Thoughts on the Course Review

            By far the toughest thing about writing the blog entries for this class was finding a way to start. It was tough to find a way to link the current events I found to the reading assigned and covered in lecture because it was never really expanded upon. The only thing that really made the writing structure of this class feasible was the group recitation that took place after the lecture. It served as an opportunity for all of us to bounce concepts off one another and get numerous angles from which to view our initial ideas. I think what we all agreed in class is true, that more discussion and guidance for the writing would make a great improvement to the class as a whole.

            I feel like the things I learned the most about were as a result of talking about them in the recitation. A lot of the information put forth by the book was kind of dry on its own, without relevant current events to act as examples and provide a realistic take on the media theory we were studying. And the content of the lecture didn’t really add much to what was immediately apparent from reading the book. On the other hand, it was really helpful to talk about things like that in the recitation portion of the course, and I was much more likely to remember the things we talked about there than the things that were talked about during lecture.

            I remember being much more interested in the discussions on the differences between the different types of media, like television, newspaper, and radio, when we compared them to one another, and much less interested in actual media events that seemed irrelevant when they were brought up in lecture. Often times, when the professor gave us examples of current events that we could write about, he didn’t draw any connections between the event and the course material, so it was difficult to write a blog entry on the topic because there wasn’t much to go on. Going to recitation afterwards helped considerably because it gave all of us the opportunity to figure it out by cooperating and pooling our ideas. Often times one person would have a vague idea of something and someone else would contribute their own vague concept and by putting them together we were able to come up with something we could work with. I guess in that way, we learned a bit about professional development by needing to cooperate to decipher what exactly it was that the professor actually wanted.

            Looking back on that now, it seems like I cultivated some fairly useful skills in group brainstorming and productive discussion, but at the time it was kind of annoying that we had so little input and direction as to what we were supposed to write. I really liked the idea that we came up with about submitting current events before the lecture, discussing how they relate to the reading in lecture, and then going into more depth in the smaller recitation groups. I feel like that would make the blogs much easier to write and would make the class as a whole much more constructive and productive. We would have more opportunity to talk to one another and the professor in a giant group to gain insight into what he expects of the whole class, and then still have the chance to dig deeper into the issues we discuss and think about what they mean to us personally and develop more-educated personal opinions. I greatly enjoyed talking about my personal beliefs and having them challenged by the points that other people brought up; I found it extremely valuable. This class was a great opportunity for this.

            Overall, it looks like what this course needs is more lecture discussion. If the rest of the class is going to stay the same, there should just be an increased amount of interactive participation in the lectures. More tie-ins from the reading and course content will significantly help everyone in the writing of their blogs, and make it easier to tell what they’re meant to contribute in the writing assignments. Discussion is the best aspect of this course and I think there should be more of it. I found the group talks to be extremely constructive and more communication across the professor, teaching assistants, and students would improve the quality of the course overall.