Using the Web to showcase our teaching

Poking around the World Wide Web, I came across this homepage (linked in the headline above) for a seminar series on networks at MIT.

It is a simple example of how to use the Web to welcome people into our school and let them see – and learn from – what we’re up to in our classes.

Imagine this display as a course syllabus. The first column is the meeting date. The second column refers to the guest speaker or, more typically in a course, the author of a key reading or the subject of an example/case study that will be discussed that day. (This column links to that person’s biography or other background material.) The third column is a mug shot of the speaker; more generally, it could be some visual representation of what the class will address on any given day (including mugs of speakers or authors of key readings, etc.). The fourth column is the topic of the class. The fifth column links to notes from the session, in this case supplied by the guest speaker; in the more usual case these could be a “story” or report on the day’s discussion posted by a student in real time to the Web during or after the class session.

So imagine a line for a class session in a "Media Ethics" course in which students discuss reporter-source relationships, using the film “Absence of Malice” as a fictional case study.

COLUMN I: Sept. 13

COLUMN II: "Absence of Malice"

COLUMN III:








Sally Field, a.k.a. reporter Megan Carter

COLUMN IV: Ethical boundaries in reporter-source relationshps

COLUMN V: Class report by Annie Flanzraich (this links to another report by Annie; I'm just illustrating the idea)

It seems to me this ought to work in any “non-methods” courses: media ethics, First Amendment/media law, journalism history, JOUR 101, etc., and could work in writing, photography and other journalism methods courses with some adaptations. Our students could post reports each day the course meets; we could promote the most interesting reports daily from the homepage of our RSJ Web site.

I think this would be a great way to prepare, and share, our syllabi and then to share with the world what actually happens on any given day in any given course. This is one way to capture, in Jean Trumbo's conceit, the "beautiful noise" that is the Reynolds School of Journalism.

What do you think?