What are three words you would use to describe yourself as a teacher?

Fortunate, enthusiastic, and student-centered.

In what ways do you connect various fields and disciplines in your teaching and/or classes?

One of the great things about studying communication is the fact that our discipline is situated at the intersection of the humanities, the social sciences, and the creative professions.

For example, I recently taught a special topics course titled “Media and Fascism.” As we explored this difficult and often discomforting topic, students were assigned readings that came from almost every shelf in the library. After studying historical examples of fascism in the early 20^thCentury, we considered what political scientists have to say about the formal definition of fascism, we mined the writings of psychologists such as Erich Fromm to understand the emotional appeal of authoritarian leaders, we adapted content analysis methods from the field of communication in order to analyze fascist propaganda, and we looked at the work of feminist psychoanalysts in an attempt to understand why fascists valorize masculinity while subordinating women.

What does inclusive pedagogy mean to you? How is inclusive pedagogy incorporated into your teaching?

For many years, college courses seemed to be organized around the assumption that all students were the same. All students supposedly thought the same way, cared about the same things, had similar experiences growing up, and wanted the same things out of life.

Recently, there has been a larger cultural awakening to the reality that students bring a diversity of life experiences, interests, and abilities to the classroom. Inclusive pedagogy is about creating multiple points of connection and reflection for all students.

Inclusive teaching is not about leaping to assumptions about a student’s background and interests based on externally visible characteristics. To learn more about students as individuals. I ask each student to fill out a detailed student survey between the first and second course meetings. Their answers to the survey give me a chance to find out about their background, their ambitions, their reasons for taking the course, and any anxieties they might have about material in the course syllabus.

At the beginning of each new semester, I scrutinize my course syllabi and think about the range of perspectives that are represented in the assigned readings. What voices are not being heard? I also try to do the same thing when revising my lecture notes and slides. In what ways can I broaden the range of examples to include more students?

Inclusive teaching practices are incredibly important, but it always feels like I could be doing more.

You teach one of the very few non-STEM Digital Literacy pathways courses (Interactive Multimedia Communication).

> How do you encourage digital literacy skills in your course?

> Why do you think it is important for Trinity students to be digitally literate?

> What are some of the specific digital literacy tools you use in your course?

​Every semester, I teach an interactive multimedia course titled “Mobile Gaming.” Many students enter the class with a huge amount of anxiety about their ability to program computers. They express confidence about multimedia production tools such as Photoshop and Premiere, but many have been convinced that coding is difficult and out of reach.

To tackle these programming-related anxieties, I assigned a DIY project that forces students to tackle an unfamiliar activity that is far outside of his or her comfort zone. So, if the student is a huge computer nerd who knows all about the latest digital devices, her project must not involve gadgets in any way. Or, if the student regularly creates his own costumes and props for cosplaying at fan conventions, his project should not involve textiles or costumes.

After reflecting on their own learning styles, students are asked to locate at least five different types of tutorials that will help them build out the project. They document their progress with screenshots, photographs, and video clips, summarizing their experiences in a succinct, three-minute class presentation and a linked blog posting.

As I recently mentioned in article about the mobile gaming class written for the anthology Coding Pedagogy, something almost always goes wrong when students are working on their DIY projects. The nails are the wrong size. Ants escape from the ant farm and invade the student’s dorm room. The glow stick recipe turns out to be an Internet prank. Tablespoons and teaspoons get mixed up in the bread recipe. Things go wrong, but the earth continues to spin on its axis.

The DIY project provides an ideal opening for talking about the role of failure in the creative process. We discuss the fact that things always go wrong when one is coding. The program won’t compile. An instance variable is used instead of a global variable. A function sets the Boolean variable to true when it should be set to false. A flipped ‘greater than’ sign accidentally creates an infinite loop, causing the entire system to crash.

One of the most important lessons that students take away from this assignment is the realization that it’s OK to make mistakes. Many also report a desire to tackle the DIY project a second time, modifying their workflow based on what went wrong during the first attempt. The second omelet will taste better than the first, the second bar stool will be less wobbly, and the second bedsheet dress will fall more comfortably off the shoulders.

Overall, the class seems to be a success, and I am regularly amazed by the creative imagination of our students. You can find examples of their games and animation projects posted at: https://bit.ly/gaming-arcade