AEJMC Teaching Committee
Criteria and Goals
A. Statement of Goals
It is in the interests of the students we are training for the 21st century to be taught by faculty and led by administrators who have given thoughtful consideration to excellence in curricular matters, course content and teaching methods, and teaching performance. To this end, the Teaching Committee of AEJMC urges divisions and interest groups to include activities concerning:
1. Curriculum. Relevant issues, developments, and trends include (but are not limited) to:
- Values in curriculum choices
- Liberal arts vs. professional training
- Core curriculum vs. menu-based education
- Internationalization of curricula
- Diversity across the curriculum
- Adapting to changes in communications technology and hiring
- Adapting to changes in student needs and interests
- Preparing students for change and life-long learning
2. Leadership. Leadership concerns the creation and implementation of goals designed to promote teaching and teaching excellence. Relevant issues, developments, and trends include (but are not limited) to the following:
- Envisioning education for the 21st century
- Implementing change
- Achieving multicultural diversity
- Creating faculty/student awareness of international concerns
- Promoting innovation in journalism and mass communication education
- Fostering teacher enrichment/faculty exchanges, etc.
3. Course Content and Teaching Methods.
Relevant issues, developments and trends include (but are not limited) to:
- Bibliographies to enrich course content
- Efforts to integrate knowledge from other disciplines
- Efforts to integrate the insights/technologies of media practitioners Ideas for motivating students
- Creative approaches to lectures, labs, field experiences, collaborative learning, self-directed learning, etc.
4. Assessment.
Relevant issues, developments and trends include (but are not limited) to:
- Planning and assessing course content
- Assessing student outcomes
- Evaluating good teaching
- Rewarding good teaching (as well as research)
- Assessing programs
It is desirable that activities in these and related areas be available not only during the annual convention, but also throughout the academic year, in newsletters and other publications, and in mid-winter meetings. These goals will be distributed annually, and be subject to regular review by the Committee. Input from divisions will be encouraged and welcome.
B. Division Goals
The Committee will encourage the divisions and interest groups to develop their own teaching goals consistent with (but not limited to) the goals of the larger organization. These group-tailored goals, which will be approved by the groupÕs membership, regularly reviewed and revised as needed, will be listed in the annual report and will provide the Committee with information that will help it better serve each division and interest group.
C. Annual Report/Ideas and Recognition List in AEJMC Newsletter
As in the past, each group will submit an annual report of its teaching activities to the Teaching Committee of AEJMC. (A standardized form will be used for this submission.) The Committee will cull from these reports an annual list of outstanding efforts on behalf of teaching excellence. This sampling of efforts will be available on the AEJMC website, in lieu of the old evaluative reports, and will offer recognition for outstanding teaching efforts as well as an annual idea pool for incoming teaching standards officers.
Accompanying the annual list of outstanding efforts will be a brief discussion of criteria used to determine the list. Should it seem warranted, the Committee will provide along with the list, an overall assessment of teaching standards efforts across divisions and interest groups, including comments about continued good work and improvements (where relevant), and suggestions that other groups might consider to enhance their teaching activities.
The committee liaisons to the groups will be responsible for sending letters to the designated teaching standards chairs (old and new) recognizing more specifically continued good work and improvements, and offering suggestions and Committee support, where needed. The liaisons will also be responsible for communicating in person suggestions and offers of support to the individual chairs, mostly likely before or during the annual business meetings of the division and interest groups, and for extending invitations to the chairs to attend, if they desire, the annual meetings of the Standing Committee on Teaching.
The assumption is that divisions will create programming and other activities consistent with their own teaching goals. The Committee's role will be to support such activities.
D. Guidebook for Teaching Chairs
The guidebook will describe the Association's goals with respect to teaching and the opportunities that teaching standards chairs have to foster teaching and teaching excellence among members of their divisions. Among the opportunities are the chance to influence the development of divisional goals with respect to teaching and the chance to develop convention programming and out of convention activities consistent with these goals.
To help the teaching chair carry out the duties of the office, the guidebook will describe the specific duties, including the need to initiate activities and write a year-end report. It will offer innovative ideas for convention programming and other activities that have been developed by teaching standards chairs over the years (generic descriptions). These ideas will be culled from the annual lists (above) and from members of the Teaching Committee, who will have as one of their formal responsibilities the development and dissemination of ideas that will foster teaching excellence.
The guidebook will also include tips for planning these activities (the mechanics of developing convention programming, for example) and instructions for writing the annual report. Finally the guidebook will list resources, such as journals of pedagogy, that might offer directions to teaching standards chairs as they develop their activities for the year. Blank pages will be provided in the back of the guidebook for notes that the outgoing teaching standards chairs wish to pass on to their successors. The guidebook is intended as a service document, and it will be updated with suggestions from the divisions, as needed. Funding for the guidebook will come from the budget of the Teaching Committee.
E. Teaching Activities for the Entire Membership
As in the past the committee intends to develop teaching-related activities (workshops, plenaries and the like) of interest to the entire membership; these activities will be specifically designed to move the association in new directions in the four areas listed above, and other areas that will inevitably be identified as enhancing the education of students in journalism and mass communication. Committee members will have as one of their formal responsibilities the monitoring of educational journals and other resources that will put them in touch with the cutting edge in educational matters.
(statement developed 11-93)
Return to About AEJMC Teaching Committee