Course redesign

I am revamping my courses for the next semester. First up is media interpretation and criticism. I just submitted a course redesign grant (fingers crossed), and here it is, in all its glory

Introduction

Media Interpretation and Criticism is offered by the Department of Communication. It is listed in the common curriculum within “Understanding the Arts and Literature – Visual Arts, Music, Performance and Aesthetic Production.” It is also one of the foundational courses for the major in communication. Students who complete the course should:

1. Understand how media texts are constructed.
2. Interpret media texts, applying communication theories regarding aesthetics, interpretation, and criticism.
3. Understand the role of ideology in shaping the creation and interpretation of messages, and the role of messages in shaping ideology
4. Use visual, rhetorical, and technological means to produce media texts.
5. Recognize the role of active audiences in using media messages to construct meaning and personal identity.

The course redesign incorporates Media Interpretation and Criticism into the Trinity Food Project, “a coalition of students, faculty, support staff, and administrators at Trinity University, provides an inter- and multi-disciplinary lens through which to explore the numerous issues surrounding food” (Trinity Food Project, 2012). Media Interpretation and Criticism supports the TFP’s goals through its combination of theory and practical experience.

Proposed changes

Media Interpretation and Criticism covers two areas: (1) Visual storytelling and graphic design, and (2) theoretical approaches to media interpretation. These components support the goals of the course, and will remain in place. The proposed changes address the following: (1) exploring theories of media interpretation through the lens of food, (2) providing practical experience in graphic design, data visualization, and visual storytelling.

Food as an exploration of theory

For the purposes of this course, media interpretation is a purposeful activity, which is informed by theory.  This includes semiotics, rhetorical analysis, queer theory and other approaches that students can use to examine media content.  In the redesigned course, students will be exposed to a key text (for example, Hall’s The Work of Representation), and will be given additional readings that illustrate the concept(s) through food. The following table provides some examples (see bibliography for full citation):

Topic	Primary readings	Additional readings
Graphic design/visual storytelling	Dick – Selection from “Film, space and image”	Kaufman, Debbie does Salad.
Meaning making (representation)	Stuart Hall, The work of representation	Kniazeva, M., & Belk, R. W.Retzinger, J
Ideology	Mittell, Screening America	Mohrfeld, J., & Leverette, M
Gender	Trujillo (hegemonic masculinity)Ott & Mack, feminist theory	SwensonParkin
Queer theory	Ott & Mack, Queer analysis	To be determined
Race / ethnicity	Ewen & Ewen	Deck
Postmodernism	O’Donnell	Miles

Assessment will be take place through two types of activities.

1. Low stakes assignments: Two pass-fail assignments will assess student mastery of the material. First, students are expected to contribute regularly to an online discussion group, where they can share insights and examples that illustrate core concepts, or add to ongoing discussions. They will also complete a series of guided reading responses, whereby they receive two to three questions about the reading, or are asked to deconstruct a media text applying a concept they have read about. These assignments are to be completed outside of class.

2. Theory rage comics: Rage comics are web comics that can be generated easily online. They are commonly used to tell stories. However, comics can also support other learning goals in this course. In this assignment, students will create rage comics to illustrate key concepts within theories covered in class (e.g., encoding/decoding). Students will deliver a 10-minute presentation explaining the concept through the comic. A short 3-to-5-page essay will also be required.  The essay explains the concept, and review contemporary examples of its application in scholarly work.  This assignment will be further developed in Deconstructing Food Advertisements, as it lays the basis for a literature review.

Food as a practical introduction to graphic design and storytelling

One of the goals of the course is to introduce principles, tools and techniques of graphic design and visual storytelling. These activities help students become more aware of the constructed nature of media messages, by creating their own content. Students will complete the following activities:

1. My food poster

Students will document their eating habits for a period of seven days. They will then create an 11 x 17 inch poster illustrating their food/beverage consumption, including information about the nutritional value of food and/or its origin. A short essay detailing their creative decision-making process will accompany the poster. This activity assesses student grasp of graphic design principles (e.g., rule of thirds, contrast, affinity, repetition). An additional benefit might be greater self-awareness about food consumption, nutrition, eating habits, or food sources.

2. Delicious peanut butter & jelly sandwich commercial

Media interpretation and criticism introduces visual storytelling. In the past, the course’s final editing project has been the creation of parody trailers of popular films. In the re-designed course, students will be working in groups to create a 30-to-60 second video that applies a theory and/or concept from the course to an advertisement for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. An alternative version of this assignment would have students create a slide show using power point or keynote. This version will be used in the event of scheduling conflicts and/or equipment availability issues.

Deliverables include: (1) A complete storyboard detailing various shot sizes, locations, sound design, and camera movement, (2) the video itself, and (3) An individual paper detailing the creative process (decisions, technical requirements, difficulties, and suggestions for dealing with common problems). This paper must also explain how theory informed the video. The PB&J project assesses students’ grasp of theory, and their ability to apply principles of graphic design and visual storytelling, including shot composition, basic editing techniques, including the rudiments of sound design. For communication majors, this lays the groundwork for more advanced production courses. For non-majors, it reinforces an awareness of the constructed nature of media.

3. Deconstructing food advertisements

This assignment introduces students to textual analysis, which is a common method of media interpretation. In textual analysis, we are asked to look at the media from a theory-informed perspective, in order to uncover the dominant reading of a text.  Textual analysis also considers the contexts of production and distribution of a text. The textual analysis will assess the following: (1) grasp of theory and ability to produce theory-informed criticism, (2) critical thinking and argumentation, as students must provide evidence as to why they believe their interpretation represents a dominant reading, (3) information literacy, as students must expand their understanding of theories discussed in class through their own research, which will be presented as a short literature review.

Timeline

Jan 16 – Class starts
Feb 8 – You are what you eat project
Feb 28 – Theory rage comic
March 8 – Delicious PB&J project pitches
March 28 – Deconstructing food advertisements
April 10 – Delicious PB&J Storyboards
May 10 – Delicious PB&J videos and papers
Low stakes assignments are ongoing.

Selected bibliography

Deck, A.A. (2001). “Now then – who said biscuits?” The black woman cook as fetish in American advertising.  In S. A. Inness (Ed.) Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race, pp. 69-93. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Ewen, S & Ewen, E. (2008). Tablier Rasa. In S. Ewen & E. Ewen, Typecasting: On the arts and sciences of human inequality (rev. ed). New York, NY: Seven Stories Press

Hall, Stuart. The work of representation

Kaufman, Debbie does Salad. The Food Network at the Frontiers of Pornography

Kniazeva, M., & Belk, R. W. (2007). Packaging as Vehicle for Mythologizing the Brand. Consumption, Markets & Culture,10(1), 51-69. doi:10.1080/10253860601164627

Miles, E. (1993). Adventures in the Postmodernist Kitchen: The Cuisine of Wolfgang Puck. Journal Of Popular Culture, 27(3), 191-203.

Mohrfeld, J., & Leverette, M. (2008). Imbibo Ergo Sum: New Belgium Brewery and the Myths of McEmpire (Joint Top Paper). Conference Papers — International Communication Association, 1.

Retzinger, J. (2010). Spectacles of Labor: Viewing Food Production through a Television Screen. Environmental Communication, 4(4), 441-460. doi:10.1080/17524032.2010.520020

O’Donnell, V (2007). Postmodernism. In V. O’Donnell, Television Criticism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Ott, B.L & Mack, R.L (2010). Queer Analysis. In B.L. Ott & R.L Mack, Critical media studies: An introduction.

Ott, B.L & Mack, R.L (2010). Feminist theory. In B.L. Ott & R.L Mack, Critical media studies: An introduction.

Parkin, K (2001). Campbell’s soup and the long shelf life of traditional gender roles. In S. A. Inness (Ed.) Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race, pp. 50-67. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Swenson, R. (2009). Domestic Divo? Televised Treatments of Masculinity, Femininity and Food. Critical Studies In Media Communication,26(1), 36-53. doi:10.1080/15295030802684034

Filed under: Assignments, Courses, Assignments, course design, Courses, pedagogy

Mentoring with blogs

I began experimenting with blogs in 2005, as a way to promote collaborative writing in the classroom. I have to say that my first experience was a case of unbridled enthusiasm for technology, but I was utterly unprepared for what would happen. I had bought into the notion of the digital native, that mythical creature that is practically born with a silver keyboard in his or her hand, and that can seamlessly float from one technology to the next. Needless to say that this experience taught me a lot about how people think about and use technology. It’s not as simple as people like Marc Prensky make it sound.

My first attempt was in a remedial writing class. I was an adjunct, teaching at Ave Maria College of the Americas (now Ave Maria University – Latin American Campus) in San Marcos, Nicaragua. I wanted a way for students to post quick responses to simple questions, so that they could practice their grammar and spelling. What I did not expect was that my students would get bogged down by the technology, which became a distraction that took attention away from the true goal of the assignment. I never tried it again with that course, even though I taught it every semester I was at AMCA.

My next foray went slightly better. In fact, I started this blog because of it. I modeled my blogging assignment after Danielle Stern’s portfolio assignment, a version of which can be found here.  I also decided that if I was going to use a blog to mentor students as they made sense of course content, I should be writing as well. I started producing mini-essays, which used multi-media examples to illustrate course content. All of them are filed in the “class notes” category of this blog.

There are problems with this approach, though. You have to be very selective with the videos you include, because even though blogs make it possible for us to write with multimedia, we have no control over YouTube. Copyrighted content might be perfect to illustrate a point, but it is also likely to disappear. So now, I’m actually thinking about going back and cleaning house. The other issue to think about is the public nature of blogs. I may choose to make my writing public, but my students’ privacy needs to be protected. At a minimum, they should have a choice in the matter. That said, it is easier to protect student privacy when everyone is contributing a “centralized class blog,” rather than using the “hub-and-spoke” model (see Mark Semple’s post). I can create the blog as a private space when it’s centralized, but I can’t guarantee that in the “hub-and-spoke.”

That leads me to my current thinking about blogs. Part of it was inspired by Mark Semple’s entry on Professor Hacker. The other part came from reading about research diaries. First, I really liked the idea of creating different roles for students, which is something that Semple discusses. I find that it is a good way of giving them experience in different types of writing.  I adopted Semple’s roles (first reader, respondent, searcher), divided the class into teams, and created a posting schedule for them. I also created a rubric for the assignment, all of which can be accessed here.

I also became interested in using a research diary . The benefits diaries have been extensively documented, especially in terms of their value for the professional development of teachers (e.g., Jarvis, 1992). However, diaries can fulfill similar functions for researchers. They are a tool for reflection (Borg, 2001; Janesick, 1998). Borg specifically discusses several advantages of research diaries. They establish a record of project development, document past ideas and their subsequent evolution, help organize procedures, and document decision-making (p. 171). As I envisioned it, the diaries would also support collaboration among students.  They were expected to read and comment on their peers entries, and were encouraged to share sources, insights, and tips.

In terms of classroom management, the diaries helped me keep track of what students were doing, which allowed me to step in at the appropriate times, rather than waiting for their project’s conclusion.  The assignment description is available here. Since the assignment is still ongoing, I can only offer some preliminary thoughts as to its assessment:

1. Making the diaries into a relatively low-stakes assignment made a difference. Students contributed very detailed entries.

2. Modeling portions of the research process and sharing my own experiences as a researcher may have also been beneficial. It set the tone for the blog, and it may have reduced the level of stress that comes with assignments in general.

3. Students used the comments feature of the blog to brainstorm, provide feedback, and share resources. Peer reviewing has been ongoing, judging from what they have documented on the blog, and also by what they have expressed to me during office hours.

I am still trying to find ways to improve these blogging assignments, and I am thinking of adding some kind of an exit interview  if I decide to repeat this project. As it stands, their final reflection is a built-in tangible assessment of the experience, but I feel short interviews would be very beneficial for me, as the person who designed this assignment.

Anyway… work in progress.

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Works cited:

Borg, S. (2001). The research journal: A tool for promoting and understanding researcher development. Language Teaching Research. 5(2), pp 156-177.

Janesick, V. (1998). Journal writing as a qualitative research technique: History, issues, and reflections. Qualitative Inquiry. 5(4), pp. 505-524.

Jarvis, J. (1992). Using diaries for teacher reflection on in-service courses. ELT Journal . 46(2), pp. 133-143

Filed under: Courses, Pedagogy, Technology, Assignments, Blogging, pedagogy, research

Portfolio Assigments: What’s the point?

I have been reading some of your blog posts, and realized that I need to post the criteria for the assignment on this blog. I noticed that most of you are not discussing concepts from the course. Please bear in mind that the discussion of concepts is part of the grade.

I’ll add to this that you should feel free to edit your blog posts at any time, so if you haven’t discussed a concept because you weren’t thinking about that, you can always revisit the post later. So far, I’m really pleased with the quality of what I’m reading, and with your enthusiasm for popular culture. Now you just need to take it to the next level, and if you’re wondering why, all I can say is that the best writing about popular culture happens when the author brings in more to the table than his/her opinion.

Here are the criteria for the assignment (based on Danielle Stern’s portfolio guidelines… kudos to her!):

A portfolio is a collection of artifacts — documents, articles, video, etc. —, and reflections about those artifacts. The purpose of the portfolio is to illustrate, support or contradict the key ideas explored throughout the course. You can find these ideas in lectures, discussion, readings and videos. Whatever catches your attention can be your springboard. Examples can include statements such as: “There could be no mass culture until there were masses” (Macdonald, 1962, p. 13), or “Jon Stewart makes cynicism attractive; indeed, he makes it profitable” (Hart & Hartelius, 2007, p. 263).  Bear in mind that the most important aspect of the portfolio is not the artifacts, but your reflections, what you think about as you read, or what comes to mind while you’re watching a youtube video that just reminds you of something discussed in class, even if you can’t quite peg what that something is. If it bugs you, explore it, but remember: What is important is how you use the artifacts to answer questions like:

• What does this artifact say about masculinity/femininity?
• How does this artifact explain the relationship between popular culture and consumption?
• How does this artifact help us understand the role of social networks in American politics?

These are only examples, but there could be more questions that you can come up on your own.

Here are some examples of artifacts:

• Description of a scene for a television program, video clip, video game.
• Link to a photograph, cartoon, drawing, or illustration.
• An article from a magazine, newspaper, etc., of an excerpt from it.
• Information from a relevant website.
• Quotes from well-known individuals.
• Entries in Wikipedia. However, bear in mind that you should find at least one credible external source that backs up the Wikipedia entry.
• Screen captures of a twitter feed, online game, Facebook feed, chat.

Please make an effort to find and post examples from a variety of sources and types, as this will be taken into account when I evaluate your portfolios. Your portfolio must include a total of 20 artifacts. 10 ARTIFACTS WILL BE PART OF YOUR MIDTERM GRADE. The portfolio should include the following types of posts:

• An introduction stating who you are, what your interest in popular culture is, and what your overall goals for the course are. Please use the blog’s “about” page for this entry.
• Personal reflections (minimum one post per week), where you analyze popular culture artifacts in light of the concepts we discuss in class.
• Reflections on classmates’ entries (minimum one post per week). The purpose of these reflections is for you to use the blog as a virtual forum. Hence, you are expected to contribute at least one entry per week that expands on something one of the blog contributors (including the instructor) has posted. If you post the comment directly on the contributor’s page, make sure you copy and paste it as a new post on your own blog (for ease of grading).
• Final reflection (one entry at the end of the quarter – due 11/12/09 by 5 pm.). The final entry summarizes the key insights you have learned from this process. You should review your previous posts and course materials in order to produce this final entry. The final reflection should be approximately 500 words in length.

I recommend that you make it a habit to post on your blog weekly. Otherwise the point of the assignment, which is for you to reflect on the material as we go along, is completely lost. If I notice that people are not keeping up, I reserve the right to take 5 points off for each late posting. I will give feedback and assign grades to portfolios on two occasions: Oct 13 and at the end of the quarter. Your grade will be based on the following criteria: (1) You present a variety of sources and artifact types (at least 2); (2) The artifacts and reflections are relevant to the course, and you present sufficient evidence to support the connection; (3) The artifacts and reflections identify key concepts from the course; (4) less than 3 spelling and grammatical mistakes; (5) the reflections are at least two paragraphs in length.

Filed under: Assignments, Courses, Pedagogy, Popular Culture in America, Assignments, Courses