Help me be a better college instructor

October 18, 2006 1:38 PM

They say good teachers beg, borrow and steal from one another, so I'm asking you for ideas. I'm teaching a college-level reporting and editorial writing class this spring. I've taught it before, but I'm looking for new and creative ideas to make things interesting. I'm also looking for some techniques to ward off/prevent bad habits--I've had problems in the past with students pushing the attendance policy, and problems of the "but I e-mailed my paper to you! You didn't get it?" variety.

We've done some fun stuff in the past--tours of the local newspaper building and newsroom, tours of a local tv news station. I've found a breaking news simulator/CD rom that's also pretty cool. I'm looking for new ways to approach lessons on finding story ideas, leads, interviewing techniques, piecing stories together, etc. I'm also looking specifically for editorial-writing lesson ideas.

My solution to the "but I e-mailed my paper to you!" problem has been that unless they get a confirmation from me that I got their assignment, they can assume I didn't get it. That's seemed to work. Any other ideas?

I'm not sure what to do about the attendance issue--the school's policy is that if you miss more than three sessions of a class that meets weekly, you get an F. I've had to fail one student in the past because she absolutely pushed it. Any ways to help avoid this? I suppose I can make the class so awesome that nobody would ever want to miss it, but I also suppose I could grab them by the backpacks before class and force them to come as well. Frankly, I've been pretty taken aback by the lax attitude some students have had.

I can have the local paper delivered to school so we can use that for a weekly tool. I try to keep things interesting with a healthy dose of humor and stories from my own experiences. Any other ideas? For those who took such classes in the past, what kind of assingments/exercises were memorable and what actually stuck with you and worked?

posted by printchick to education (13 comments total)

Require that they submit all papers to you in hard copy. No exceptions. They should be able to make it happen—anyone who says they can't is blowing smoke.
posted by limeonaire at 1:43 PM on October 18, 2006

Class should be interesting, but you are not there to entertain them. You are teaching them to write like a reporter. If they don't have the motivation to come when it is costing them $, fail them. Make it very clear the first day.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 1:48 PM on October 18, 2006

Yes, some students will not make it to class for reasons of personal motivation/inability to get their act together in college for one reason or another. It doesn't have to do with your teaching. I was this way in college with some classes I *loved* -- I just couldn't get up for morning classes, no matter how much I liked them. You just need to make it do-or-die for them to come, and then be willing to actually penalize the ones who don't come. (Though it's always nice to let them withdraw without penalty if it looks like psychological issues prevent them from making it to class.)

And seconding the all-papers-in-hard-copy suggestion. Make it so they can log papers in with the department front desk and get them time-stamped by the secretary. Another option is if your school has something like Blackboard course software, that package has a way for them to turn in assignments through it. If you want to accept electronic submissions, that's a good way because it puts an unalterable timestamp on the assignments, and I believe they get a confirmation from the system.

Give them the firm impression up-front that you are a totally no nonsense prof. You won't take excuses or b.s. from them, because their bosses in the journalism trade won't. Most students will respect this and bring up their performance level as required. The ones who aren't able to do that, the ones who think they're still in high school where they can just fart around, will benefit from a wake-up call.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:00 PM on October 18, 2006

I am not a prof, but was a student for many years. Like LobsterMitten says, it's better to be very firm up-front than to give the impression that you're lax with the rules. Explicitly lay out the ground rules in the syllabus and stick to them.

One of the best (and most reviled) ways to encourage class attendance and participation is to incorporate heavy student-teaching assignments - student presentations or group work that is scored by their peers. Give a pass/fail grade on completion of the scoring sheets. Of course, this may not work for larger class sizes.
posted by muddgirl at 2:11 PM on October 18, 2006

as discussed in a question yesterday (about a student who seemed to try to forge an email send date), i would suggest that you use a special email for assignments that provides an auto-response whenever something is submitted, and make it the student's responsibility to see that such auto-response has been received (or to take steps to resolve it or resubmit the work)...an automatic response is best to prevent the time lag between submission and confirmation...also, given that it is a writing class, you could set up a bulletin board where assignments can be posted (for all to read, even)...not many excuses can be given for an 'unreceived' bulletin board posting--the confirmation is instantaneous...

it sounds like you are excited about the subject, so your worries about entertaining students should be minimal...you should perhaps emphasize that since it is a college-level course, the students have real-world, college-level responsibility...many students will live down to your expectations if you set them (or enforcement) too low...

...and as an adult student taking college courses when i can, i can tell you from experience that when you get students who are really interested in a subject and want to be there, you risk disappointing them and their ambitions if you are too accommodating of students who simply don't care about the subject or who don't bother to show up regularly and on time...at college-level, the student who doesn't want to bother is already lost to you, and i say you should put the bulk of your effort into cultivating the minds of those who seek it...
posted by troybob at 2:12 PM on October 18, 2006

For the sake of U.S. democracy, please teach them that writing down what people say and putting that in the newspaper is not journalism. This story:

"Bob said the sun rises in the west. Critics countered that it actually rises in the east. Who can say which view is correct? Not us at this newspaper, that's for sure."

is the mainstay of corporate journalism today. If you are teaching them that, please shoot yourself. If you are teaching them to report *what is really going on*, which is informed by but not at all dictated by what people tell you, then pat yourself on the back.
posted by jellicle at 2:16 PM on October 18, 2006 [2 favorites]

Probably obvious, but assign them to interview another person in the class and write a profile of them based on that. Then let the person interviewed critique it. Nothing slams you in the face more with how easy it is to make a factual error than to let its subject tell you ("But you said your brother's name was Shawn!" "But it's spelled Sean!")

It leaves you with a rich respect for getting the damn facts right, once you see your own precious details mangled by another.
posted by GaelFC at 2:48 PM on October 18, 2006

They might be a pain to make, but a daily news quiz going toward their final grade might help attendance.
posted by starman at 3:17 PM on October 18, 2006

I attended journalism school, and I can tell you the policies of my particular school did wonders for my work habits, and have continued to inform my reporting. In our introductory newswriting class, there was a strict policy about factual errors: any error, including a misspelled name or arithmetic error meant an immediate F on that article. No exceptions. Furthermore, spell checking was disabled on all journalism lab computers, to ensure all students carefully read and edited everything they wrote before turning it in.

As for deadlines, they were simple: hard copy of the assignment, turned in at the beginning of class, or no credit for the assignment, no exceptions. The rationale was, deadlines are immutable at newspapers: you don't turn in the story, it doesn't get printed.

The other thing that did wonders for the class, in my opinion, was a requirement to get work published in local papers a certain number of times per semester. There's a lot you can learn in a classroom, but nothing, nothing teaches like the experience of overcoming discomfort at interviewing strangers and writing about what you've learned and observed.

I can't stress enough that learning journalism, in my opinion, should be as much like doing journalism as possible: hard and fast deadlines, unforgiving dedication to accuracy, and actually getting out in the world and talking to strangers and observing real events. Without that, a journalism class is at best forgetable and at worst a bad foundation for real reporting.

As such, many of the non-freelance assingments for the class were in-class newswriting exercises. The instructor has a set of events and names, and the class takes the part of the reporter, asking questions of the instructor (who may play the role of a information officer or spokesman or somesuch). Only what they learn from the interview can go in the story, and all facts must be accurate. The story is written in a limited amount of time (10-30 mins or so), and due at the end of the class session. This was a fantastic learning tool, and help drive home exactly what made reporting different from just writing. Assignments were graded on content, and news style (and of course accuracy).

The last thing that was very helpful in the newswriting classes was an informed critique of news coverage from multiple sources. Read the same story in the PA version, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, see how they wrote the exact same piece of news. It's especially eye-opening if you can see as much of the primary source material (press conference, news release, interview transcripts, background info), to compare it to the finished product.

If I had to pick the one thing that's stayed with me most from my first days of j-school, it would be the experience of writing in news style, with less than 15 minutes time from frist word to turn-in. That, really, was the best preparation for work at a newspaper.
posted by Eldritch at 3:19 PM on October 18, 2006 [1 favorite]

To second the last poster, deadline, deadline, deadline. Worked great for me. I would do something that kicks off the class - have a guest speaker, show them live news footage, etc - and then force them, in class, to turn in 500 words on deadline in 15 minutes. Give a critique, live of the freshly written work and show them that good is great but decent and fast if okay too sometimes.

I also favor the "drop them in a van with blindfolds at a random locale, take them to a location and give them 30 minutes to find a story and write about it" approach
posted by rileyray3000 at 5:48 PM on October 18, 2006

My wife is doing a library science course, and the way they handle the assignment stuff is to have an online sumbission system (it also doubles as a way for students to chat as it's mainly online). She submits assignments online, and it records the time/date,etc. It's up to the student to submit the work and make sure it goes in OK.

If you need to do it by email, you could set up an autoresponder that emails them back to say "submission received at 23:11, 9th october" or similar. Tell them to assume that if they don't get that (with the usual caveats on spam filters, etc), then it may not have got through.

And you should tell the students this: "look, an editor ain't gonna accept crappy excuses for missing a deadline. It's up to you to meet the deadline and make sure that it gets to the person who needs it."

Here's an interesting idea for a project: give them an spectacularly boring press release and ask them to generate three story ideas from that. Encourage them to think laterally: what angles can they take on the news in the release, and what does the release inspire them to write about?
posted by baggers at 6:52 PM on October 18, 2006

I have taught a Practical Journo 101 type class for six years. I would second most of Eldritch's comments above.

The biggest favor, the most useful lesson I can offer the college students I see today is to reproduce real-world conditions as best I can.

That's why I have written a detailed four page syllabus that includes all of the rules -- all of the excuses they have used throughout high school and college that will not be effective in my class.

I warn everyone repeatedly during the drop-add period at the beginning of the semester that my class is unlike any other they've taken. I encourage them to drop the class if they do not want to be subject to Real World Rules.

Then I reduce their grade for every class they miss without a written doctor's excuse. I reduce their grade for every day a paper is late. I do not accept papers via email without prior permission granted in person.

I make them write at least four real stories with real sources I help them find. To do this, I give them my number and encourage them to contact me. I talk them through the roadblocks and the panic attacks.

I also do in-class exercises where we go from interviews to a feature lead and nut graf in one class. I bring in speakers and make them summarize (and pick out quotes) from a 15-minute speech, which they write out and hand in in class.

Some students can't hack it, even though they were warned. They get Fs. Others flower, and go on to work in the field.

I have had numerous students thank me later for caring enough to push them. I have stopped being surprised by the number of kids who tell me no one has ever demanded the best from them before.
posted by sacre_bleu at 8:34 AM on October 19, 2006

Start with something small but difficult Hold up a pencil and ask "What's this?"

Long pause, until someone tentatively says "It's a pencil."

OK, tell me something about it.

Long pause, until someone says, maybe, "It's yellow."

Send someone to the blackboard to write that down and all the following statements.

When you get 10 answers, ask, "Which of these makes it a pencil instead of something else?"

It'll probably be none of them, other than maybe "You can write wth it." But then ask about a pen.

Show how difficult it is to say even the simplest things without ambiguity, picking just those details that produce a clear mental picture.

Read them the first half page of A Farewell to Arms, showing Hemingway's mastery at this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Tell them that it's their responsibility to get their assignments to you, not yours. Every email program lets the sender get a confirmation that the message has been delivered, and another that it's been read. Say that's the only acceptable proof that the email was sent.

Tell them they're in college now, studying adult material, and they will be held to adult standards. They get 3 cuts, but after that it's an F. If they need to miss a 4th class, they have to clear it with you in advance, or in an emergency, by the date of the next class.
posted by KRS at 1:42 PM on October 19, 2006