Welcome to this inaugural blog post! For those of you who don't know who I am (and are therefore reading this blog for reasons I cannot understand or anticipate at this time), I'm an Associate Professor of Communication Studies, and the Chair of the Fine and Performing Arts Division, at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. As part of a group organized in the spring of 2010 by Augustana College's Center for Teaching and Learning (ACTL) and the Academic Affairs Office, I began exploring the possibilities for blended/hybrid learning in my political communication classroom. This blog will record that journey.
I teach courses in political communication, rhetorical theory and criticism, mass media, and communication research. I am currently researching the possibilities for blended/hybrid learning pedagogies in the political communication/rhetoric classroom. In the near future, I will post documents on this blog that will provide additional detail regarding the rationale behind, the objectives and plans for, the work in progress on, and the results of research and development of a pilot effort to introduce blended learning elements into my teaching. For now, here's a thumbnail explanation:
I teach a course in political communication and rhetoric at a small, residential liberal arts college. This course, entitled "Communication, Politics, and Citizenship," introduces students to two interconnected fields of communication inquiry and practice: political communication (e.g., speeches, advertising, journalism, popular entertainment media, and other texts connected to public politics and policy), and rhetoric (the theory and critical methodology used to study persuasive public discourse from a humanistic perspective). The course is open both to Communication Studies majors and to students seeking a general education course in a learning Perspective on "Literature and Texts." Students range from First Year students to seniors, in a wide variety of majors. But while many students are interested in politics, most have little background in American politics and little to no background in rhetorical studies.
In this course we spend a good deal of time critically examining a number of rhetorical texts from a variety of analytical perspectives. This approach to rhetorical inquiry involves understanding texts within a broader historical and political context, as well as applying particular rhetorical theories and analytical methodologies in a systematic manner to unpack, interpret and evaluate texts.
My objective: to see whether the use of online mini-lecture podcasts that contextualize rhetorical texts and present specific rhetorical frameworks before a given class session can free up more time for active, collaborative work on these texts in the classroom -- deepening the quality of student work and their understanding of the analytical perspectives as well as the texts.
Will this work? We'll see! This blog is intended to function as a public journal of my research and development efforts related to this pilot project. Maybe this will be useful as well -- to myself or others interested in this kind of pedagogy. For what it's worth, thanks for paying attention!
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