Entry #8

Part 4 of Teaching Tips promotes writing, active learning, and problem-based learning when generating assignments and activities in the classroom. In my blog entry this week, I’ll describe three activities that I’d like to try, based on what I read. Afterwards, I’ll lay out a couple of best practices that I witnessed from the many teaching demonstrations we’ve seen in COMM 702 so far this semester.

Class Activities/Assignments

Low-Stakes Writing

The first class activity I propose is a generally “low-stakes” writing assignment. It’s actually more of an on-going writing exercise, as I intend to have students keep a journal of mass media musings. Each week students will respond to a prompt that relates to what we’re reading and/or discussing in class. For example, in discussing journalistic controversies, we'll talk about privacy issues and photojournalism. In class we will look at some of these controversies. Then I will ask students to read an essay by photojournalist David Perdew, in which he describes some of the agonizing moral dilemmas he’s faced during his career.

The writing assignment requires students to answer the rhetorical questions Perdew poses in his essay, like, “do photojournalists serve their readers by running controversial pictures?” and “can journalists be accused of censoring or softening the news when they don’t run those pictures?” Unless students have experience in photojournalism, they should respond as consumers, not producers, of news photographs and video.

The assignment is low-stakes because the grade will be based on whether or not students complete the assignment and meet the basic requirements of the assignment, which are that the writing must address the questions posed and must be at least 400 words. How students answer the questions or the positions they take will not impact their grades.

The purpose of this assignment is, as Teaching Tips says, to help students process class material with their own experiences and opinions. In this case, they'll think more deeply about the kinds of images we see all the time in the news media and at least start to formulate an opinion about the role of photojournalism in society. The writings will deepen students’ learning without burdening them with anxiety about how well or poorly they write. They also help students prepare for a longer paper near the end of the semester. I can cite students’ views—anonymously, even—to jump start classroom discussions afterwards.

At first I was going to have students write a traditional journal that only they and I would see, but I was inspired by this course and the text to have students make their entries in a blog. To accommodate students who might feel anxious writing in the public domain, I will let students establish blogs under pseudonyms, so long as I know their real identities. This way we might even be able to look at blog entries as a class, without embarrassing the writers.

Peer Learning and Teaching

The second activity I propose is a small group assignment, in which students will work with 4 or 5 colleagues to present research on a relevant issue or event. I intend to have a list of issues and events that students can select, but they may also propose to research an issue or event of their own, subject to my approval. Examples of an issue or event could be the role that radio was shown to have played in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the evolutionary relationship between the music industry and the internet.

Groups will have to present what they learn in their research to the class, using PowerPoint or other visual aids. A paper need not accompany the presentation, but students will have to submit a references sheet. The purpose of this assignment is to make students responsible for investigating and then teaching course material. The students in the groups should learn their issue/event especially well. After all, in the words Teaching Tips uses to describe peer tutoring, in preparing their presentations, students must think about the material and make informed decisions about how to present it in their own words. There is also a discernible benefit for students watching the presentations: the book supports my own observations that classes tend to pay more attention to students’ presentations than teachers’ presentations.

To ensure as much collaboration as possible, I will spend time talking with the class about what effective groups do and how they can work cooperatively. The book lists several suggestions. Students will also anonymously provide feedback to me about their groups and group members.

The Case Method

Teaching Tips describes case methods as a type of problem-based teaching method that attempts to get students to apply knowledge and concepts in solving a problem or figuring out a particular situation. One case study I propose presenting will look at the effects of depictions of violence in the mass media on audiences. In small groups students will answer five questions based on brief excerpts from ten or a dozen different sources, including research articles into the causes of violence and news accounts of allegedly media-inspired violence. Before they read the excerpts, students will be asked about what they think they know about media’s links to violence. After they read the excerpts, students will be asked to analyze who is making the various claims and how those making these claims might benefit from their claims.

The purpose is to introduce students to media effects research and get them to think critically about research findings. It should also encourage them to reflect on their own views about depictions of violence in the media. Presenting the issues of media effects research and violence in the media through a case method should promote deeper learning than talking about these issues generally. The key difference, as Teaching Tips points out, is that the case method contextualizes the material to be learned.

Best Practices: Classroom Learning Activities

The most important thing when conducting any learning activity is for the teacher to know precisely what students are to learn and how, in their best estimation, the activity will result in that learning. If the teacher doesn’t know this, there is a high probability that the activity will fail. Even if it’s fun, most students will see it as pointless, or “busy work” designed to do little more than pass the time. The teacher must also share this information with the students. Telling the students what they will learn does not mean telling them exactly what facts they will uncover or opinions they might form. This, after all, could very well spoil the thrill of discovery and joy of learning. But students must generally grasp the purpose of the activity so that they will be motivated to participate fully and actively.

The second most important thing is to ensure that after the activity the class has at least a little time to review what was learned. This is useful in making sure that any students who may not have performed as well as hoped during the activity recognize what errors or shortfalls may have occurred, especially since students should be permitted to ask questions. Depending on the course and the activity, the review may also be the ideal time for the teacher to situate the activity into a real-world context, or at least reemphasize the applicability of the learning gained through the activity in another academic context.

In COMM 702, most of the teaching demonstrations have showcased teachers’ ability to design fun, relevant activities that do promote deeper learning of their material. However, mostly due to time limits, few of the teachers (including me) have spent sufficient time after the activity reviewing what was learned.

Links

While researching how to design writing assignments for large classes, like the one I will teach next semester, I came across this website from the University of Kansas’ writing center.

Lehman College offers some additional ideas for incorporating writing in class, including how to use Blackboard as a writing tool.