Teaching

Courses Taught

Current Courses

Social Media: Research and Practice (Undergraduate service learning course, 12-35 students) - Syllabus
Community partners: BUILD Hartford, Connecticut Science Center, iQuilt Partnership, Quiet Corner Communications / Explore Stafford

Computer-Mediated Communication (Undergraduate writing-intensive course, 13-40 students) - Syllabus

Social Media Use and Effects (Graduate seminar, 5-15 students) - Syllabus

New Communication Technologies (Undergraduate lecture, 19-65 students) - Syllabus

Effects of Mass Media, eCampus edition (Online undergraduate course, 8-65 students) - Syllabus
Developed with eCampus online course development grant

    Previous Courses

    Effects of Mass Media (Undergraduate lecture, 40-240 students), UConn.
    I used the iClicker student response system in the large lecture sections of this course

    Responsible Conduct of Research (Graduate course for NSF-funded students), Northwestern University

    Research Methods in Advertising and Public Relations (Undergraduate lecture/project course), Pennsylvania State University

    Guiding Principles

    I initially relied heavily on presenting the course material from my own perspective, but both formal and informal feedback from students has encouraged me to move into a more student-driven/collaborative learning model of teaching which allows the students’ own experiences to play a greater role in their learning. This has led to a teaching style shaped by three values:

    Awareness

    I quickly learned that my instruction is most effective when I understand how students learn and interpret new information in the context of their previous knowledge. I start each semester with an assessment of each student’s background and throughout the semester I gather feedback on my teaching methods and adjust as necessary for the class.

    Relevance

    As a media scholar, I rely on current topics of interest as examples for research so that not only are students more engaged in the topic, but they understand the relevance to their own current media use and interests. For example, rather than explaining a media effects experiment from beginning to end, I may have students propose a research question of interest and we will work through the steps to investigating this question as a class. This way they have learned how to find the answer to a question in which they were interested, rather than memorizing a method.

    Learning by Doing

    It is my experience that students fully comprehend the nuances of a particular theory or method incredibly fast when they can test it for themselves. By running their own survey in my methods course, for instance, students discover the benefits and drawbacks of survey design in a concrete way which may be lost in a lecture on the same material.

    Instructional Education

    Designing Your Hybrid/Blended Course
    UConn eCampus, Fall 2019

    Exploring Online Learning
    UConn eCampus, Fall 2019

    cetl_certificate_assistive_technologies_web certificate: teaching_students_to_think certificate: responding_to_student_writing twt_certificate grad_teaching_certificate