Press release
Helsinki 22.5.1996
HSEBA / Sanna Leskinen

The Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration is having the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the moment. The program consists of Multimedia and Telecommunications tracks. The courses are taught by visiting specialists in the field.

The students of the Multimedia track have recently finished their first project. The outcome is a compelling and engaging multimedia story "Navigare Necesse Est". The story consists of sound, graphics, animation and music all made by the students themselves especially for the project. "Navigare Necesse Est" is one of the first Finnish multimedia stories which can be viewed on the internet.

The Interactive Telecommunications Program is arranged for the second time at the HSEBA. The program is taught in English. The HSEBA is the only business school in Finland that offers telecommunications and multimedia studies as one of the minor subjects in Masterīs Program.

In addition to lectures and demonstrations the first course, Introduction to Multimedia Production, consisted of a laboratory project. In the project the students independently produced multimedia. A special character of this internet story is that the roles are acted by students and the surroundings of the story are natural. Also for its depth and diversity "Navigare Necesse Est" as an internet story is a forerunner in Finland. This is a story of love, of Anna and Otto, and of the great dream to build oneīs own boat and sail around the world in it.

In the beginning of the project the students were divided into groups according to their own special skills and interests. The story team put forward the project by planning the plot of the story, giving ideas for its content and writing the core of it. The material was then programmed for the internet WWW-pages and it can be publicly viewed on http://www.hkkk.fi/mmedia.

There are fourty students with diverse backgrounds participating in the course, all interested in working in the field of multimedia. They were carefully selected for the program. The teaching method of the course is different from the usual (Finnish) style. The courses are offered in intensive modules. A normal one-semester university course is shortened to three weeks of full time study and lectures are given five days a week. A great deal of the time is spent after lectures on independent work by the students in their own groups. Creativity and group work are essential skills in the working process.

The goal of the Introduction to Multimedia Production course is that the students would understand the impact of the technological revolution that changes our way of accessing information, learning and entertaining ourselves. The students will also feel comfortable using the newest tools and methods for producing multimedia. During the course students will become familiar with the fundamentals and concepts of digital multimedia. In this way the students can combine their newly learned multimedia skills with their previously studied specialties.

The professor of this course, Mr Tay Vaughan, is a pioneer in the multimedia industry. Vaughan is the president of Timestream Inc., a multimedia products design and development company based in California. He has produced multimedia for clients such as Microsoft, Apple and Lotus. Mr Tay Vaughan is also the author of textbooks for multimedia developers and producers. He is the editor of several magazines in the industry.

On Thursday 23rd May from 6 p.m onwards an open doors event will be arranged at the multimedia classroom of the Helsinki School of Economics. There is a chance to hear about the project, to see the story "Navigare Necesse Est" and meet the producers fo the multimedia project. The story can also be found on the WWW-pages of the internet, from http://www.hkkk.fi/mmedia.

For more information, please contact Arja Kinnarinen, phone 4313 726.