MADT 351: Global Media & Convergence
MADT 351: Global Media & Convergence
Embedded Files
Course Description
Course Description
The course examines media ownership, content flow and reformatting, international media policy, technological impact, and cultural values to investigate one of today’s most used and discussed terms: globalization. Lectures, readings, and clips screened in class explore how history (colonialism and international relations), industrialization (“First World” vs. “Third World”), political power (media imperialism), economics (media corporations and international distribution), and culture (religion, language, world view) shape contemporary communication systems worldwide. In doing so, we will examine international audience reception and national media productions to investigate the negotiations at play between local and global identities.
The course is an elective in the Media Arts Degree, Option in Criticism.
Course Modality
Course Modality
This is a fully online class that meets synchronously and also requires students to complete work outside of the class zoom meeting time. The course is organized in Modules, where students can access all material (lecture, readings, assignments, activities, videos, etc.). Students are responsible to watch the video lectures and complete all the required readings and screenings and reading report assignments before the live meetings on Tuesdays, as the discussion will be heavily based on each week's material.
When offered face to face, this is a flipped classroom where students are asked to complete work outside the classroom (before the class meets) and the class time is dedicated to experiential earning and hands-on activities based on each week's topic.
Elements of Course Design
Elements of Course Design
The course design focused primarily on building consistent (in terms of both content and style/aesthetic) modules that can provide student with all the course material needed for each week of class (lecture, readings, videos, links, assignments, class activities, and other resources). Each module offers a visualization of the topic discussed, a definition of that topic, a link to contemporary news that refer to the topic discussed, a lecture available if 3 formats (video lecture, PPT presentation, and lecture script), a links to the weekly reading report, and instruction for a group activity.
Student Engagement & Feedback
Student Engagement & Feedback
A key goal for the class is to increase student engagement by creating opportunities for both discussion and group work during each week/module. Each week students must turn in a reading report discussing fundamental aspect of the reading assigned (including the author's main argument, and an analysis of the overall purpose of the article. In addition, students much include 2 questions related to the reading and the lecture, and those questions are later used in the live zoom meeting to lead the class discussion. Students are more likely to get engaged if the discussion is based on their own questions. Students are also asked to contribute (voluntarily) to class notes for each week's topic, provided via google docs. Lastly, the instructor provides a midterm survey to collect student feedback and tweak the class according to the students' response.
Assessment of Student Learning
Assessment of Student Learning
Course Student Learning Outcomes
Students will be able to evaluate the industrial and cultural relations between foreign and American media.
Students will be able to write critically about global media studies and international communication theories.
Students will be able to apply principles of global media studies and practices of international distribution to current events.
Students will be able to utilize technology as a critical tool for analysis.
From year to year there are recurrent assignments such as quizzes and reading reports that allow the instructor to assess the students' ability to understand and evaluate readings and lecture. There are also weekly class activities designed to foster students engagement and experiential learning. Lastly, each year the instructor assigns a final project designed to assess students' ability to create a product utilizing technology applied to key concepts of global media and convergence. Below are two examples from two different final projects: the creation of a TV format (assigned in Fall 2018) and the creation of a digital story (assigned in Spring 2017).
Challenges
Challenges
A major challenge for this course was the ability to create class activities, related to the class topics, that could encourage students engagement outside of a F2F environment. Through zoom meetings and breakout rooms, the instructor can provide opportunities for students to interact in smaller groups, following clear instructions included with each activity. Some examples of class activities are listed below:
Compile a list of 10 contemporary news articles (properly cited) that address the major words included in a word cloud created utilizing the words from an academic article on cultural imperialism.
Explore current news media outlets and their political bias. Each group will explore one news media outlet (assigned through a lottery process), its organization, its sources of funding, and any other information that can help us understand its ideological agenda.
Explore issues (aesthetic, political, cultural, industrial etc.) related to the creation of subtitles in films and TV shows.
Make a short video of yourself and your partner discussing whether or not you think that the internet is a democratic space for everyone to have a voice.
Dub a short foreign clip considering the following elements when writing the new dialogue: the film's genre (make sure the dialogue fits the narrative conventions), the characters' body language and movements (the dialogue needs to match them), the characters' tone of voice (the dialogue needs to match it), he film's original cultural elements (which inevitably inform the dialogue), the timing of the dialogue and the lip synching.
These activities allow students to apply the concepts learned (through the lecture, readings, etc.) to more practical activities and/or contemporary topics.
Accessibility & Universal Design for Learning
I make my lectures available in three formats: video lecture (posted on youtube with available closed caption), PowerPoint presentation, and lecture script. This diversity of formats allows students with different learning preferences to access the lecture material in their preferred way, it provides accessible tools for students with disabilities (see photos above and on the left, a script to be used with a reader for visually impaired students, closed caption for hearing impaired students, etc.) , and it also offered students the idea to use the script as a basis for their own notes (see photo above).
QLT Course Design
QLT Course Design
Completing the QLT training allowed me to apply some key best pedagogical practices in my course, primarily related to stronger involvement in the learning and evaluative process:
I involved students in the creation of a rubric for the digital storytelling assignment. This process was done via a brainstorming session where students established criteria for evaluation and then we grouped those criteria in broader categories and decide how much each category should weight in the evaluation.
I created a midterm survey to collect student feedback about my course design.
I significantly increased in-class time for activities designed around experiential and active learning (by flipping my course and expecting students to complete specific tasks before the class and then building activities to test their knowledge and understanding).
Page updated
Report abuse