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AEJMC Teaching Ideas

To help AEJMC divisions and interest groups plan for the coming year, the Standing Committee on Teaching Standards has compiled a list of teaching-related activities for the year that culminated with the Miami convention in August 2002. This list provides examples of how divisions and interest groups highlighted teaching for their members through convention programming, convention-related innovations, academic journals, division newsletters and division web sites.

The Standing Committee on Teaching Standards evaluates the effort of AEJMC divisions and interest groups to produce programming and communication in four areas:

Curriculum. The philosophy, design and examination of issues, developments and trends in building the best curriculum for students.

Leadership. Organizational efforts to recognize and enhance good teaching and mentoring and ways of thinking about teaching and learning.

Course Content and Teaching Methods. Examining teaching techniques and strategies.

Assessment. Weighing the effectiveness of teaching or, more broadly, JMC education.

What follows are examples in each category from the annual reports submitted by divisions and interest groups. The examples may help generate ideas that can be shaped by divisions and interest groups into excellent teaching-related content.

CURRICULUM
Convention programming related to curriculum is common, and important. For instance, the Law Division sponsored a panel at AEJMC's 2002 convention on teaching about the First Amendment. A Public Relations Division panel probed the future of integrated marketing communication and whether predictions of a merger of PR, advertising and marketing will in fact occur. The Internships and Careers Interest Group, feeding off the convention site of Miami, focused on opportunities in Spanish-language media. Besides the national convention, opportunities for teaching-related programming may exist in other venues as well. For example, the Newspaper Division and the Civic Journalism Interest Group co-sponsored a session on "Technology and the Journalism Curriculum" at AEJMC's mid-winter meeting. Some divisions publish journals, which are natural avenues for a teaching emphasis. The Advertising Division's Journal of Advertising Education published articles during the year addressing the advertising curriculum at Michigan State and Missouri, two of the largest advertising programs in the nation. As a result, the Teaching Standards Committee suggested that the division, in the future, address the advertising curriculum at smaller programs as well. Newsletters play an important role in a division's communication with its membership. The division's teaching standards chair frequently writes a column for each issue, focusing attention on a teaching topic. The newsletter also is an ideal forum for thematic pieces. The History Division newsletter published an article examining the trend to eliminate media history courses from the curriculum, and the Public Relations Division newsletter carried an article on the role of "job shadowing" in the undergraduate curriculum. A division's web site plays an increasingly important role. One of the best teaching examples comes from the Communication Theory and Methodology Division, which features 19 syllabi on its web site for courses emphasizing theory or research methods. The availability of syllabi is an outstanding resource, especially for new faculty members assigned to teach similar courses.

LEADERSHIP
Pre-convention workshops are a good occasion to focus on a teaching issue. At the Miami convention, four divisions and one interest group (Media Management and Economics, Radio-Television Journalism, Law, Newspaper and Entertainment Studies Interest Group) co-sponsored a day-long workshop on covering crime. This topic is at the intersection of more than one standing committee, since the workshop topic impacts teaching but surely also deals with professional freedom and responsibility. Regular conference programming included a panel on ethics for the world's press, co-sponsored by the International Communications and Media Ethics Divisions. Some divisions consider off-site events as well, such as a tour of the Miami Museum of Science sponsored by the Science Communications Interest Group. Some divisions show leadership through creative initiatives. For instance, the Communication Theory and Methodology Division involves doctoral students in the review process of convention paper submissions and, in Miami, invited four doctoral students as session panelists. The History Division provides complimentary registration and some travel funding to the top-three graduate student papers, plus awards for the best scholarly article and best book dealing with media history. The Visual Communication Division sponsors AEJMC's annual student logo design contest, and the Newspaper Division presented its distinguished educator award in Miami to textbook author Melvin Mencher. The Mass Communication and Society Division launched a mentoring program that promises to link graduate students with faculty. Newsletters and web sites are good vehicles for leadership initiatives. The teaching standards chair of the Visual Communication Division wrote a column for each issue of the newsletter during the year. The Communication Technology and Visual Communication Divisions co-sponsored the sixth annual Best of the Web competition recognizing the best teaching site and the best school/department site.

COURSE CONTENT AND TEACHING METHODS
This category focuses on the teacher in the classroom -- what we teach, and how. The Newspaper and Scholastic Journalism Divisions and the Small Programs Interest Group sponsored a "Great Ideas for Teachers" (GIFT) competition that featured more than 40 presentations ranging from a technique to teach writing for the web to creation of a game to help students develop news judgment. The Minorities and Communication Division focused on teaching methods at the Miami convention with a panel session on understanding the learning style of minority students. The Visual Communication and Communication Technology Divisions sponsored a discussion on teaching new media in old classrooms, and the Law Division focused on teaching legal research methods. The Entertainment Studies Interest Group hosted a session titled "Are critics born or made? Teaching the review and criticism course." The Advertising Division conducted a separate competition for teaching papers, and the Media and Disability Interest Group focused on syllabi in discussing how to accommodate in the classroom those students who have disabilities. Outside of the Miami convention, the Magazine Division sponsored a mid-year colloquium on magazine editing, and the Radio-Television Journalism Division sponsored a teaching-tips panel at the Broadcast Education Association convention. For the fourth year, the Mass Communication and Society Division hosted the Promising Professors Workshop that attracted 23 entries and some 50 attendees in Miami. Teaching-related articles appeared in Visual Communication Quarterly, the Public Relations Division's newsletter always carried a section titled "Teaching Public Relations," the Newspaper Division has a teaching tips column in each newsletter, and the Cultural and Critical Studies Division newsletter offered an article on popular culture as a critical teaching tool.

ASSESSMENT
This is, by far, the weakest area of focus in the teaching standards arena, and many divisions and interest groups were unable to cite site any assessment-related programming at the end of the year. Examples of successful programming include the Media Ethics Division's panel in Miami titled "Teaching Ethics or Teaching About Ethics: Assessing the Impact of Ethics Courses on Students." In addition, the ethics division published four articles in its newsletter on assessing ethics in the curriculum. The Communication Theory Division and the Science Communication Interest Group joined for a panel titled "What Is Good Teaching?" that delved into the philosophies, approaches and assessment of quality teaching. The Public Relations Division accepted six teaching papers on topics such as an assessment of textbooks in the discipline and a multi-school survey of public relations graduates. The Internships and Careers Interest Group sponsored a session on the evaluation and assessment of student internships, and the Mass Communication and Society Division published a newsletter article on assessing student writing.

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