By Kristin L. Gustafson, University of Washington Bothell, Teaching Standards Chair,
gustaf13@uw.edu
Five scholars will share their mini, hands-on teaching modules featuring original and tested transformative teaching ideas and practices that address pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community, and/or justice in August. Come ready to learn more about how each teaching practice might be transferred to your institution or classes and what evidence points to marked changes for students.
I will moderate the panel at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Toronto, Canada. The session, held at 9:15–10:45 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 10, features these winners of the History Division’s inaugural Transformative Teaching of Media and Journalism History teaching-idea competition:
- Nick Hirshon, William Paterson University
- Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University
- Kimberley Mangun, University of Utah
- Shearon Roberts, Xavier University of Louisiana
- Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee
Here are a few details about the projects and practices taken from the winning entries.
Hirshon says his collaboration with the Queens Memory Program “represents the pedagogy of community,” as his graduate students interviewed residents in a neighboring community and captured their geographic and artistic histories. This program, an initiative by the Queens Borough Public Library and the City University of New York at Queens College, transformed the culture of the graduate program and increased the visibility of media history.
Lanosga redesigned an elective journalism history course to foreground archives and primary source collections to complete a research paper written individually or a multi-media presentation created in groups. He says the changes challenged students to resist “dipping superficially into online archives,” energized his own teaching, and engaged students directly with an extensive list of collections at his university’s repositories.
Mangun describes how her students used primary and secondary sources for a “publication-quality, hands-on research project” instead of the standard end-of-semester (or end-of–quarter) paper. The students published Mass Communication History content on the Utah Communication History Encyclopedia, a site that Mangun created and maintains and which provides external visibility for student academic work.
Roberts says over the past five years, she transformed a traditional converged media writing sequence through a community partnership with the three African American newspapers in New Orleans “to connect with cynical African American students who felt disenchanted about entering careers in journalism because they felt unseen, their communities misrepresented, and their voices unheard when they look at the news today.” The project exposed these students and other students of color to the history, need, and achievements of the Black Press.
Roessner incorporated her collaborative, community-building experiential learning project into mass communications history around a diverse journalist committed to social justice. Through the Id(e)a Initiative, her students sharpened their media history and multi-platform journalism skills by creating biographical entries, written analyses, and audio or video packages related to Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
Gustafson and the History Division created the competition to acknowledge and share best practices publicly that journalism educators and media historians use in their classrooms. The contest was designed to serve three AEJMC History Division goals: (1) help the division grow and diversify by inviting people from other divisions; (2) encourage pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community, and justice; and (3) support an equal balance of History Division attention to teaching standards, research, and professional freedom and responsibility.
In addition to recognition at the panel, the History Division will celebrate the five winners at its pre-conference Awards Gala held 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 6. Winners will each receive a $75 prize at the teaching panel. One prize was to go to a student scholar or team entry with a student; however, there were no student entries this year. In addition to the conference teaching demonstrations, winners may publish their ideas on the History Division’s website and will be featured in the Division’s Clio newsletter.
This year’s judges were John Ferré, University of Louisville; Teri Finneman, University of Kansas; Melita Garza, Texas Christian University; Earnest Perry, Missouri School of Journalism; and Erika Pribanic-Smith, University of Texas-Arlington; and Yong Volz, Missouri School of Journalism. As journalism educators and media historians, we have excellent classroom practices and curriculum designs like the ones discussed here to share with one another. As teaching chair, I continue to invite you to share your best practices that encourage pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community, and justice. Send them to me at gustaf13@uw.edu.