeles, USA • Sergio Paez, Graphic Artist working in animation, TV, video games, and film. Co Founder, StoryboardArt, California, USA • Steve Peters, No Mimes Media, Los Angeles, USA • Stuart Samuels, Stuart Samuels Productions, Toronto, Canada • Charles Santoso, Concept Artist, Sydney, Australia • Seth Shapiro, New Amsterdam Media, Los Angeles, USA • Scott Snibbe, Eyegroove, San Francisco, USA • Tracey Taylor, The Pulse, Sydney, Australia • Robert Tercek, Public Speaker, Digital Media Strategist, and Executive Leader for Creative Ventures and Business Innovation, • University of Southern California, USA • Kevin Williams, Founder & Director of KWP Ltd and DNA Association, UK • Brent Young, Super 78, Los Angeles, USA • Maya Zuckerman, Transmedia SF, San Francisco, USA COURSE CONTENT DEVELOPMENT Karin Watson, Iman Irannejad, and Dr. Simon McIntyre....

Top reviews

NT

Aug 15, 2021

Being someone who loves movies, this course has provided me deep knowledge about storytelling . the lectures were very understandable for a beginner. Hope to use this knowledge in future. :)

MP

May 23, 2021

I definitely recommend this course to all those who want to improve their creativity, their storytelling skills and learn to use different technologies to engage all types of audiences.

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1 - 25 of 299 Reviews for Transmedia Storytelling: Narrative worlds, emerging technologies, and global audiences

By Roberto N

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Feb 1, 2019

I expected more from the course, although I definitely learned something new, and a part of the contents helped me a lot to generate new projects. However, I realized that the same course is available for free on the UNSW website, I paid for the certificate, and it is only for completing the course. I am disappointed that I paid for the certificate. It did change a lot for me, I learn new and exciting things

By J-Man

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Feb 7, 2019

Although this course was thorough it felt very laborious very quickly. I understand the subject is complex but it really seemed like a large percentage of the start was hammering home the definition of the subject as apposed to teaching about it. I'm not sure I took much away from this course unfortunately despite the amount of great thinkers and obviously successful interviewees it had.

By Alberto V

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Jul 18, 2020

The high ratings made me think this would be a very interesting and exciting course but after 2 whole weeks it seems that they are just giving opinions and boring statements, nothing new or challenging.

Also, please lecturers, STOP mentioning Star Wars, it's a famous franchise but not a great story...

By Joyce S

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Mar 13, 2017

This was a great course. Well structured into the four areas you need to understand to build transmedia experiences. Loved the mix of industry stories with lectures.

My biggest bug bear is that ALL of the content is delivered via video. The transcripts are there, but they don't read well on their own. I would really love an eBook to go with this course for future reference.

By Oscar D

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Aug 28, 2017

Hi, I expected a feedback and follow up from the teachers. Finally, we as the students had to evaluate the works of the other fellow students. For the rest the content of the course is ok, but can be better, more practical focused and with some more didactic flow. We also can search for similar YouTube videos. Honestly, I expected more from this course. Best regards.

By Robert J B E

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Mar 23, 2018

Very engaging. I have not seen this level of interviewing before. It's very educational and intensive. But less so on the education side, more on the motivational one. -L

By Michael K

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Apr 14, 2017

This is a great course! Lots to think about. It turns out Transmedia Storytelling is a lot harder than you might think. It's not just branding across different channels. The course is clear, builds on itself from week to week, challenges you to think and write and then apply your new understanding as you grade your peers. You will have to come up with one storyworld idea you can run with for the four assignments. <brag>I got 97%!</brag>

By Emese K

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Sep 11, 2017

this is one of the best courses I have ever taken. So professional, helpful, insightful yet encouraging. Totally a must-take if you interested in content marketing.

By Harleen D

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Dec 10, 2019

Although it is a very organized course as compared to some other free courses I have attended, I found this course having the following issues:

-a lot of points, basic definitions and information keeps repeating unnecessarily throughout the course in almost all videos

-Each video and the whole course as a whole seems a little stretched and not to the point, even though the attempt is there, seeing the weekly concept headings.

-It is a little difficult to grasp the expectation of the assignments; some of the assignments I had reviews have been very well thought of, almost as if the students were already ready with their individual stories to full details (possibly students with their own professional writing background) , while some were quite vague and had an underlying idea correctly present. It becomes hard to judge them in one basis because of their varying experience.

I love the discussion prompt exercises and the readings available. It is quite an informative and helpful course to build your skills, know all aspects one should keep in mind while writing. I only wish it was a little more concisely put so one could finish things while still staying interested to carry on. That can only happen if it was leading us somewhere, which I found missing. Other than that, good experience.

By Kevin L

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Feb 16, 2019

I wish there were more on the basic thinking behind transmedia and less on the already aging technologies. This course needs updating already to stay relevant.

By Irene T

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Sep 1, 2024

The course helped me a lot to develop skills besides the writing of the story. Especially the way to use stories for social change and the analyzing of who my audience is where essential. I am in progress to develop a creative project to empower children. Children with a difficult background can gain strength through that. On the other hand, I want to raise awareness for educators, teachers, and parents. They do have a different experience than the children. The user' journey map helped a lot with this. So I gained valuable tools to put my project further.

By Martina D P

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May 24, 2021

I definitely recommend this course to all those who want to improve their creativity, their storytelling skills and learn to use different technologies to engage all types of audiences.

By Anna C

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Nov 8, 2020

Very entertaining and interesting course! I thought I wouldn't be able to do the project justice, but this course really encourages your creative thinking. Very good experience!

By Pablo S G L

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Jul 22, 2024

I Really enjoyed the course. It was very helpful. I have lots of books and papers to read deeply and investigate how to improve my future projects. Well done!! :)

By Kent V

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Feb 8, 2017

Generally, a good course.

The lectures and supporting talks were instructive, helpful, and inspiring. The instructors and industry experts were well chosen.

The assignments were pretty good. They provided nice constraints and freedom of expression to come up with ideas and think about how one might create and adapt a story world so that meaningful experiences can be had from it. The peer review process was good, but I would have liked instructor feedback as well (I suppose it is free for because of only being peer reviewed though).

By Consuelo M

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Jan 30, 2023

It was a great experience with lots of valuable information, but I have two constructive criticism points to give:

1) There's approximately an 80% male presence among academic instructors and interviewees vs 20% female and gender diverse persons. It's 2023. We need more diversity in Academia and in the creative industry.

2) This course needs to be urgently updated. References are from 10 years ago and many links are no longer working. As you may know, VR and AR technologies did not cause the revolution we all expected 10 years ago. It is important to update this with new trends and a fresh view of transmedia from 2023.

Thank you!

By Anastasia L

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May 12, 2020

I loved this course! It's been very useful for me to understand the dynamics of transmedia storytelling. For the project that I've been developing, this course allowed me to concentrate more on the audience, dig deeper into the audience research to adapt possibilities of the overall experience to evolve, which technologies to use and what could be successful to start with. I gained more clarity on how I want the project to move forward. Over the course, I learned more about some practical aspects - I think it's really useful to hear real life examples from the industry experts! Plus, the ressources given in the course give an opportunity to continue exploring transmedia topic and follow interesting thought leaders featured in the course.

By Daniel J V I

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May 8, 2017

it is a detailed course that help the learner to understand the power of transmedia storytelling for promoting merchandise, social causes and ideas. It help to understand many concepts of marketing used in the creation of transmedia campaigns for products and services, it has a huge quantity of examples and experiences shared by professionals in the field which help a lot to understand how the concepts are used in the real world, it has a huge quantity of reading and extra materials that let you understand more deeply any topic of the course, the course staff engage on the discussion of the forums and provide feedback on your forum activities. This is one of the best courses that I ever took on Coursera, totally recommend it.

By Robert K

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May 1, 2019

Great course, gives a first overview of the elements of Transmedia Storytelling. Interesting insights into the movie world of Hollywood as well as into other producers of contemporary media. The course has provided some ideas that i had not considered before after being 20 years in the Marketing and Advertising industry.

Very well structured content, easy to understand lectures even for students with non-English mother language. Loads of additional non-compulsory content for those interested in knowing more.

Entertaining and Educational lectures in manageable time consumption. Finally: nice certificate on my wall. First one from Australia ; )))

Course recommended!

By Alberto L A

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May 24, 2020

Definitely, the knowledge I got from this course has enriched my vision, it helped me visualize my own story in a new way. It brought my attention to some details and aspects I had not thought of before. I think I will continue to improve the storytelling and the planned sharing with the audiences my story is aimed at. The course has taught me a lot of new stuff on modern storytelling across several media platforms, on changing communications paradigms, and it has given me valuable insight into how this looks like in practice by listening to practitioners and leaders of the industry.

By Mariela d P R B

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Jun 9, 2017

This is an outstanding course and I highly recommend it to people who want to get familiar with the topic and also to those who want to start a career as a transmedia storyteller. The course structure is motivating and coherent (key concept explanations, interviews to a number of world leading transmedia professionals to learn practical tips and strategies, practical activities). Furthermore, recommended readings and sites are useful to complement the course material. Finally, there is a project for participants to apply their knowledge and creativity.

By Yann C

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Jul 4, 2017

I'm a storyteller, music and image maker with some experience in illustration and design. Technology has played a big part in what I do.

This course is an essential resource for anyone venturing into cross-platform storytelling.

The information contained in the curriculum come from seasoned professionals and invested academics. All of them are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in 2017 and reflecting on what the future of storytelling looks like.

I found plenty of ideas to help me draw a strategy for my own work, I highly recommended it.

By Georgina G

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Nov 21, 2016

This course is very good. After reading a few very good books con Transmedia, and taking a few courses on Transmedia related topics, I can tell this is THE course that has really made me think I can do it. It provides information, examples and advices to meet the requirements to build a transmedia world with meaningful and engaging experiences. After this course I feel I know how to move on with the idea of Transmedia I had in mind when I started the course. Thank you to all the excellent teachers and congratulations for this wonderful course!

By David A

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Apr 5, 2020

Super fun and educational course. I recommend this to anyone who is studying (content) marketing or in the storytelling business! I study content marketing myself and I see that this has given me a lot of insights.

By Noopur T

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Apr 27, 2020

Great Course. Love the inputs from all the professionals and the various tools and methods provided to the students to complete the modules. Very interesting and enriching. Thank you