Developing an undergraduate course provides opportunity to develop skills in instructional design

by Julie Dodd

The major assignment in Mass Communication Teaching (MMC 6930) is to develop an undergraduate communications course — creating a syllabus, lesson plans, instructional materials, and an assessment tool.

Creating, modifying and updating courses is an important part of university teaching. So this assignment helps you develop instructional design abilities.

The first step is determining what course to develop.

Should you select to develop your materials for an already existing course or a new course?

Creating undergraduate course materials to demonstrate best practices

by Julie Dodd

The assignment to create materials for an undergraduate communications course gives you the opportunity to plan a course that you would like to teach (or that you already teach and would like to improve) and to demonstrate best practices for teaching and learning.

You are drawing from your own experience as teaching assistants and from our work this semester, including readings such as “McKeachie’s Teaching Tips,” “Who Gets to Graduate?” and “Rebooting the Academy.”

Syllabus
You are designing your course as if you were teaching it at UF during Fall Semester 2015. You are keeping the various UF calendar dates in mind and are following UF’s guidelines for syllabi. [For example, Ligia Cervera’s teaching presentation on working with students with learning disabilities was an excellent reminder of how important it is to include in your syllabus information on UF resources.]

An important component of the syllabus is the timeline. You list every class meeting and indicate the topic for each class (not just a chapter number), any assignments or quiz/test for that date, and any assigned readings.

[You’ve submitted a draft of the syllabus and we did a critique in class.]

Faculty in College of Journalism and Communications spends day hearing from media professionals and discussing how our curriculum can help prepare our students

I have my iPad and bluetooth keyboard for typing and my iPhone for taking photos during today’s faculty kick-off. The CMIR is wireless, so I’ll be able to post as the meeting progresses. Photo by Debbie Treise

The faculty in the College of Journalism and Communications is having its fall kick-off today. We’re meeting in the Center for Media Innovation & Research (CMIR. This morning we are discussing trends in the media industry and are having media professionals share with us. Then in the afternoon the departments will be meeting to discuss our curriculum and preparing our students for the changing media industry.

I’ll be blogging as the day progresses. I thought you’d be interested in hearing this discussion.