Small Programs 1998 Abstracts
Small Programs Interest Group
The Newsroom Approach to Improving Writing and Reporting Courses: Murder, Rape, Child-care and Crisis Counseling 101 • Kim E. Karloff, California State University-Northridge • While newswriting and reporting textbooks instruct them to “write with particular care when accusing someone of a crime,” and newspaper headlines highlight the fact that rapes and sexual assaults continue to plague their streets, homes and campuses, and statistics indicates at least 9 percent of their friends will become pregnant or develop an STD, few journalism students say they are truly equipped to cover such woes. This paper suggests that while future journalists may be more open to discussing these issues than their media predecessors, they learn more about covering such news by meeting with media professionals and the experts, scholars and counselors who work daily in their respective fields.
Teaching Beginning News Reporting Using the Conferencing Method • Sally Turner, Emporia State University • While composition professors for decades have been discussing and experimenting with ways to teach writing that would enhance learning and performance, only rarely do these dialogues spill over onto those who teach writing in other disciplines. This paper focuses on what the research, largely qualitative and anecdotal, says about teaching news writing as a process, and specific ways to quantify that research as we begin, in our field, to explore the most effective ways to teach news writing.
Assessing the Teaching of Media Ethics in Small Programs • John W. Williams, Principia College • Higher education in American is under attack and one of the forms of the attack is the growing threat of the federal government to participate more fully in institutional accreditation. In response to the threat, regional accrediting bodies have been pushing for institutional self-assessment for the purpose of institutional improvement. The assessment movement, including outcomes-based assessment and performance assessment, is filtering down to the individual instructor and course level. This paper is an exploration of one instructor’s attempt to design assessment process, by which he can assess student change using an experimental method.
Print friendly
