Tips from the AEJMC Teaching Committee
What are your TLOs for DC?
By Amy Falkner
Standing Committee on Teaching
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
Syracuse University
Twitter: amyfalkner
(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, July 2013 issue)
Learning is good. I don’t mean just for your students. I’m talking about you. The AEJMC Conference in Washington, DC, presents you that opportunity and I encourage you to take full advantage.
We all know how important it is to have clear student learning outcomes on our syllabi. My university’s Senate Committee on Curricula has put a big push on these in the last academic year. They’ve bounced back numerous new course proposals in an attempt to get faculty to make crystal clear on their syllabi what exactly students will know or be able to do as a result of a learning activity or course or program. Make these measurable, they say. Express the outcomes using action verbs as knowledge, skills or attitudes.
Ok, then. Let’s turn this on its head. What are your teacher learning outcomes (TLOs) for this conference? Strategize about this before you go. What is it that you want to learn? Incorporating diversity into your courses? Better use of social media? Best practices in developing an online course?
All of these topics will be profiled during the Conference. Seek out these opportunities and be ready to capitalize. Have your business card ready for the presenter and write down on the back of it, as an example, “pls send Twitter assignment.” My TLO is to collect five such skill-based assignments or exercises during the course of the conference. Action verb? Check. Measurable? Check. New knowledge? Check.
The Standing Committee on Teaching has put together a perfect slate of programming for you to start your pre-gaming. I’ll explain it below. But also know that the divisions and interest groups have plenty of teaching programming that is discipline-specific. Most of them also make it a point to bring in some industry professionals either for a special panel or a mixed panel with academics. I find these particular panels especially helpful to learn what’s the latest industry trend, skill needed or problem to solve. What you learn will help your students, and that should always be your goal.
So here is the line-up for the programming from the Standing Committee on Teaching. It’s a great place to start your conference to-do list.
Thursday, Aug. 8, 10 to 11:30 a.m. — “2013 Best Practices in Teaching with Tools and Technologies”
You could get your entire list of TLOs simply by attending this session. The call for entries specified a search for innovative ways tools and technologies were integrated into the learning environment, either as used by instructors in presenting materials or by students in learning new tools. The Committee has held this competition eight years in a row and this one was one of its most highly competitive. Nearly 30 entries were judged and three winners were selected, plus an honorable mention. Winning entries utilized geo-tagging, cloud-based research tools, Google Forms, YouTube, social media and more. Interested? Attendees receive a booklet with the winning entries, so that makes it super easy to accomplish your TLOs.
Friday, Aug. 9, 1:30 to 3 p.m. — “Doctors Are In” session
This will mark the seventh year of this popular session, where you are essentially speed dating, but for ideas: participants move from table to table, with each table responsible for a different topic that keeps teachers, new and experienced, up at night. Originally, the intent of this session was to reach those new to academe, but we’ve discovered over time that both newbies and long-time faculty wanted a safe place to ask questions, share concerns and gather new ideas.
This year’s topics are sure to provide a springboard for ideas for your classes with proven classroom management tips and suggestions on how to teach large lecture classes, in addition to the topics of social media, diversity and teaching online mentioned above. And for your own personal TLOs, there are sessions on creating a teaching portfolio for tenure and promotion and the secret to balancing research, teaching and service.
Saturday, Aug. 10, 3:30 to 5 p.m. — “Transforming Teaching Failures into Teaching Successes”
The Committee schedules a “faculty concerns” session each year, and utilizing the long teaching careers — and goofs — of several Committee members (yours truly included), we have a panel session on transforming those errors into a positive experience in the end for your students. This is the ultimate TLO. It’s also a little-discussed part of being a professor, but it happens. The key is to recognize something went wrong and how you can recover from it. We’ll also suggest some red flags that may indicate a classroom crisis is ahead. Being prepared is half the battle.
Saturday, Aug. 10, 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. — “Top Papers from Research on Teaching Paper Competition”
New this year, the Committee, in conjunction with Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, sponsored a special paper call for research related to teaching. We received so many papers we had to recruit extra judges. It’s a good problem to have! The top papers discuss three topics near and dear to all: strengthening basic writing skills, integrating team-based learning and the gaps between journalism and practice in the digital age. Talk about TLOs. You can’t miss with this session.
Hope to see you at these sessions and that you’ll be pleased with what you learned. Your students thank you in advance.
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