[Air-L] Textbook Suggestion Needed

[Ted Coopman]

I have found that a majority of students are much too instrumental  - at
least at my institution - to be let loose from the start. Although I do
follow your suggestion after I have laid down a foundation so they know
enough to move forward with finding useful and compelling answer to things
they find interesting. I front-load my classes and then turn them loose on
projects.

For example, whatever text I use the class would have read it by the end of
the first half of the semester and then be on to topical journal articles
and doing research projects.

One thing I have noticed is that students are coming to class less
well-versed in the internet and new media than they were before. My thought
is that new media is becoming more like TV in that people use it but don't
need to know how it works to get what they want from it. I think we have
tendency to see students as an undifferentiated mass of tech savvy
technophiles and while some certainly are, many are not that comfortable
with the technology or simply don't know why things are or how they work.

-TED

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Christian Nelson <xianknelson at mac.com>wrote:

> Given the problem with how rapidly things are changing, might this not be
> more reason than ever to adopt a question/research based approach to
> teaching rather than a didactic model? By "question/research" based I mean
> one in which students are guided to the most interesting questions to ask
> about a phenomenon, and then led to the answers through their own research
> efforts? I know this is tough to do on a large scale, and perhaps means less
> coverage. But perhaps its more valuable in the long run, if feasible.
> --Christian
>
> On May 18, 2009, at 12:04 PM, Nicole Ellison wrote:
>
>  I've faced the same dilemma. For my undergrad new media class, I've used
>> the Thurlow et al CMC book, but only the first few chapters and only in the
>> first third of the semester. Then we read online articles for the remainder.
>> (I agree it's getting very dated, and in fact recently I wrote the authors
>> asking about a 2nd edition - not in the works at this point.)
>>
>> My experience is that (at least with the students I've worked with),
>> undergrads like a textbook because it gives the field legitimacy in their
>> eyes.  Ted's description below really rings true with mine - a textbook
>> seems to give many undergrads a sense of finality and control. I've found
>> that one of the challenges of teaching content that is so interesting and
>> publicly visible (e.g. social network sites) is trying to keep classroom
>> discussions at a higher level than pub or coffee-shop conversations, and a
>> textbook and/or academic readings are necessary to do this. Depending on how
>> they are written, some academic articles just don't work for some
>> undergrads. It's definitely a challenge!
>>
>> For fall, I'm planning on using the Thurlow et al textbook and a
>> collection of online articles, but this will probably be the last year and
>> I'm also interested in hearing about an accessible, updated replacement.
>> Thanks, N
>>
>
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-- 
Ted M. Coopman Ph.D.
Lecturer
Department of Communication Studies
Department of Television, Radio, Film, & Theatre
San Jose State Universit