The Challenges

Mike Dorsher, Ph.D., assistant professor Department of Communication and Journalism Mike Dorsher, Ph.D., assistant professor Department of Communication and Journalism

Ease fall and spring enrollment pressures on a popular course We require CJ 412 for all advertising, journalism and PR students Mass Media Ethics is also a general education course

Making the course available in the summer, primarily online Students can then focus on it, without commitments to 3-5 other classes Greater time flexibility with online courses Students can hold summer jobs and save for college expenses Instructor can teach from his summer lake home! Cuts commuting to campus when gas costs $3 per gallon

Maintain the learning community nature of this discussion-based class Especially for complex philosophical concepts and techniques such as the Potter Box (right), which we normally discuss and practice in groups repeatedly during class Using “clickers” in class also enhanced discussions

Maintain an emphasis on students’ oral communication Increase learning during classmates’ case study presentations Find a way to forecast which students would benefit from writing a final paper on their case study rather than presenting it orally

A Summer of Hot-Button Issues Online:CJ 412:Mass Media Ethics goes from the classroom to chat room A Summer of Hot-Button Issues Online:CJ 412:Mass Media Ethics goes from the classroom to chat room

Solutions Tried

Translate Mass Media Ethics into an 8-week summer course in Desire2Learn But still have two mandatory, five-hour on-campus class days

One in the first week to lecture on the Potter Box, practice it, get library orientation for online materials and take pictures of everyone in class One in the last week of class, for oral presentations of case studies

Enhanced D2L discussions by using technologies such as:

Head shots in every post

Video clips of instructors

Live ‘office hours’ chats

Extra credit and private threads

Partial peer grading on orals

D2L surveys replace clickers

Assessments and conclusions

42% of the 20 students said they learned the most from the case study presentations, followed by 26% who cited the discussions

80% agreed the two on-campus days were a good idea 60% agreed the head shots on discussion posts helped; only 7% disagreed Similarly, only 7% disagreed that the video clips helped them learn 90% said they’d like to make more use of live online chats But 40% said they thought they’d have learned more if they had taken

CJ 412 in class in the spring or fall semester And 50% scored worse on an anonymous ethics scale post-test than they

scored on the pre-test the first day of class

Only one student qualified to write a final paper by earning an A or B on the mid-term essayand the case study outline 94% said the course ‘fostersstudent involvement in learning’-- the exact same percentage as in spring 2006 student evals