Tagged: Introduction to Media Industries

Adjunct Teaching: Procrastinate or Else

Earlier this summer, low enrollment cancelled two of my courses at Fordham. I was slated to teach two new offerings, The Broadcast Industry and Digital Media and Cyberculture. The two were so new that no one had taught them at Fordham before, which is probably why students didn’t enroll and the class was cancelled. I had kept thinking about materials for these courses in the back of my mind, but I never prepared a syllabus or ordered textbooks. I learned a some time ago that, because your course can be cancelled due to low enrollment, you have to be prepared to trash a syllabus you worked on over the summer. It’s better to wait until August to create that syllabus.

After the classes were cancelled I was assigned to teach TV News and Today’s World, a stalwart course of the undergraduate curriculum that I’ve never done before. A few weeks later, I was asked to fill in for a professor on medical leave and cover his Introduction to Media Industries. I was happy to do that because this is a course I’ve done many times, as recently as this past spring. I went from having two courses to zero, and then back to two. In addition, another professor was granted some course relief (sounds nice, doesn’t it?), and I was asked to cover his Introduction to Electronic Media course. Because I consider him a friend and because I have also done this course in the past, as recently as the Sandy-shortened semester of Fall 2012, I happily took the course, provided I was relieved of TV News and Today’s World.

That’s exactly what happened. At the beginning of the summer, I dreaded the thought of creating two new syllabi for courses I’ve never taught before. That’s a lot of work to do over the summer, and I was even preparing to ask for a raise when I went in to sign my contract. I was also anxious about the new courses because I suck at doing a class the first time around, or at least it feels that way to me. But then they were cancelled. With these personnel issues that arose over the summer, and that our department chair had to handle, I was able to not only substitute for two full-timers who couldn’t teach their courses, helping out the department with crucial staffing issues, but my overall workload will be much easier with these tried-and-true courses.

Sometimes, it pays to procrastinate.

My Fordham Semester Has Sprung

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Springtime at Fordham University, Lincoln Center.

Another semester begins this week at Fordham University, Lincoln Center and with it, I’m making available the syllabi for the two classes I’m teaching there this semester.

Introduction to Media Industries

This course is an overview of the mass media communication industries, including print, electronic, and digital media. We will examine the institutional, social and technological histories of these media, the influence of economic factors in shaping content, and issues surrounding regulatory policy. I like to give special emphasis to the media’s role in society, the concentration of ownership, the impact of new communication technologies, and increasing convergence of particular media.

This course meets on Thursday evenings, 6:00 – 8:45 PM.

Introduction to New Media

This course examines the cultural impact of new digital technologies such as the Internet, telephonic communication, and audiovisual media. We will survey the origins of digital communication and the Internet and engage closely with contemporary the work of seven contemporary on the impact and effects digital technologies, the Internet, the institutions that control these technologies.

This course meets on Wednesday mornings, 8:30 – 11:15 AM.