Narrative – Professional Assessment
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Introduction
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Credit Load
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Creative Activity
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Professional Development
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Service
In the Spring of 2012, I received the confirmation of my promotion to professor by the Board of Regents of the Connecticut State University System. I had started my academic activity at Central Connecticut State University in the Fall of 2003. That was my second experience at an American University after one year working as assistant professor at the University of Connecticut. Previously, I had spent six years working at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität (Mainz, Germany), four as teaching assistant and two as assistant professor. In addition to that, I have been since 1999 profesor asociado (visiting professor) at the Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, Spain), where I have regularly imparted courses for doctoral candidates and master lectures for students and faculty. Now, I submitting this file for a six-year assessment/renewal. In this narrative, I will emphasize my achievements in the four categories established in the AAUP collective bargain from the moment I applied for the promotion to professor.
The last six academic years (2012-2018) have been very productive and rewarding. In the Summer of 2013, I finally saw published the book on which I had been working for over three years, including my sabbatical leave. Now, in the Fall 2018, another book is in progress, also related to my last sabbatical project (Fall 2017). In the meantime, I had the opportunity to write several articles and book chapters and read a good number of papers at international conferences. In addition to this intense creative activity, I have been able to play the leading role in the curricular reform of our department, which now offers two majors: one in Strategic Communication and one in Media Studies.
I have created new courses in four different areas: New Technologies, Public Opinion Theory and Research, Mass Communication Theory, Audiovisual Narrative. I would like to emphasize in this introduction my especial contribution to the curricular development of the module on Multimedia Production and Distribution within the major of Media Studies. As a consequence of this intensive involvement, I have added the areas of Internet, streaming technologies and social media to my research agenda. The knowledge and the skills acquired allow me, first of all, to update the content of our courses in the fields of public relations and media studies. It is especially helpful when it comes to create communication channels with my students. I have used the server of the communication department to develop sophisticated online platforms for all my courses, which contain hypertextual and multimedia contents, highly interactive and easy to navigate through. They proved to be a perfect aid in my classes and a good channel to receive feedback from students. Web-publishing skills, strongly demanded in the labor market, are a further element that would make our communication students more “marketable” after their graduation. Finally, I have been a pioneer in the introduction of online courses in our department. I started with introductory courses (Fundamental of Communication and Introduction to Public Relations) in the Summer of 2009. Since then, I have kept developing my offer of online courses and making their contents more sophisticated and user friendly.
In general, I considered myself extremely fortunate to work for Central Connecticut State University, an institution that allows me to keep learning and expanding my vital and intellectual horizons. I cannot imagine a more rewarding activity than higher education. Creating and transmitting knowledge is my passion, and I can develop it at Central Connecticut State University without any concern or restrain. I think my contributions to the institution, both at departmental and institutional level, correspond to what I receive from it. I have been an active member of Central community, becoming involved in and leading different committees and associations, and participating in many of the events and activities this vibrant place offers.
Teaching Philosophy
When I decided to accept the tenure track position at CCSU’s communication department, I was doing a declaration of principles: education is the most important of all human institutions. Education opens horizons for individual development and self-fulfillment, and constitutes the only basis for a sound and vigorous society.
I am devoted with heart and soul to the mission of higher education. I believe that the ideal of education is not just the transmission of knowledge. Our social mission is to help form free and responsible citizens, conscious of both their rights and the rights of their fellow citizens, and committed to the obligations that a mature citizenship implies. This is the mission tradition has entrusted to the public schools of Arts and Sciences. Thus, in addition to the academic contents, students develop in my courses sense of responsibility and learn how to deal with freedom. Following Immanuel Kant’s logic, I consider these two terms, freedom and responsibility, to be synonymous. According to the author from Königsberg, freedom is nothing but the manifestation of the practical reason. And this concept implies the absolute accountability for individual actions.
One of my priorities is always to get the students involved into the course dynamic. To achieve this goal, I always tried to avoid the monologue of the professor and to create a dialogue with the class. Students can express their previous knowledge, ideas and also prejudices about sometimes controversial subjects (public opinion issues, political communication, or mass media contents).
I try to create a balance in the grading assignments to exploit all the students’ potentials. They find exams with different formats (multiple choices, essays, take home exams) and a variety of assignments, such as essays or presentations based on specific research projects, theoretical and practical group projects, or interviews with experts in professional fields related to the subjects of the courses. In this way, I create a positive class dynamic that allows me to maintain high standards in the academic expectations.
In addition, I offer the students the possibility to gain extra grading points doing research and presenting to the class a subject related to the contents of the course. These voluntary assignments help me achieve my main goals: to increase students’ involvement in the class and to develop in them the sense of responsibility.
Courses Taught at CCSU
From the curricular offer of the Communication Department, I taught the following courses:
COMM 115 fundamentals of Communication, COMM 240 Survey of the Field of Communication, COMM 234 Introduction to Public Relations, COMM 220 – Introduction to Film History, COMM 230 Introduction to Mass Communication, COMM 231 New Communication Technologies, COMM 405 Principles and Processes of Mass Communication, COMM 431 Mass Media and Society and COMM 500 - Introduction to Graduate Studies in Communication.
In addition to those existing courses, I have added a series of courses to the department’s curriculum:
COMM 332, Web-publishing, COMM 436 Streaming Media in Web-publishing, COMM 410 Public Opinion, COMM 432 Media in Film, COMM 430 Public Relations: Historical Development and Social Impact, COMM 319 Filmic Narrative, and COMM 510, Public Opinion Theory and Research.
Furthermore, I have offered new subjects as special Topics:
485: The Wire, 585: PR and Web-publishing, and 496 Study Abroad Programs in Cuba and Spain.
The new additions (7 new subjects) bear witness of my constant search for intellectual challenges and the ambition to apply my research in the curricular development of the department.
In the Fall of 2013, my academic emphasis in the department shifted from the strategic communication area to the media studies track. As a consequence of this change, I had to teach the at that time required course COMM 405 Principles and Processes of Mass Communication. The course had a deep theoretical orientation, which is the reason why it was not particularly popular. Based on the struggles of the students with this course, I decided to start a pedagogical experiment. I used fictional filmic narrative to explain the theoretical contents of the course. I selected a series of movies that deal with mass communication (newspapers, radio, TV, cinema, advertising, public relations, new technologies) and use them to illustrate the theories discussed in the course. That was the genesis of the course COMM 432 Media in Film, which I offered for the first time as special topic, and is now an established course in our curriculum.
The most demanding undertaking in this area has been the introduction of the series in new digital communication technologies. The different communication industries are going through a revolutionary process that is changing the way communication in all possible contexts (interpersonal, professional, mass communication) has been produced, delivered and consumed. To develop courses in Web-publishing has been a real challenge due to both the intrinsic difficulty of working with very abstract codes and the vertiginous speed this field evolves and changes. I started the series with a limited focus: Web-publishing only applied to the field of public relations. However, it soon became clear that the series in Web-publishing should constitute the backbone of the new module in the major of Media Studies: Multimedia Production and Distribution. I created two different courses that try to cover the essentials of the Web-publishing industry. In the first course, COMM 332 Web-publishing, students learn the basic of the Hypertext Mark-up Language (html) and became familiar with the layout system CSS (Cascade Style Sheet). In addition to that, I introduced students in the most sophisticated, open-source content management system WordPress. In the advance course, COMM 436, Streaming Media in Web-publishing, the focus is the media converging process. In this course, students need to integrate in their projects different audiovisual formats, as well as a variety of dynamic and interactive features.
The design and implementation of those courses was a completely new adventure for me. My academic background had focused up to this point on the theoretical analysis of social and social-psychological phenomena. I have seldom taught before skills-oriented courses with such a strong emphasis on technology. In addition to this limitation, the field of Web-publishing changes dramatically every year. I started using for the students’ project Microsoft FrontPage, a user-friendly software ideal for people with no knowledge in coding. I very soon realized that we needed to introduce the standard software in the Web-publishing industry. I tried with Adobe Dreamweaver and moved to Adobe Flash the next time I offered the course. Flash offers limitless potential when it comes to two essential features in Web-developing: interactivity and dynamism. Still, I needed to move away from Flash when the plug-in Flash Player was banned in some popular mobile devices with access to Internet (tablets, 3G cell phones). Then, I started to use CSS and the more developed html5 to integrate audiovisual elements in Web-sites. Finally, and given the continuously growing level of complexity, I introduced the open-source CMS Word-press. Practically every time I offered any of the courses in the series, I had to start from zero.
Much more in accordance with my previous academic experience are other courses that I have added to the departmental academic offer. COMM 410 Public Opinion, which is cross-listed with the journalism program (JRN 410), is actually the most important of my academic emphases. In this course, I explore with my students the nature and social function of public opinion. To achieve this goal, the contents of the course are based on contemporary public opinion issues. The course also has a strong research component. Participants learn the essentials of public opinion research, including sampling methods and data interpretation. Students in this course need to complete a project that encompasses the development of research questions, the design of the questionnaire and the data collection and interpretation.
I have also designed a course on the subject Public Opinion for the graduate program: COMM 510 Public Opinion Theory and Research. This course has a stronger focus on Theory and Research.
The book on PR History I published was the inspiration for another course I created at CCSU: PR: Historical Development and Social Impact. I taught the course for the first time in the Fall of 2012 as Special topic. Then, I added this course to the regular curricular offer of the department.
I have been a pioneer in the field of online instruction. I introduced online courses in our department and helped some of my colleagues design and implement their online courses. In the meantime, I have developed sophisticated skills to make online courses more effective. I am a convinced supporter of online instruction because I think it demands from students stronger discipline and a higher sense of responsibility. The courses I have taught entirely online or in a hybrid version:
COMM 115, 230, 234, 405, 410, 431, 432, 500
One of the most rewarding experiences at CCSU was the special topic course I co-taught with Prof. Cindy White and Prof. Ismael López Medel on the acclaimed TV series “The Wire”. That was a unique example of faculty cooperation in a department marked by dysfunctional and abusive relationships among faculty members. In the Fall of 2013, we were able to put together a course analyzing the fictional narrative from different points of view. The series offers an excellent opportunity to study social phenomena, such as inequality issues, racial discrimination, the failure of education in the U.S., or the impact of the mass media on the game of political power. Students rewarded us with their enthusiasm and outstanding performance.
Equally rewarding were the two Study Abroad programs I designed in cooperation with the Center for International Education. In the Sommer of 2015, I took a group of about 15 students to Cuba. The focus of the course was first to analyze the country through the eyes of some relevant filmmakers, and then, to explore to which extent the real Cuba relates to the filmic fiction. We discover a country in a fascinating process of change, adapting from a long period of communism to a more liberal market economy.
The second study abroad program was in Spain. Visiting the cities Madrid and Barcelona, we studied how the political conflict between the Spanish state and the Catalan nationalist movement is reflected on the sport arena. To this end, we focused on the sport rivalry between the clubs Real Madrid and Fútbol Club Barcelona.
Finally, I want to mention in this six-year report the tremendous aid I found in Internet to help me stablish effective communication channels with my students – and not only in online courses. I have created sophisticated content’s platforms where my students can find all the material they need for my courses. Also, my evaluators can find in those platforms all the necessary examples of my syllabi, course contents, assignments, as well as of the students’ work.
Students’ Evaluations
In my file for the application to professor, I included a detailed statistical analysis of my students’ evaluations. There was a significant positive correlation between the average grade and the score of the students’ satisfaction in the items that affected the instructor’s performance. That means that the higher the average grade was, the more positively the students assessed my performance. This is a serious indicator of the lack of validity of the measuring instrument. Validity refers to the ability of the instrument to actually measure what it is supposed to measure. I brought the issue up during some of our departmental meetings but my concerns did not find any resonance.
For this six-year assessment, I have not repeated the extenuating statistical analysis. Still, I observed that my students’ evaluations follow the same pattern. Specially challenging classes, where the grades were lower, or classes that are unpopular because of the contents, such as theoretical courses or subjects that demand a high degree of abstraction, and in which grades are also usually lower, show lower scores in the items that especially focus on the quality of my instruction or my capacity to teach those courses. Still, even in courses that had the lowest grades (COMM 405 Principles and Process of Mass Communication, Web-publishing courses) the percentage of students’ disapproval seldom reaches 10%.
Students, for the most part, respect and value my pedagogic approach. In the student evaluation’s questionnaire, there are 10 questions (5 to 14) that directly refer to the instructor’s perception. Question 11, which refers to the textbook used in my classes, is the one where the scores are lowest. There are two main reasons that explain those outcomes. In technically oriented courses (Web-publishing), we do not use textbooks, which confuses the students when they have to answer the question. The second reason has to do with the type of literature used in my regular courses. Most of the courses I am teaching now are at the 400 level. For advanced courses, I decided a couple of years ago not to use textbooks, but to work with original literature. This represents a significant amount of work for me since I have to publish in the online platforms created for the different courses all the reading material as pdf documents. Students welcome this at the beginning of the term when I discuss the readings because they do not have to spend the money in any of the expensive textbooks they normally have to buy or rent for other courses. Still, reading Marshall McLuhan, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann or Jürgen Habermas is much more difficult than the contents of the usual textbooks. They struggle with the contents. This explains the lower appreciation that sometimes may appear in the teaching evaluations in that particular question. I will keep working with original literature, though, because I firmly believe that students in advanced courses should be able to cope with this type of readings. It is an indispensable phase in their intellectual development. Furthermore, my advanced courses, such as Media in Film or Public Opinion, have a very well-defined focus and there is no textbook in the Market I could use.
The answer to question 9 provides an accurate idea of my teaching style. As I already stated in the teaching philosophy section, I strongly encourage class dialogue in my courses. I consider this pedagogic technique the most effective way to gain the attention of student and to enhance comprehension. Students appreciate my effort. The overwhelming majority of the students strongly agreed or agreed with the statement. This constant exchange of ideas in the course dynamic also explains why a high percent of my students find my classes intellectually stimulant.
I have studied the outcomes of teaching evaluations in my different courses in order to see whether the new courses I introduced had a lower evaluation. I was especially concerned with the courses on Web-publishing because this subject has been a constant challenge for me, and in many occasions, I found myself without a proper answer to questions or problems originated during the lab sessions. Without having conducted any statistical analysis, I have observed that the student satisfaction in Web-publishing courses tend to be a little lower. It is important to mention, though, that the gateway course for the advanced courses in Web-publishing were taught by a new hired faculty member who was using consumer oriented online platforms to introduced students into Web-publishing. When confronted with the standard software in the industry, they felt overwhelmed and confused by the level of complexity of my classes. These false expectations created some tensions that, of course, are reflected in their evaluations.
Examples of syllabi, assignments, students’ work
Creative Activity