Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category
I continue to find it mind-boggling that people seem to think that a good use of AI tools like ChatGPT is to gather accurate information. Any cursory reading on the topic should explain that ChatGPT is designed to predict language in response to a prompt, not actually present information based on “knowledge” or “intelligence.” I […]
Filed under: Academia, digital humanities, Film, Teaching, Technology, Television | 1 Comment
Tags: AI, bullshit, ChatGPT
Like many academics, I’ve been seeing a lot of concerns around how AI tools like ChatGPT might impact the work academics do as teachers and scholars. I don’t want to dive too much into those muddy waters, but I saw one post on Mastodon that piqued my interest and led me to do some experimenting. […]
Filed under: Academia, digital humanities, Film, Teaching, Technology | 1 Comment
Tags: AI, ChatGPT, race
Media Mirrors: A New Website
I am excited to launch a new project called Media Mirrors: Critical Analysis of Film & TV and Film & TV! This website collects undergraduate student writing that has emerged from my course Key Concepts in Film & Media Criticism. The site emerged from a decision many years ago to encourage my students to write […]
Filed under: Academia, Film, Media Studies, Middlebury, New Media, Teaching, Television | Leave a Comment
Tags: 30 rock, adaptation, all that jazz, boogie nights, digital humanities, digital publishing, one cut of the dead, pedagogy
More Adventures in Ungrading
As my blog has become more intermittent over the past few years, one topic seems to still get lots of traffic: rethinking grading. I first started experimenting with grading (and writing about it) around five years ago, and I’m proud to say that I have not “graded” an assignment since! But the ways that I’ve […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, Teaching | 4 Comments
Tags: specifications grading, ungrading
In the spirit of the season, I am pleased to announce a gift to anyone who wants it: a new open access, multimedia site, The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy, available at videographicessay.org. This site collects both previously-published and new versions of writings by Christian Keathley, Catherine Grant, and me, as well as numerous examples […]
Filed under: Academia, digital humanities, Media Studies, Open Access, Publishing, Teaching, Videographic Criticism | 1 Comment
In April, five of my students formed a panel at Middlebury’s Spring Student Symposium out of my Fall course Videographic Film & Media Studies, where they presented video essays that were created in the course. Alas, I was away at a conference during the symposium, so I could not see the panel, but reports were […]
Filed under: Middlebury, Teaching, Videographic Criticism | Leave a Comment
Tags: The Wire, videographic criticism
Over the course of these harrowing couple of months since the election, one of the many questions that has plagued me is how media educators can effectively teach about media under the Trump administration. This spring semester, I’ll be teaching my cornerstone course Television & American Culture, where media & democracy are a core topic. I’ve racked […]
Filed under: Media Politics, Teaching, Television | 7 Comments
In my last post, I closed the book on my spring Television & American Culture course, reflecting on the general success of using specifications grading for the course. As I launch into a new semester, I’m using the same approach on a different course, Theories of Popular Culture (the whole syllabus is available at the link), […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, Teaching | 2 Comments
Tags: specifications grading
Return to Specifications Grading
I’ve had a lingering “to be continued” here for a few months, as I promised to report on my experiment with specifications grading from the spring, beyond my first mid-semester update. The delay was first due to the need to wait to process a post-semester survey that we did from my class and another colleague who […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, Teaching | 1 Comment
Tags: specifications grading
Last month I shared my plan to use specifications grading in my Television and American Culture course this spring semester. I just finished marking the first exam, which provides my first real opportunity to reflect on how the experiment is going. (Make sure to read that previous post for the specifics of the approach and […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, Teaching | 5 Comments
Tags: specifications grading
Today I started my spring course, Television and American Culture, a class I have offered around 15 times. It’s the course that inspired my textbook (of the same name), and my co-edited book How to Watch Television also was structured to fit with the course’s design. In short, it’s the course that I’ve dedicated the most […]
Filed under: Academia, Teaching, Television | 11 Comments
Tags: specifications grading
The Scared Is Spread
I have a video to share with you: [vimeo 58659769] If you haven’t seen it, take the eight minutes to watch & enjoy. But there’s a good chance you’ve seen it, as it’s been viewed over 72,000 times (and counting) in the three days it’s been online. It’s been written about on Buzzfeed, Jezebel, CBS News, CBC, Yahoo!, Mashable, and many […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, New Media, Not Quite TV, Teaching | 10 Comments
Tags: spreadable, viral video
For anyone keeping track, this blog’s hiatus is a sad signal that it’s been a busy couple of months for me re-entering to real life in Vermont, what with teaching, chairing my department, taking care of lots of personal projects, and obsessing over the election. (And thankfully, Super Storm Sandy had little personal impact on […]
Filed under: Academia, Conferences, Media Studies, Teaching, Television, TV Textbook | 2 Comments
Tags: Flow Conference
Back to the Classroom
Summer is over (even though it remains in the 80s in Vermont this week), which means my sabbatical is completely over. It was a great one, with a wonderful fellowship in Germany, a lot of writing, travel for lectures & conferences, and lots of quality family time. But yesterday, I returned to the Middlebury classroom […]
Filed under: Academia, Books, Complex TV, Film, Media Studies, Middlebury, Narrative, Teaching, Television, TV Shows | Leave a Comment
Tags: Homeland, How to Watch TV, Mildred Pierce, Phineas & Ferb, syllabi
Recently, my friend Annie Petersen took advantage of one of Twitter’s best functions for academics: crowdsourcing syllabus recommendations. Annie was looking for readings that provide a good introduction to semiotics, but are not impenetrable to novice students. I recommended this online visual essay by Tom Streeter (another friend of mine), which I’ve found quite useful for […]
Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Middlebury, Not Quite TV, Teaching | 12 Comments
Tags: cultural studies, pedagogy, theory
Just TV 