Call for Teaching Ideas: New Methods for Our Changing Media

As we're teaching our students about new ways that journalists use digital technology to connect with audiences, we're often exploring new methods ourselves to make our points.

As we teach about change, we're adopting our own new approaches. In this, we mimic those in the field who are involved in a continuing quest using trial and error to find effective techniques.

It's time we begin sharing more of our experiences and learning from one another. Here are some questions we can try to answer:
· What techniques have you adopted and which ones seem to be succeeding?
· What unintended consequences have you discovered?
· Have you introduced a class blog? How do you manage it?
· How are your students responding to this new approach?
· What sort of issues have you experienced in assessing student work?
· What should others know before they attempt a project similar to yours?
· Do you have a means of evaluating your new methods?
· Have you gathered empirical data that you can share with others?
· Do you have ideas for gathering meaningful evaluative data?

Those of us in the Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group look forward to sharing our ideas. Please join us as we compile our ideas and comments. Let's turn this into a conversation that benefits everyone. We are weighing a few different means of publishing this information, from creating a compendium to posting ideas on our group's Web site at http://www.has.vcu.edu/civic-journalism to adding to our weblog at http://ccjig.blogspot.com.

To participate, please send your ideas to Glenn Scott, CCJIG teaching chair, at gscott3@elon.edu. We will gather, edit and post from there.
Please keep your comments concise. This blog will welcome participation via comments. We'll follow AP style as long as it seems applicable. Be sure to include:
1. Your name and institution.
2. Name of course and your main teaching goals.
3. Number of students.
4. Length of time or number of semesters/quarters you've used the techniques.
5. Please add other salient information that will help the rest of us.

Thanks for your interest in participating!