SYLLABI: Teaching Online Journalism and Communication

Online Journalism Review aggregated syllabi in 2004, however this list needs to be updated. In an attempt to aggregate this information, I have begun a list of syllabi dedicated to online journalism, online communication and social media. I found that results from Google do not showcase all of the best available syllabi online.

This section highlights faculty syllabi that focus on skills, theory, online communication, and journalism. The selected sites featured interactive, timely, and great resources for students, educators, journalists, and people with a desire to learn. I have also highlighted some useful features that I believe may be useful for educators.

Mindy McAdams – University of Florida
Mindy McAdams shares her syllabi focused on the teaching of multimedia, animation, and reporting for online users. Her sites are designed simply and feature possible assignment ideas and online resources for educators and students.

Dave Stanton – University of Florida
Dave Stanton has a broad background, which enables him to teach web consulting, design and XHTML/CSS. I really like that Dave gives his students video tutorials to help them process information outside of class.

Serena Carpenter – Arizona State University
My class is the foundation class for all things concerning online media. It is divided into three sections: 1) social media, 2) visual communication, and 3) Web site creation. The focus throughout the semester is on online communication. I provide ideas for class assignments as well. I also provide tutorials on my blog.

Leslie-Jean Thornton – Arizona State University
This is an online reporting course for students in a Masters program. The resources page also provides some useful tutorials.

Carol Schwalbe and Nancie Dodge – Arizona State University
The Advanced Online Media class builds upon skills taught in previous basic online media classes.

Cindy Royal – Texas State University
Cindy Royal’s site contains useful ideas to include into lectures.

Don Wittekind – University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
I am impressed by Don Wittekind’s ability to teach Flash, based on my experience from a past seminar. Don provides a list of classes that he teaches in the left-hand navigation section. He provides some lectures and handouts as well.

Ryan Thornburg – University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Ryan Thornburg shares his online reporting syllabi. His assigned readings page is interactive.

Alfredo A. Marin-Carle – Ball State University
The New Media Journalism concentrates on web design. The reference section offers a list of useful sites for people teaching such courses.

Tracy Rutledge – University of Tennessee at Martin
Intro to Multimedia focuses on creating multimedia websites. She provides some tutorials as well.

Donica Mensing – University of Nevada-Reno
Donica Mensing shares her syllabus for her online reporting course, which covers multimedia reporting, social media and HTML/CSS. She provides helpful videos as well.

Laura Ruel – University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Laure Ruel teaches design and multimedia storytelling. She has a great downloads section that features storyboarding and usability execises.

Chris Harvey – University of Maryland
I like that this instructor’s Online Journalism class schedule is interactive and detailed.

Sean Mussenden – University of Maryland
His Online Journalism course has screencast tutorials teaching others how to use WordPress.

Gaurav Mishra -  Georgetown University
The Social Media in Business, Development and Government course concentrates on social media literacy.

Henry Jenkins – Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program
The New Media Literacies course site shares resources related to online participation and communication.

Alice J. Robinson – Arizona State University
The Digital Cultures and Social Media course is a doctoral seminar. There is a list of thought-provoking pieces on her schedule and on her Delicious page.

Corinne Weisgerber – St. Edward’s University
The Social Media for Public Relations class offers useful material for anyone teaching social media including how to reach online users.

David Carlson – University of Florida
He teaches an Applied Interactive Newspaper course and an online communication class. I like that student projects are shared.

Tim McGuire – Arizona State University
The Business and Future of Journalism class encourages students to reflect on the journalism industry by having them write about business models. Tim also provides links to suggested readings.

Siva Vaidhyanathan – University of Virgina
This Introduction to Digital Media instructor encourages students to take a critical look at new media and its impact on culture. The reading list is a useful resource.

Jeffrey Michael Heer – Stanford University
Research Topics in Human-Computer Interaction is a graduate-level course focused on HCI. He also includes links to student articles.

Vin Crosbie – Syracuse University
The course examines how new media differs from traditional media. Crosbie provides a list of books that may be useful for other instructors.

To add your course to the list, email me or provide your syllabus in the comments section including background information related to the course. I hope that these examples are useful for educators designing their classes for future semesters and for those looking for resources to learn more about the online media environment.

Look who’s back

It is a new semester. I have decided to rejoin the social media sphere (at least on a professional level) again. I am teaching online media this semester. If you would like to view my syllabus, please do. I break the semester into three parts: social media, visual communication and site creation. Feedback is always welcomed.

Also, Dave Stanton shared his syllabus with me. It is definitely worth a visit.

Visual Toolkit of Freebies – Step by step instructions

I spent the day working on my visual toolkit. I am in awe of how much easier it is today to share and embed beautiful elements on your Web site. I believe that anyone can use and follow this handout. Have fun!

*Thanks to @chrishogg for the tip on Scribd

FCP video editing problems

My slideshare lecture on video editing provides tips on video editing and how to use Final Cut Pro. It is also provides information on troubleshooting problems with Final Cut. One of the most difficult parts of teaching software is troubleshooting technical glitches or figuring out how the new user or student ended up where they did. My presentation presents four common problems news users face when editing in Final Cut Pro.

1. “I don’t see my video.”
   • This likely means that the computer does not recognize that the video camera is connected to the computer.
2. “I see red lines through mu clips.”
   • This means that FCP cannot find your video because it is likely stored at another location, which means you did not save properly.
3. “I can only see part of my video and the rest says needs rendering.”
   • It means that your clips need rendering before you can view them.
4. “My video is not playing.”
   • A trick that may help you is to copy and paste your video project into a new timeline, which may solve the problem.

Check out my slideshare presentation to see how to solve these problems. Tomorrow, I will talk about exporting video from Final Cut Pro to a player. A media player allows the user to play your edited video.

How to shoot b-roll video

The key to good video is shooting sequences. A sequence is a wide, medium and close-up shot of the same object or person. When shooting video, you want to mimic how humans see the world. A person will cognitively process visuals in steps. For example, if a person walks into a room looking for a chair to sit on during a public speaking event. That person will walk into a room and see the whole room (wide-shot), then they will see a few people (medium-shot), and then they will spot an empty chair (close-up).

I also limit the shooting of zooms and pans by my students. A pan is recording video as the camera horizontally moves across the room. First, movement can look pixelated online, diminishing the quality. Second, the shot lasts a long time if shot properly. Third, our eyes do not zoom. We can not look at someone and zoom to them. Thus, it is better to shoot shots when shooting video for the web.

How to shoot a video interview

I teach video in four steps in my online media class, which equals to 8 hours of class time. I am a former broadcast instructor who has spent many years teaching video to people of all backgrounds. I find that this approach works best for me. I hope that it helps you teach or learn video basics.

1. Online video trends

2. How to shoot an interview – they must practice shooting following the interview. I provide an in-class assignment on my lecture slides.

3. How to shoot broll or cover video – they must shoot a sequence and a action shot following lecture.

4. How to edit and prepare video for the web – they edit the video they shot over the past few days.

I have shared my lecture on online video trends on my blog. Today, I will share my lecture on how to shoot an interview. The following days I will share with you my b-roll shooting and editing lectures.

Online video storytelling and trends

I will share with you my lecture on online video trends. The focus of this lecture concentrates on educating my students on how online video is different than broadcast video including current trends.

Broadcast news organizations perform an important function by providing the top news stories of the day. People expect this information when they tune into the news. However, many of those stories may not be visual. In the past, I used to tell my students to use a detached, wide-shots when narrating important information because audience members could not cognitively handle important factual information under interesting video. Imagine talking about the number of renters abandoning pets in this economic crisis while watching a kitten playing with a string. People will most likely only see the kitten, and not hear the narration.

In the online environment, online communicators can communicate critical facts in other ways such as text or graphics.

The beauty of the online environment is that only video pieces that are visually worthy should be placed online. This is why you should see more raw video online. However, a common mistake I see is that people will write the text first without considering the visuals or audio. Writers should weave narration in between audio and video. To accomplish this, video writers should listen to their audio and watch their video before writing.

Online journalism classes to consider adopting

There are several controversies related to teaching newer media and journalism, one of which is that schools focus too heavily on teaching skills. I can teach a student online and broadcast skills that give them an edge when applying for a position. However, have I prepared them to become a leader in that changing field? Journalism graduates burn out quickly because pay is low and hours are long. This means that there is a good chance that future graduates will question their future.

I believe that we should teach them enough skills to understand how to use technology to engage people through words, social media, and visuals. However, we must also cultivate leaders who continually inspire change. I don’t just want to teach them a skill so they can emulate it. Because all they will know is how to follow, not lead. The abilities to think, be flexible, and problem-solve are traits that make employees invaluable to an organization. I want my students to be creators, not consumers. If they lose a job, I want them to think about starting their own companies or be wise enough to look to other types of organizations for work. I want to train my students to adapt and think of journalism as a career for life. This is why I believe journalism programs should expand beyond skill-building to provide classes that connect technology to bigger issues. So I spent this evening instead of grading thinking of ideas for new undergraduate classes not always found in journalism programs.

Digital Sandbox (freshman)
The class encourages students to express their creativity by using whatever digital technology they have to tell stories in text and in visuals for online display. Friend and colleague Bonnie Bucqueroux invented this class concept as a way to encourage learning through structured play, before students are exposed to rigorous journalism school training. De-mystifying technology by focusing on fun also helps reduce pressure and stress on students.

Online Multimedia Journalism (sophomore/juniors)
This class teaches students to understand how to communicate visually, how people process information in the visual and online realm, and how to create visual content for the web. If the digital sandbox class was adopted, students would learn to express the skills they acquired at a professional level.

Entrepreneurship and Online Journalism (juniors/seniors)
Prerequisite: Online Multimedia Journalism
This class teaches students how create a Web site, develop a business plan for that site and use social media tools to market the site. The class would encourage students to work together to launch one or more Web sites into the marketplace.

Online Organizational Behavior and Change (juniors/seniors)
Prerequisite: Online Multimedia Journalism
This class teaches students to view journalism from an organizational perspective. Students would be teamed with information organizations to identify the problems they face and develop a plan to address those problems. Students would not only have the opportunity to job shadow, but they would be participant observers in helping organizations make the most of the online environment.

Citizen Journalism (sophomores/juniors/seniors)
Students in this class would each be assigned to cover one community.  Students would use online media to report on a community and would also recruit members of that community to contribute content to the site on issues facing that community.

Data Mining, Creation and Visualization (juniors/seniors)
Students in this class learn how to mine the internet for information. They not only learn how to find, evaluate, and aggregate sources of information and data, but they also learn how to present information graphically and visually. The class encourages students to do more than present information visually, but to also think critically, select samples, and to use social science research methods. This class reflects some elements of a class designed by Phil Meyer called Precision Journalism.

Defining and Envisioning Journalism (juniors/seniors or masters)
The class would address fundamentals such as the history of journalism, how journalism has evolved, how journalism functions to promote or limit democracy, what journalism is and who journalists are, news quality, and constraints on journalism. The class would also encourage students to envision how the field can retain the best from the past as we move into a digital future.

Connecting text to visuals

A common mistake I see many journalists make is that they write a visual story without watching the visuals in front of them as they write. Too often, a video or slideshow story is not connected to the visuals. A good story is hooked to the visuals and audio. In broadcast, disconnected shots are referred to as wallpaper video, meaning that the story could be told without the visuals.

So that means that students or people should have the visuals in front of them when sitting down to write. If you do not have video to address a specific aspect of a story, then delete that aspect or keep it short. If someone says, “Look over there” on camera, you can incorporate that chunk of audio into your writing.

For example, “Look over there” (audio). Alice Thompson watches a humming bird while eating dinner (narration). And we should see a visual of her watching the bird.

Think about adding pauses, adding sound, and really think about your visuals when writing. Visualizing is a part of visual writing and adding too much text can sometimes drown your story. The National Press Photographers Association has some nice examples of visual writing.

Free video editing software options

There are a lot of inexpensive video options out there, and there is no reason why a newsroom or a person should not include video online. A Flip video camera can be purchased for as little as $129, and you can even buy a tripod for the Flip camera for $15. The Flip camera limits your creativity when shooting, however the Flip is comparable in quality compared to a professional camera, as shown in this blog post.

Many video editing software applications are free as well. iMovie is a Mac-based program that is popular in newsrooms, and Microsoft’s Movie Maker is a free application that is commonly used by PC users. However, there are few other video editing programs that you may not be aware of including Yahoo’s Jumpcut, JayCut, Wax and Avid’s Videospin. About.com compares the first three applications.

The drawback of free editing systems is that they tend to be less precise when making edits and they have fewer correction and exporting options. If you are looking for a superb editing system at a low price, think about Final Cut Express. Apple sells it for $200, but you can purchase it for less if you are a student or educator. It has almost all of the same features as Final Cut Pro. And you can buy it on eBay at a less expensive price.

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