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Popular Nonfiction in the Classroom: A Mid-Semester Update

11 Oct

My class's apparent impact on Amazon: search for Ad Nauseam, get all of these results (the rest of our reading list).

Earlier this year, I posted about my intent to choose six popular nonfiction titles in lieu of a textbook for my introductory “Mass Communication and Society” course this fall, as inspired by Joshua Kim’s post at Inside Higher Ed. I followed through on the idea, and am now in the middle of the semester, about to select books for next spring. (Our textbook orders are due October 15 for spring 2011, which is frustrating when two books haven’t even come up on our schedule yet.)

Here’s the final list of books I adopted this fall:

  • Fame Junkies by Jake Halpern
  • Ad Nauseam by Carrie McLaren, Jason Torchinsky and Rob Walker
  • True Enough by Farhad Manjoo
  • Journalism in Crisis by Neal Cortell
  • Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
  • Republic.com 2.0 by Cass Sunstein

My 116 students in this course (no TAs, no discussion sections, two 75-minute sessions per week) have been assigned 50-75 pages of reading from one of these books per class session – a hefty chunk, especially for freshmen and sophomores. I’ve created a variety of tasks intended to support the reading, including a student-produced study guide for every session that’s posted on Blackboard, online “blog posts” on the Discussion Board that rotate among groups for every session, and small group “discussion warm-ups” in every class meeting, in addition to daily iClicker reading review quizzes. (You can see the whole syllabus here, which contains links to these assignments and their descriptions.)

So far, based on an anonymous, optional mid-semester SurveyMonkey class survey, just over 70 percent of the class says they have done either about three-quarters or all of the reading assigned. Sure, the survey respondents are probably the more motivated folks anyway, but I’m still hopeful about that result.

The students have taken to the books pretty well. Eighty percent “liked” or “loved” Fame Junkies; 77 percent liked or loved Ad Nauseam; but only 38 percent said the same for True Enough. They seemed to find the concepts from True Enough to be interesting during class discussions, but they struggled with the political anecdotes used as illustrations; they are too young to remember the 2004 election and the Swift Boaters, for example. Overall, our class discussions have been quite active (especially since I now have a grade linked to successful discussion, as inspired by a presentation I attended at the CSU Teaching Symposium in San Bernardino last spring).

For the spring, I’m planning on changing up the books a bit. Fame Junkies and Ad Nauseam will stay on the list, but I’m going to rotate in some newer books: Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload for journalism, I Live in the Future & Here’s How it Works for Internet/technology, and The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media for a bit more of a global and political perspective. I’m concerned that the students will struggle this semester with the density of Republic.com 2.0; Journalism in Crisis turned out to have a rather awkward structure, and the associated documentary wasn’t fabulous; and though I like Here Comes Everybody a lot, I Live in the Future also looks promising and is brand new.

I think the students are getting more out of this class than they did when I used the typical approach to this course, in which media industries are usually approached one by one and discussed in terms of their history, their current status, and a few of their possibilities for the future. Not only are students learning to read a different kind of text – something I feel will have value across for their future courses and their lives – but they are also being exposed to a great many real-world examples of media issues that they are going to encounter as media consumers and (for some) as professionals.

And I’m enjoying teaching the class a lot more. That’s never a bad thing. I’m giving up some of the structure I used to impose on classes through lecture with slides, devoting a lot more time to discussion and group work, and working in some of the media history and giving multimedia examples when needed. I can respond to questions in class much more freely in this approach than when I had, oh, 30 slides to “get through” in class and felt guilty if I spent too much time on questions and didn’t make it through the presentation.

I have more fun reading these books and teaching with them than I ever did with any textbook I’ve used, and if my enthusiasm can be contagious and help students also feel more motivated to ask significant questions about the media, then I’m thrilled.

Starting Out with the iPad: Reading

25 Aug

It hasn’t transformed my life. But some things are changing.

I got my iPad last week, a few days before the start of classes. I immediately procrastinated on finishing my syllabi by spending the better part of an evening setting it up with apps and files.

I’ll focus in this post on how the iPad has changed my experience as a reader so far, and follow up next week with a post about using the iPad in teaching after I’ve had a few more classes to test it out.

Screenshot of my Pulse setup; these are the first 3 of 20 feeds I've chosen.

News. I set up the slick Pulse app with feeds of local news from my local newspaper, the state news from the Sacramento Bee, investigative stories from California Watch, and a variety of other tech, higher ed, and knitting topics. (Yes, there is such a thing as knitting news.) These feeds, in combination with a perusal of the New York Times, BBC and AP apps, pretty much satisfied my morning news needs.

I experimented the first morning after setting this up by reading the newspaper after completing this iPad news routine, and found in it little I’d missed – the obituaries, letters to the editor, local lifestyle news. And, I can tweet an article from my local paper directly from Pulse without having to go to my browser, find the story (if I can), copy and paste the URL to Twitter, etc.

I am still debating whether I want to continue my newspaper subscription, but probably will out of loyalty to local journalism. That loyalty is still victorious over my desire to be more green. We’ll see how long it wins out.

Magazines. This one is an easier call. My magazine subscriptions are all going digital ASAP. As they expire, I’ll shift them over to the digital versions. I think almost all of my subscriptions are accessible digitally, and since most of them are digital replicas anyway, I don’t feel I’ll miss much besides the weight in my recycle bin. Even those I used to keep around – such as the occasional copy of Yoga Journal for a particular sequence, handy to have in print by the yoga mat – can be more easily stored and located on the iPad, which sits on the floor just as well.

Books. I bought one book on the iPad through the Kindle app. I am a heavy user of my local library, which efficiently brings requested books to my nearest branch. The free use of library books is much more appealing to me than the purchase of digital books from Amazon or Apple (especially for guilty-pleasure fiction I will never re-read). The one book I bought has a library waiting list of 600 people at the moment, so I was willing to spend $8 for the Kindle edition to avoid months of delay.

Using the iPad. I find it comfortable to read on the iPad, despite its weight and backlighting. I like that even with my severe myopia, I can make the text big enough to read without glasses – something I haven’t experienced comfortably since about sixth grade. The only challenge is reading on my dining table, where I have to turn the overhead lights off due to glare on the iPad’s shiny screen. Otherwise, I love having so much reading material on one device.

How has the iPad changed your reading experience? Am I the only one ready to end the print subscriptions, despite a lifelong love of print magazines? Please tell me I’m not the only traitor to the medium out there.

Managing the Professor’s Library

18 Aug

A trial run of BooksApp on my iPhone.

I recently searched my office bookshelves for two books I want to use this fall in a course. I know I owned them. I remember buying them in grad school. Then it hit me: I loaned them both to a student, and they haven’t been seen since.

After placing a quick Amazon order for replacements (sigh), I realized I needed a better system for lending books to students. I asked the Twitterverse for ideas. Here are some of the suggestions I received from those who have more wisely addressed the problem for their own libraries.

  • On the low-tech end of the spectrum, Janni Aragon (@janniaragon) suggested holding a student’s grade hostage – well, those are my terms, not hers. Her system is simple: she keeps a list of items checked out by students and tells them she will not post a grade until the books and/or articles are returned.
  • Similarly, Brad King (@Brad_King) keeps a collection of notecards documenting items students have checked out, and gives them a failing grade in his course if they don’t return his stuff. (These are great solutions for students in your courses, but I often work with students I am not currently teaching in a course, so they’re a bit more…elusive.)
  • For a short-term loan – say, a student needs to make a copy of an article or book chapter - Katie Johnson‘s (@KatieAJohnson) solution is terrific: have the student leave a piece of collateral behind, such as a phone or iPad. (I might run away with the iPad, though.)
  • Matt Thomas (@mattthomas) recommended a piece of Mac software called Books. It’s free and looks pretty snazzy. It appears to be transitioning into a new product called Codex that will also track a book collection. However, even Codex is now on hold, as its developer notes that iTunes may soon feature a book cataloging utility (maybe part of iBooks?).
  • Dave Childers suggests another software solution called Delicious Library, also for Macs. This software uses your webcam to recognize and catalog your books – and all sorts of other items you want to document in your office or household. You can even attach an item to a friend’s Address Book record to track who has been loaned what. It also interfaces with an iPhone or iPod, creates bibliographies (including in APA style!), and has a lot of other cool features. It does cost $40, but for a comprehensive solution, this looks to be a great option.
  • Finally, because I am rarely away from my iPhone, I also looked for an app solution. I found one called BooksApp that costs $1.99 and scans barcodes on books to record them into the library. It does track lending of books. My first attempt at cataloging with it went well; the barcode scanner is a little finicky, but works, and it’s a lot easier than typing ISBNs into the phone.

Any other suggestions for low- or high-tech solutions to this problem? Please share in the comments.

Choosing Textbooks for “Mass Communication & Society”

15 Apr

I didn’t manage to blog last week, and this week’s post is going to be a bit different; it’s probably most relevant to my fellow journalism and media educators. I’ve been struggling with the question of which readings to assign for my introductory course called “Mass Communication and Society” (admittedly not the title I’d choose), which is a course enrolling about 100 students per semester and that I’ve taught in various iterations at three institutions for the last six (six! wow – time flies) years.

Here’s our course description at CSU Fresno:

Examines the political, economic, cultural, and behavioral impacts of mass media in national and international contexts. Analyzes the historical factors that have shaped the structures, practices, and products of mass media industries, and assesses contemporary trends in media-society relations. G.E. Breadth D3.

That “G.E.” bit at the end means this is also a general education course that satisfies graduation requirements beyond just those of majors in our department – so the course needs to be of interest, and ideally lasting value, to students who may never take another media or journalism course.

The book selection project.

One of the biggest challenges for me in teaching this course has been choosing readings that are contemporary, interesting, well-written and thoughtful. I have skipped around among textbooks in my six years of playing with this course: from Media/Impact by Shirley Biagi when I taught at a community college, to Media Today by Joseph Turow when the course was required to have a more media economics focus, to The Media of Mass Communication by John Vivian in my first year at Fresno State, and then to Media Literacy by W. James Potter this year.

I’ve just never been satisfied with any of these books, though the Potter textbook has come the closest to fulfilling my hopes. I like its focus on timeless media literacy skills that will be applicable regardless of the evolution of media in the coming years, and I like its rather critical approach to media overall. But its writing style is not especially compelling to students, and it’s a bit heavy on media effects and employs a specialized terminology that I think overwhelms students, especially early on in the semester when that material is covered.

Inspired by this post by Joshua Kim at Inside Higher Ed, I started thinking more about how I could use popular nonfiction to bring both breadth and depth to this course, while also allowing myself a chance to catch up on major nonfiction relevant to my field that I could explore with my students. So then the question became: which books?

Given that incredibly broad course description, it might seem I could choose just about anything. But here’s the list I’ve come up with, and the rough order in which I might use the books this semester:

Look like a lot of books? It’s about 1,800 pages, which averages out to about 60 pages per class session (and only $59 for all used copies). I think it’ll be manageable, and all of these books are written in language that should be accessible to most freshmen and sophomores. I also like that most of these books have gotten enough public attention that I can find ample articles, videos and interviews online to supplement our class discussions.

Have a suggestion of a book I should substitute or subtract? A resource that would complement one of these? I’m looking forward to keeping this class on the cutting edge by exploring these texts next fall.

The Google Model of Library Use?

18 Feb

I’m not going to get a fully fledged blog post written this week – on what is normally designated my “blogging afternoon” on my calendar – because of a looming conference deadline, a laptop crash and piles of grading. So, this week, I give you some photos and some questions.

I recently picked up some books from the Henry Madden Library here on the Fresno State campus. I went to the stacks, which, like many libraries today, use compact mobile shelving – motorized shelves that move apart at a user’s command – in order to store more books in a smaller space. It looks like this:

So when you want to find a book, you find the shelves that contain the book’s call number, press the “move right” or “move left” button, and then wait while the shelves beep (too loudly, in my opinion) and separate accordingly.

However, the library offers us some specific directions for using the shelves, as seen below:

I completely understand having this sign from an efficiency perspective. Of course, library users should not prevent others from locating their books by dawdling in the shelves.

I wonder, though, if these shelves and this sign change the way that users perceive the library, and, by extension, the purpose of a collection of books and of books themselves.

We’re already in an age in which information is expected to be pinpointed at a moment’s notice through the use of Google and so forth. Now, students walk into the library, call number in hand from an online search at home; open the shelves; grab a book – and get out of the way, as directed.

Some of my best moments in college were those spent just wandering the stacks of my university library, looking for other books related to those I’d identified through the online catalog, finding connections to other disciplines and other texts that I hadn’t anticipated before I spotted other books in the stacks. I know that those experiences enriched my education and gave me a greater appreciation for other fields of study.

Is it unrealistic? elitist? old-fashioned? overly nostalgic? nerdy? of me to want a library to encourage students to have that same kind of exploration? Or perhaps it’s completely reasonable to limit somewhat those rambling book excursions, in the name of preserving storage space, providing more workspace for students’ collaborative efforts, and promoting efficiency in information retrieval. Maybe the Google model – targeted access to information, fast and easy – is adequate for libraries and students today.

I’m torn. But not so torn that I could stop taking these photos in the library.

…433 words – that’s pretty darn fledged. Oh, well. Back to work.

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