This is the class blog for Gateway, an introductory multimedia storytelling and critical thinking course offered by the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Exercises and class posts are below. Class information will be updated on links to the right. The blogroll is primarily students who are enrolled in the class and posting their assignments.
The multimedia presentation of your argument will be the final persuasive effort of your term-long research into your specific “should” question. It’s also the potential seed for further work in the class. I’d like you to make your presentations provocative and use the storytelling ideas that you learned last term in Gateway to make a call to action among your fellow students.
What does that look like?
You standing up in front of the class for three minutes.
You using images, graphics and text in your presentation for maximum effect.
You giving your fellow classmates something to think about and argue about on Monday.
You can roughly follow the guidelines of the text argument. It should be a supporting document anyway—a “for more information click…” kind of thing.
What might it look like?
It’s probably a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation that COMPLEMENTS what you have to say. Don’t just read slides projected on the wall. Engage your viewers, show them information, lead them to make conclusions.
You might use images that create a mood. You might be lucky enough to have images that document some little story in your topic. You might have graphs or maps or charts. You might have YouTube video clips. You might use bullet points.
You should focus on the people affected by this.
How will it be graded?
Did you use the three minutes effectively? (Did the slideshow work, had you practiced, was the pacing right?)
Did you use images, sound and text in a way that makes sense?
Did you clearly state your point?
Did you offer evidence for why you’ve come to this conclusion?
Did you offer counter points?
Gateway Final Project Grading Guidelines
100 Total Points
SOURCES: 75 points
30 sources required. (-10 points for each source less than 30)
Required mix and diversity (35 points)
Categories
5 Journalistic
5 Institutional
5 Academic Research
5 Citizen
Media Types
5 still images
5 multimedia
3 blogs
3 interviews
Quality of information (40 points)
Key parts of the Source Note:
Summary
Publication information
Support
Audience and Agenda
Usefulness
Works Cited
Are the sources clearly written with correct usage?
Do the sources fit with the question?
Are the sources consistent in their treatment (depth of research, linking)?
ARGUMENT: 25 points
This is a 1000-word summary of your answer to your should question. You can use bullets to summarize some points, but the components of it need to be clear with correct grammar and usage.
It should include:
The should question (3 points)
An introduction to the issue (5 points)
History, background and context of the issue (5 points)
Competing ideas for solving the should question (5 points)
Your answer to the should question (5 points)
What arguments can be made against your answer (2 points)
You must also include a linked list of all of your source notes. The summary and list should be posted on your blog by the date and time that the project is due.
I’ve extended your deadline for Warm Up #3 to Monday at 5 p.m. We will sample after that.
For source notes this week, I want to focus on Usefulness and the Summary. Use the same guidelines for each category that I’ve described before, but reallocate the points as follows (20 total):
Summary 5
Pub Info/Categorization 2
Support 3
Audience and Agenda 3
Usefulness 5
Usage 2
Summaries should be tightly written at this point—one to three sentences that link the five Ws with the relevance of this source to the topic.
Usefulness needs to directly address how this source fits into answering the Should question. Good language for it would combine Support and Audience and Agenda to show how it fits in with the overall arguement. Comparisons to other sources and fitting it into context would merit full points.
Warm up #2 Grading
- THE TITLE AND SUMMARY: It needs to be a sentence (or two) that addresses the 5 Ws and H (not necessarily all), uses correct, active and concrete language and serves to give the reader a sense of why they might want explore this source further. Includes title of article and link if possible. 5 points.
- PUBLICATION INFORMATION: This needs at least three points of reference. Reproduce-ability is a key concept. Title, publication, date, URL—these are minimums. Some parts they may not be able to fill out but the pub info should have three legs. They need to declare what category it is (J, I, AR, Cit) and they should have a link to their question. 2 points.
- SUPPORT: This is a short list of specifics and a summary few sentences about how those sources used in the source fit together. 3 points.
- AUDIENCE AND AGENDA: This is a short analysis (3-4 sentences max) of what the publication is and who created the source. There must be some quantification of audience—circulation numbers, page hits, advertising revenue are great starting points. There must be some description of ownership and what kinds of things that owner publishes and why. 3 points.
- USEFULNESS and WORKS CITED: There should be a brief entry here, but we’re not grading this for content this week.
- OVERALL USAGE: Spelling and grammar errors. 2 points (Grader may take off more in specific sections for usage problems).
I’ve updated the Source Notes forms and examples to reflect what Dan needs for Trackingchange.net. Please use those new forms for new posts and edits to old posts. The forms move Title to the top of the page and include it as a link.
Dan wanted to update the format for source notes to make his job aggregating Trackingchange.net a little more straightforward.
Please follow this format for future posts and updates. Here are his instructions:
Title of publication and date in parentheses followed by summary (all linked)
Example:
What No Child Behind Left Behind (The Washington Monthly, 1/23/09) (Make Sure Your Link the whole title line to the article)
An explanation of the motivations and origins of No Child Left Behind. The author argues that the decision of the Bush administration to allow states to define “proficiency” has led to many more students being left behind in terms of academic achievement.
To keep on pace with your research and the argument you develop out of it at the end of the term, you should have five more sources posted to your blogs this week (bringing the total to 10). We’ll be sampling and grading posts next Friday (Feb. 13), starting at 5 p.m.
Have a great weekend.
Source Categories
1. The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
- reports information about crime so it’s a journalistic source.
- is a governmental agency so it is an institutional source.
- supports researchers and policy makers who deal with crime issues so it’s an institutional source.
- would be considered academic research because it’s at the University of Michigan.
2. The Recipe for Seafood Toxins published in Nature this week
- reports information about a common human ailment so it’s a journalistic source.
- is a letter to Nature so it’s a citizen source.
- is trying to promote awareness of a little-studied component of human biology so that lawmakers will look closely in the future at issues surrounding stereochemistry. For this reason, it’s an institutional source.
- explores a little-studied aspect of human biology by describing the chemistry of toxins that cause seafood poisoning. It builds on earlier research and is intended to support and to further research activity in this area. It’s academic research.
3. The Great Backyard Bird Count
- is a citizen source because it’s driven by people counting birds in their back yards.
- is a journalistic source because it reports the geographic distribution of songbirds in the U.S. for a lay audience.
- is academic research because it’s sponsored by Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, an Ivy-league institution that is perhaps the preeminent ornithological research institute.
- an institutional source because it is promoting engagement with the natural world among many people. Ultimately its findings will be used to argue for funding for programs and protection of species.
- is academic research because the author is the editor of a dictionary.
- is an institutional source because the author is trying to sell her dictionary.
- is a journalistic source because the author is trying to inform a lay audience about words.
- is a citizen source because the author is promoting her work as a lexicographer, for which she has achieved a certain amount of personal fame, but the site itself is not intended to make money directly.
5. The Christian Science Monitor
- is a journalistic source because it reports the news for a lay audience and takes advertising to support it.
- is an institutional source because it’s promoting the mission of a church.
- was created by a woman who wrote a bestselling book a century ago who felt she was being persecuted by the mainstream media of the time. So in a way it’s her form of a blog so it’s a citizen source.
This week we’re talking about Audience and Agenda. Look at the Source Notes form for an update—I have changed the Source Analysis heading to Audience and Agenda. This better reflects what we need to see there and also, I hope, will reduce some confusion in terms.
Key points this week:
- Get a handle on the numbers of an audience
- Follow the money
- Understand what the source is trying to communicate
Here’s a link to a survey of your social marketing knowledge. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fQ7olW7e2TZcesMF8q7BrA_3d_3d
