Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with university and class

What topics should be covered in a "new media" class for journalists?

Lownotes — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:22:12 -0800

What topics should be covered in a "new media" class for journalists? I am putting together a class on "new media" for journalism students at the university level.

I am a journalist with lots of experience in the field of convergent/Web 2.0/new media - and that's why I'm asking the hive mind to help.

This class will be a companion to The History of Journalism, and will probably be listed as The Future of Journalism.

It will be for journalism students who have already covered all the basics - AP stylebook, ledes, nut grafs, interviewing, writing and so on.

If you were to teach or take a class like this, what do you think should be the topics covered?

Feel free to go into great detail and include links - also, if this turns out well, I'll showcase to students how I used AskMeFi to help create the class.

How to deal with an intimidating professor?

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:03:29 -0800

My professor’s intimidating, confrontational style makes the classroom atmosphere difficult to tolerate. I can't drop the class or switch sections. What should I do? I’m in an advanced-level business class. The students are all seniors, post-bacs and graduate students, but the professor treats us as if we were a bunch of insubordinate kids in need of discipline. He doesn’t do this all the time, but it’s frequent enough that I’ve started to dread the class.

The class runs for two hours, and we are not given any breaks. If someone leaves their seat to go to the restroom, he will occasionally pause the lecture to interrogate them, ask where they’re going, or insist that they’re going to miss the best part of the lecture in the five minutes that they’re gone. Sometimes he laughs and tries to pass this sort of thing off as a joke, but very few (if any) of us find it funny.

When students ask questions, he often interrupts them or cuts them off before they’ve even finished articulating their questions. If they give an incorrect answer to a question he poses, he often chews them out for it, even if they can demonstrate verbally that they’ve read the assigned material and understood the concepts. At this point the only students who speak up voluntarily anymore seem to be the most thick-skinned ones. I’m not very thick-skinned, so I remain silent in class unless he calls on me directly. Sooner or later, though, he’ll probably put me on the spot and challenge me to explain why I’m so damn quiet all the time. (He’s already done that to another student).

He picks on people mercilessly. This week, for example, he loudly berated a student for not being able to answer the professor’s question:

Professor (pointing at student, after describing a long scenario): What’s the answer?

Student: Uh, I’m not sure. I was a bit distracted. I missed some of the details.

Professor (aggressively): WHY? Why aren’t you paying attention? What were you doing? What’s the matter? Don’t you take this class seriously?

Student (meekly): I’m sorry. I was reading something for a moment.

Professor: If you’re not going to pay attention and take this class seriously, then get the hell out of my class! Either you get on the ball, or you get your ass out of here!

Student (embarrassed): I’m sorry, Professor. I got it. I’m taking it seriously from now on.

At that point a couple of the students gave each other quizzical looks of disbelief, as if to say “What IS this, anyway? Reform school? The military?”

I felt sorry for the student he confronted, and wanted to stand up for him, but I feared that the professor would turn his wrath on me. If the professor ever does try to humiliate me like that, I doubt I’ll be able to endure it. I’ll probably just get up and walk out. I almost walked out today in protest of his treatment of a fellow student, but I knew I’d pay a high price if I did so, and I need this class to graduate.

Two weeks into the term, and already I dread going to class (which is very unusual for me; I love school, and my other classes are great). It’s a required class, and my class schedule is set in stone through my graduation date this summer, so I can’t drop it. There are no other sections available, so I can’t switch to a different instructor. I’m stuck with him until the end of the term.

What should I do? Is there anything that can be done, short of confronting him directly, to get him to ease up or treat the students more respectfully? I don’t want to confront him, because I fear he might hold it against me at grading time, or even try to humiliate me in front of the class and then claim it was “all in fun”.

Would this sort of behavior be considered harassment? He's never threatened or sexually harassed anyone, to the best of my knowledge. Should I document all the individual incidents in the classroom, and take my complaint to the university ombuds office? He's a visiting professor from another university; would this make a difference? Should I complain to the department head, and suggest that they confront him?

Advice, encouragement, suggestions, coping strategies, personal experiences – all are welcome. Thank you!

Throwaway e-mail: merciless.professor at gmail.

Where is class gonna be?

soelo — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:21:00 -0800

Who decides when and where (and which) classes will be held in a typical public, American University? I am frustrated with many aspects of my University's class schedule and have been for years. I want to know more about the typical process for assembling this schedule, specifically when multiple campuses are involved. It's a state school, but not the Big One.

There are whole departments that never hold a single class on my campus (we have 3 different ones). I have been asking around and emailing various people but I have not had any luck in getting answers as to why, and how I can get this changed.

I have been working with the Student Senate, who put me in touch with a Campus Rep. She has not been very forthcoming, and told me I must go to the other campuses. I have told my teachers that I appreciate them holding class on my campus.

Is my adviser the person to ask? Each department head? The Office of the President?

Thanks

Unofficially auditing university classes?

jayder — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:03:20 -0800

Is it weird to ask a university professor if you can audit his/her class without officially enrolling in the university as an auditor ... and, as part of the arrangement, asking the professor if you can submit papers and have them graded and evaluated? Asking for a friend:

"I think I mentioned to you that I was going to look into taking a [graduate liberal arts] class at [Prestigious State University] this fall. [Prestigious State] has a program where people who aren't full-time students can enroll in a class, with the instructor's permission, and you even get credit and a real-life grade for it (whether the [graduate liberal arts] department would later count that credit towards a degree is an open question, I think, but that's not the main point here). I've looked into this, and the snag is that if I do this right now I'd have to pay tuition for the class at the out of state rate, which is very expensive for one class. I don't qualify for in-state tuition until I've lived in this state at least 12 months. So, I wondered what you thought about the following: I've considered e-mailing the professor in the class I'm interested in taking and asking if he would allow me to "audit" the class, i.e., take it for no credit, and without being assigned a grade, and essentially no record that I had ever officially taken the class. Of course there's no way to know how a given professor would react to this, but I wonder if you know anyone who's ever done this, or if you think this idea sounds completely crazy or a professor might take offense at it? The problem with it is that I sort of am asking the professor to work "for free", because I would want to do the assignments and have the prof evaluate them, even if I don't get an official grade. On the other hand, the presence or absence of my tuition being paid into the system is not going to make a difference in the professor's pay rate. But it still seems a little like asking for charity when the prof will probably wonder why I don't just wait twelve months. (I'm not sure it would be appropriate to tell the prof I want to get into grad school one of these days and I'm not getting any younger, damn it). So, what do you think about this idea?"

Help me be a better college instructor

printchick — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 13:38:47 -0800

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?