Category Archives: academia

I’ve been using a combinatin of online teaching tools this semester, and I’m not really happy with most of them.
We use WebCT as a standard, university-wide tool. It is very clunky and, quite frankly, pretty dang crap. It’s windows based in its logic, and it’s counterintuitive, which means that it’s often pretty difficult to figure out how to do basic tasks. Even when you’ve been trained to use it (as I was). It’s also super-slow in uploading and managing files. I don’t know enough about it to know why, I just know that I don’t have that trouble when I’m uploading files to other sites using other tools. It also looks horrible. Not the most important point ever, but when you’re working with stoods who aren’t exactly keen to start off with… And it’s not a very ‘friendly’ site. It doesn’t make me want to explore. It also favours a particular visual logic which is very culturally specific. This is a big deal for me working with students from multicultural backgrounds and who may not have ever used a computer before (this is true of a fair chunk of my students).
Using it has been pretty shitty, and I’m a keen computer nerd. The internet, she is my friend.
We’ve also been using the e-reserve bit of our library website. That seems the most popular option, especially for students who aren’t terribly computer savvy. It helps that it’s within the library universe, so they’re only using one visual interface, rather than having to learn a whole new environment – they know where all the buttons are. It’s also the simplest tool – we just upload basic files to the site and they log in and download them. No fancy teaching modules or whatever. It’s a bit like going to the library to borrow a book – simple and functional.
These expereinces remind me of how we developed an online networking tool for the committee running MLX. We started with druple, but we all found it incredibly difficult to use. Most of the team had only very basic experience with complex online environments, and druple was just difficult to use. So we ditched it. I’d been reading about plone and liked the colour scheme. But the more I fiddled with it, the more I liked its usefulness. That’s the software we use now. And it’s been very useful and successful. We certainly don’t use it to its fullest capability – we really just upload files and then comment on them, or email the links from within the site. But that’s all we’ve needed. And it’s been neat.
So now I’m thinking about our experieces with webCT this semester, and I’m not satisfied.
I keep thinking ‘Most of these guys use faceplant and myface and are really proficient internet kids. How can I steal the best bits of those sites and make a course site that really rocks?’ These guys love that stuff, so how can I get them to love a course-related site?
This is what I want:

• somewhere to put each week’s lecture notes and various media files (films, images, sound files, etc)
• somewhere to put all the assessment documents (assignment tasks, style guide, etc)
• somewhere to put general notices where all the students can see them

That’s the very basic list. It’s really just a course reader online, where everyone can see it and access it whenever they want.
I have students who work a lot and have very busy lives. They need something easy to use and navigate, something useful and something that will make their study easier, not harder. So it has to be easy to learn to use. And fun. And actually valuable (not technology for the sake of technology).
I want the site to encourage their interest in the subject. I’ve been doing some stunt lecturing this semester, trying to capture their interest in the subject. For me, this is the most wonderful, interesting stuff in the whole world. And I want them to find a way into the subject that works for them, and really captures their interest. So I’ve been looking for interesting little films (thank you, thank you, Chaser, I owe you big time), sound files, pictures and so on. It’s been surprisingly successful. I squeeze these into my lectures and then make the urls available. YouTube has been an essential part of this.
I’ve also figured ‘if I’m interested in all this stuff – this whole range of stuff – surely they will find at least one thing that captures their interest?’ And if I set an example of ‘media is super fun’, and a real acquisitive, hunter-gatherer approach to learning, where I ‘bring home’ the interesting things I’ve found, perhaps it’ll rub off.
Partnered with my ‘talk about media you’re into’ strategy (I talked about it a bit here), it’s been reasonably successful. Students have taken the opportunity to talk about the things they’ve seen in the media that have caught their interest. They’ve been a bit hesitant and scaredy about revealing an interest in nerdy stuff, but have generally worked up to more confidence. Even the quieter students.
Ok, so other things I want from an online package:

• somewhere for students to add their ‘interesting finds’ – images, news stories, AV clips, sound files, TV shows, etc etc
• something that will encourage discussion, but will work as a complement to the face to face (I do not want this to become a substitute for tutorial chatting – that is still the absolutely central part of any subject)
• something that’s not too time consuming. This is important for my students with kids and lots of responsibilities. So it has to be easy to learn and use.

I’ve also been thinking about new ways of structuring course. Pretty ambitious stuff, but still. At the moment we have:

• lectures (1 hour is preferable, but our uni tends to 2 hours with 1 hour tutes – it’s a funding thing)
• tutorials (2 hours preferably)
• written assignments (my preference is for cumulative, not discrete ‘blobs’ of essay)
• readings (delivered in a big wad of reader (Glen has made some really interesting observations about readers here)
• and perhaps in-class exercises or random quizzes

Here’s something I’d like to try:

• lectures. Large groups of students together in a room listening to someone talk about interesting stuff. One hour is maximum attention span time. Lecturers preferably some big gun in the department (for all these reasons), including some illustration by way of snippets of film or images – whatever best illustrates the points being made
• tutorials. Small groups (12-15) of students working for 2 hours. Emphasis on discussion and learning to talk about the readings/lectures/ideas. Emphasis on socialising the stoods (eg learning to listen and work collaboratively on developing ideas). Some practical exercises to test theories/methods. I like the ‘talking about media’ tool to encourage students to talk about their media experiences and workshop/develop their assessment ideas
• assessment. Two pieces of cumulative assessment (essays to develop writing skills) and a not-too-hard in-class exam. Short answers. Drawing explicitly on weekly quizzes. This will help students who haven’t quite gotten the hang of extended written tasks and encourages students to study all the weeks’ work, not just the ones relevant to their projects

weekly quizzes. Not necessarily for marks, but covering the essential elements of each week’s topic. A good way to keep lecturers on-track and give students a clear idea of the main areas of discussion. An excellent revision tool. Also a useful de-stresser for students who feel like they’re drowning in a formless mass of details. These could be made available online quite easily.

• readings. Key readings in the field are absolutely essential. Students do need a guide to key readings in the literature. Discussion of readings should emphasise not only what’s in the reading, but also the structure and form of the reading. How is it written? What sources does it use and cite? How does it develop arguments? How does it illustrate key ideas? How influential has it then been on the field? How did it shape opinion? Is it representative of a particular approach? This body of readings should give them a broad overview of important ideas and writing in the field, and serve as a jumping off point for student’s further research. Encouraging students to follow up the articles and books which cite these key readings is a useful way of developing research tools and getting them to think about how ideas develop discursively in disciplines
• possibly some sort of interactive film/slide show/AV. Combining interesting images and audio-visual clips to illustrate points and provide an always-available interactive, multi-media discussion of the issues. This could be available on CD, to be watched in the library, online via a website to be streamed or downloaded.
  This is one I’m not entirely sure of. But I have students with such a range of learning styles and skills, I really like the idea of forcing information into them in a range of forms. I am, though, still wrestling with my instinct to encourage diversity in terms of learning styles within a university context where the one thing we want to do is force them to learn to learn and ‘make discourse’ by reading and writing (it’s ridiculous: I was lecturing this week about the advantages of radio in developing countries – it doesn’t require literacy so it’s more inclusive!)

So when I talk about a useful online teaching tool, I want something that would complement all this stuff.
If I’m encouraging students to work on cumulative assessment, developing their own ‘projects’ over 2 essays during the semester and using tutes to discuss and workshop their ideas, then why not use the site to encourage and support that? It would be really nice to make it possible for students to upload their project notes and files to the site, and to then download them and work on them in multiple locations, uploading their additions when they finish a session. That would allow them to share their work with other students, get feedback from staff (egads – the extra work!), discuss ideas, etc. Importantly, it would provide backup for all their data.
I’d also like to have a glossary or lexicon of terms on the site which they can add to. I’ve had requests for something like this from my students, but haven’t had time to develop it.
I’d like the usual email/discussion board/chat options, but I’m not sure just how successful they’d be. They’d be nice for public questions, eg “how many ads should I use for this assignment?” but could be a big fat time sink. Moderating them could suck.
I’m also wondering about whether to put recordings of the lectures online. As with lots of other people, I’ve been fascinated by Berkeley’s YouTube channel and want to take advantage of this idea. On the one hand, we have resisted making full versions of our lectures available for students because it drops the number in lectures. But the number of students who come to lectures drops off as the semester progresses anyway. Partly because students drop out (especially in first year), but also because the pressure towards the end of the semester thins them out. Which makes me think about alternative ways of structuring the semester, too.
I find, though, that I still get a core group at each lecture (mostly students from my tutes, incidentally), and as the classes have shrunk, their willingness to ask questions during the sessions have grown. This isn’t like a tutorial – I am still declaiming the Good Oil from the pulpit – but it’s an interactive lecture. The students are quite aware of the distinction between the two, and its been interesting seeing how they’ve developed different modes of interaction for each. They realise that tutes are times for them to talk as much as they like while I listen and monitor, but that lectures are time for me to talk with room for requests for clarifications.
While I had trouble with people chatting in lectures earlier in the semester (and man was it satisfying to kick those arses!), I now get a few whispered to-and-fros. When I say “if you’ve got a question or comment, share it” (and it doesn’t sound as facetious as that reads – they know I really do mean it), they usually reply “oh, I was just asking what that last word was – I didn’t hear”. So it’s just a bit of peer-clarification. Which is all good and nice.
That’s actually interesting, because in tutes I encourage students to answer each other’s questions and to work collaboratively towards figuring out answers or ideas. But in a lecture we actively discourage that. It’s a really weird conflict between student-centred/participatory learning and declaratory, lecturer-centred learning.
I’m still not sure where I stand on in-class presentations by students. On the one hand I don’t think it’s a good idea because it freaks them out. I also feel that I can better judge their learning if they’re participating activley in class, than I could by listen to them stumble through a formal presentation. Shit-scarey and tedious for everyone. But on the other hand, sometimes it’s nice to have a chance to actually have the floor to yourself for a while to present a properly worked-through idea.
Maybe a presentation of their research projects? But again, a less formal, more participatory in-group model would be better.
So anyway, to sum it all up, I’ve been having a look at moodle, another online teaching tool. Will let you know what I think. Will you let me know what you think? I’m interested in feedback from people who teach in other fields especially.

It’s no secret that I think the F-bomb is the fushiz, and browsing the internet today (mostly looking for answers for students who’ve asked me “are there any other easy things we can read about media?” – they’re sick of hearing me talk about the Media Report and so am I) I came across this article “Literature, Culture, Mirrors:John Frow responds to Simon During” in the Australian Humanities Review by the Man.
I’ve been thinking about the role of literature – or books – in cultural studies lately. Mostly, I try not to think about the ‘boundaries’ between media studies, cultural studies, book studies and (now) communications studies. They seem to be set down, for the most part, by the funding structures and course requirements of university departments and faculties and otherwise really don’t seem very useful for most of us who are actually in there getting jiggy with kultchah.
But I’d been wondering how to talk about books in a cultural studies context. One of the clearest differences in the way I think about books when I’m wearing my cultural/media studies hat(s) as opposed to the way I thought about books when I was enrolled in an English department doing ‘literature’ subjects,* is to do with audiences. I know there’ve probably been some changes in English departments since I got all into the Screen Studies (that’s what we called it in the olden days), but I’ve noticed that I think about books in terms of the relationship between audiences and textual structure rather than thinking about books as little boxes of words, standing alone there between their covers on the shelf. So while I can get all “oh, I just love blahblah author”, I’m actually far more interested in what people do with blahblah author’s work once they get ahold of the words.
So, for example, I’ve been thinking about writing a paper for a symposium being held as part of swancon. I’d like to write about watching HBO’s Big Love‘s representation of patriarchal polygamy while reading about Karen Traviss‘s matriarchal polygamies in the City of Pearl books. For me, it’s interesting to think about the way we SF fans aren’t just consuming a solid diet of SF – we read across the genre lines. And the way I think about polygamy, humanity, gender and society have been inflected by both these texts while I’m reading them both….which of course makes me want to talk about TV programming, book publishing seasons and structures of consumption, but that would be (yet another example of) digression…
This point was brought home to me the other day listening to a colleague’s very interesting paper on Scifi.com. She noted that there’d been some resentment from hardcore SF fan Scifi.com audiences about the introduction of ‘un-SF’ in the Scifi.com programming. Apparently they weren’t impressed by the wrestling shows**. Now, I’m interested in the gender implications at work there (particularly as a fair old swag – if not the vast bulk – of SF telly involves fighting, violence, warfare and plain old fisticuffs), but I’m more interested in the insistence that hardcore SF fans want only to watch SF on telly. Of course, if I were paying for an SF channel, I think I’d be after a fulfilment of my expectations – SF 24/7 YES! – but at the same time…
So I was wondering how I would go about thinking and writing about literature in a cultural studies context. I don’t particularly want to go down the fan studies track again. Yes, yes, we all know SF fans read SF books, watch SF films and telly, play SF games and party in online SF communities. But what happens when we talk about women reading those interesting romance/SF hybrid books? That’s my other pet interest at the moment – is anyone else writing about these books at the moment (not counting my posts)? And I’m definitely not interested in getting bogged down in discussions about ‘quality’ lit – if it’s a book, it’s literature to me, mate.
But anyway, back to JF. My interest was caught by this bit:

Let me offer two reasons why cultural studies has the potential to change departments of literary studies for the better. The first is that it forces students to come to terms with different regimes of value, different and perhaps incommensurate valuing processes and their relation to social forces and social positions. It shifts the interpretive gaze from a self-contained text to its discursive and social framings, within which students are themselves implicated; while at the same time it opens a potentially fruitful methodological exchange between the distinct protocols of interpretation that apply in the social sciences and the textual disciplines. The second reason has to do with process. Cultural studies supposes a pedagogy in which students are at least as fully in control of much of the subject matter as are the teachers. This isn’t the end of teacherly authority, but it does transform the learning process by challenging teachers to redefine what it is that they do in a classroom, and by involving students – in a quite orthodox Socratic manner – in the understanding and analysis of what they already know. In neither of these respects is cultural studies the enemy of literary studies; the two perhaps work best when they coexist in tension and exchange; but literary studies will not survive if it is taught as a form of religion.

That second bit is the bit I’m most interested in:

Cultural studies supposes a pedagogy in which students are at least as fully in control of much of the subject matter as are the teachers.

It’s the sort of argument that makes a great deal of sense to me when I think about teaching magazines/tabloids this semester. I never read magazines, but for the occasional copy of Nature (the glossy one), or the odd gardening or cooking mag. I don’t watch enough commercial telly to recognise the TV stars and I have absolutely no idea about mainstream, popular music. I was largely teaching this unit in reference to academic reading and a few weeks’ panicky hunter-gathering online and at the supermarket checkout (the latter proving most challenging for a hippy who likes indy grocery shops).
So while I could present the ideas to the students as academic concepts, drawing largely on my own enthusiasm for news values and news papers (hell, it’s all print media to me), we were largely relying on their specialist knowledge of and familiarity with magazines. This offered interesting moments in the tutorials, which are (of course) ten quarters female. Female students who hadn’t said a word all semester were suddenly contributing with enthusiasm. And these chicks really are magazine gurus – they read anywhere from one a week to a dozen a week. And they’re intimately familiar with the complex relationship networks which are the stock in trade of these publications.
At first we had to deal with the (mostly male) students’ disparagement of ‘trash media’. I made the point that reading these things – and making any sense of them whatsoever – required an intimate and extensive knowledge of the personalities, events and mode of discourse. We’d already talked about why tabloids are more popular than broadsheet media the week before, and they’d mentioned that ‘it’s too hard to understand what they’re talking about – the middle east is too complicated for just half an hour of news’. And I pointed out that while they mightn’t be prepared to unravel the middle east, they were prepared to wade into Britney’s social network – equally complex and foreign. Which of course led us them to the idea that personalisation is a really effective way of creating news value – making a story marketable for a wide audience.
But it was mostly an interesting exercise in the sort of stuff JF is talking about in that bit of the essay. For me, as a bub teacher, it can be both absolutely thrilling and exciting, but also terrifying. I spend most of my time worrying that I’m telling the stoods a big line of bullshit – one day someone’s going to figure out that I’m full of shit. I learnt in the very first tutorial that if you lie and pretend you know the answer to something – if you really do try and make up a bullshit answer – they’ll figure it out and you’ll look like a dickhead. So I’m all for admitting ignorance: “I dunno. I haven’t read that stuff. I’m into blahblah. But I do know blahblah writes about it. What do you guys know? What do you think?” I’ve found they’re actually far more willing to speculate and expore ideas when they’ve heard me admitting complete ignorance, but still being prepared to have a bash at figuring out an answer.
But I really like this approach to teaching – the postioning of students as specialists. And then working with them to apply the ideas from readings or lectures to explore (as JF puts it) “involving students …in the understanding and analysis of what they already know”. This was a truly fabulous approach in a media audiences subject I taught last year.
The first piece of assessment was a lit review, where the stoods chose a media audience (ie an audience of a particular media text or form) and then figured out who’d already written about it, or which bits of research could help them research their audience. The second bit of assessment involved planning a media audience research project (each week of lectures explored a different research method). It was fabulous to teach because the assessment worked cumulatively – you were building on their knowledge. The stoods dug it because they began to feel like proper media researchers – specialists with a body of knowledge and skills under their belt.
I also used tutorials to discuss media and their media interests. I encouraged them to think about the media they were into, and then as we began working on the assessment, to talk through their ideas about the research. Because we were all reading the same literature and most of us knew the media they were discussing, we could all comment and discuss the topic knowledgeably. I’ve found that this is the most important part of teaching stoods – encouraging a confidence in their own skills and knowledge. Encouraging them to trust their ideas and instincts. I mean, why not? They really, truly know things that we old sticks don’t – they haven’t read the academic literature, but they’re hard core media consumers. And they are engaged in really complex and interesting media – cross-media – consumption and use. So why not get them using those skills and ideas?
But this approach was really nice for the students – they really felt a sense of ‘ownership’ of their projects (and I used that term – our projects) and a confidence in their ideas. And they did produce some really interesting work. And man, it rocked to teach because they gave a shit and actually got excited about the assessment and readings.
I’m not sure how I got to this point, and I know this is a confusing post, but I guess this is meant to be a story about disciplinarity, about teaching practices, about methodology cross-discipline, and just another fan-atic post about your hero and mine, the Frowstah:

*I’m really sorry about this terrible sentence. I have been marking essays full of this rubbish and really can’t remember how to write any more. Perhaps I need to read more bewks?
** Frankly, it makes perfect sense to me – what could be more fantasy, speculative ficationesque than WWF?

Does it make a difference that Canada’s wielding a sword and not flashing her boobs?
I kind of have trouble with the whole judging people for grammar thing.
Yes, I like the joke, but I often think of grammar in the same way I think of manners – a class thing. So it’s really not all that cool to judge people for either…

DFE logged this story about pecha kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha) on faceplant this week and it’s caught my attention in a massive way. I think I want to do it. I’ve been thinking about making keynotes into little films (there’s a neat export option which automatically makes them into quicktime files) and to think that there are other nerds out there, just like me, who’re into this action… how wonderful! But of course, part of my thinking is centered on the fact that that is one hot teaching tool.
I’m already a really big fan of Keynote. I just LOVE the way I can combine pictures, little bits of text, little movies, music or sound files (oh yes, please – jazz up the wazoo), ‘slides’ which change automatically, or use basic animated transitions (like a page turning or one slide being pushed aside by another) and me strutting about talking crap in front of a captive audience.
I am just obsessed with the opportunities for visual puns and bad jokes – I’m still thinking I’m the queen of lecturing for my joke about laundry trucks and Roland Barthes (which I can’t really tell here because it takes some setting up).
Writing that lecture about the media and war, I was also struck by the possibilities of keynote for making quite full on emotional points.
I really enjoy making these things (even though they’re a lot of work), and I think they’re a really effective way of teaching – the stoods like them and stay interested, and I find they slow me down and stop me talking a zillion miles a minutes (which I tend to do otherwise). Not to mention the fact that when you’re teaching media it actually helps to show some.
I also like the ‘found object’ approach to keynotes that I’ve been taking. Basically, I write my lectures in a word file, including all the necessary information, then I break it down into ‘slides’ (which usually means one major point per slide, so I’m looking at about 70-90 slides for an hour and a half lecture), then I go looking for images and clips. Hello google, my fine friend. And hello youtube. Once I’ve found clips, I download them and then insert them into my keynotes. Because I’m using a mac, it’s all a matter of click-and-drag: easy peasy.
I’m also a fan of sound files – I’ve found some truly fabulous audio files from the www.firstworldwar.com site. There’s one I especially like called ‘Loyalty and German-Americans’, which is a speech by the American James W. Gerard speaking in 1917. It’s a neat example of wartime racism, making quite clear the idea that the media is a useful place for developing anti-enemy emotions, including dehumanising the enemy. And it’s particularly effective when you match it with a series of posters like this one from WWII.
I’ve just dropped that sound file of that speech into my keynote so the stoods can hear exactly how people talked about this stuff. The fact that most of them are first or second generation Australians (if that!) makes Gerard’s anti-German immigrant talk extra pertinent. Talking about WWI is interesting because we don’t have cinema or TV or radio working in the same way as it was in WWII and then later wars – we’re looking at a culture dominated by visual print media and public speaking.
And of course, when it comes to WWII, I just have to play songs like Ellington’s A Slip of the lip (can sink a ship), because it illustrates so perfectly the sentiment in posters like this one and this one.
And then, of course, I show them pictures of the current war-time, racism-inciting, ‘anti-terrorist’ posters like this one*.
A slightly different message: talk more about the things you see, rather than talk less, but still inciting a sense of paranoia and mistrust of the people around you. Or more specifically, mistrust of the people who are ‘unusual’ or ‘not like us’ around you.
Looking at all these amazing posters, and watching the doco Hype yesterday (which I picked up for a few dollars in the recent JB sale – ah, serendipity!), I’m suddenly all inspired to print my own posters. I’m not sure whether I’ll be promoting kick-ass chicks in sensible clothing or punk-ass indy rock, but I can be sure it will be wonderful. Though I’ll probably have to get ducky to tell me how…. when I get time, of course.
*My favourite line on that poster is this one: “I know this person who has downloaded a lot of documents from suspicious websites”. I’m just waiting for one of my stoods to ring up our Fearless Leader and dob me in.

Firstly, here’s a picture from this week’s lecture. We are all about celebrity this week.
I have about a million emails in my inbox from panicky students, all asking me if their ads are ok for the assignment. The assignment is due next week. I also have a bunch asking for extensions, for reasons ranging from ‘I just haven’t had time’ to ‘I’m sick’.
I’m not sure what to do about them all, so I’m ignoring them.
The “can I have an extension because I haven’t had time” excuse is a tricky one. One of the challenges of working with students who are supporting themselves financially with shitty jobs while they study, or who have families they’re supporting, is that they’re not on campus terribly often, and they work shitty jobs for the other 4 days a week they’re not at uni. What do I do in this situation? On the one hand, part of the assessment task is being able to manage your workload. On the other, these guys really are working shitty jobs that leave them zero wiggle room – they really can’t ditch a shift just to do an assignment. And it’s not like they’re slacking – I’ve noticed more and more students are having to work crappy jobs to fund their university study. And as I move down the food chain, away from the sandstones and down to the concrete slab unis, I find more and more students have less and less time for wandering around the library making friends with librarians or just popping in to see me to talk about assignments.
I think about the university of Melbourne’s new ‘American model’ uni, where degrees are reworked to become postgraduate degrees, and I shudder. It’s hard enough for students like mine to support themselves on bullshit jobs for the three years of an undergraduate degree. But to then put themselves through a postgraduate degree that doesn’t offer a nice, fat scholarship… it’s really a matter of access and equity.
Oh well. I’ll answer their emails tomorrow.

So I’m doing a lecture on the media in war time.
I start with WWI, then WWII, then Vietnam, then the Gulf War and finally the ‘war on terror’.
It’s been heavy going, to say the least.
I’ve collected a lot of images from the intertubes, and also some absolutely amazing footage.
I’ve found some really great sites like www.firstworldwar.com, which has some truly awesome AV and sound files, which I’ve just been popping into my keynote presentations. Keynote rocks, by the way – a truly fabulous alternative to powerpoint. So much easier to use. So much prettier.
I’ve also been playing on YouTube. Search for ‘second world war propaganda’, and you get fascinating archival footage – news reels, animations, etc.
Do a search for ‘vietnam war footage’ in YouTube and you get a stack of archival footage. And some truly freakin’s scary red neck racist commentary.
I’ve just started into the bit on the Gulf War and the ‘war on terror’, and that’s scary. It’s really upsetting. The Gulf War is easier to deal with because I’m discussing the way it was sanitised by CNN – lots of talk about technology, lots of computery stuff. Not a lot of bodies.
But the stuff on Afghanistan is really breaking my heart. One of the points I’m making is about the way the internet has suddenly allowed anyone to upload footage of the conflict – US soldiers, local citizens, politicians. I’m also writing about blogs and the US army sites, but the stuff that’s really caught my attention is the way ordinary people are using youtube to make little films.
It really reminds me of the stuff I’ve read about community media and the role of media in developing countries… if you have a camera phone, you can make a movie. And if you can get access to the internet, you can put it online.
I know that getting online isn’t easy, and that supplies of electricity are difficult, but still. This is really a massive, massive change in the way wars are represented in the media. And more importantly, the way people in occupied or invaded countries represent themselves.
One thing I have come across is Alive in Baghdad. I’ve only just stumbled over it, but it’s interesting. I know nothing about it, and part of me wonders about anti-US propaganda. But I suspect it’s on the level. Does anyone know?

Writing these lectures this semester, I keep coming back to a couple of questions.
Should an undergraduate course present an ‘unbiased’ overview of a particular area of research? In other words, if you’re teaching an introductory media or cultural studies (or gender studies or political science or whatever) subject, should you present an overview of the highest profile thinkers in the field – even if they contradict each other?
Or should you present a subjective overview of the literature and thinking which you find most convincing, which presents a cohesive overview of a particular group or genealogy within the literature or which best represents the theoretical approach of your particular university?*
If only it was that simple, though. I’ve been also been wondering if an intro subject should present an overview of key thinking within a specific national context – Australian media studies, British media studies, American media studies…?
If you answer yes, then, of course you’re also left asking “well, shouldn’t I include some of the American (or Australian or British) stuff just as an example of how we don’t do things here?” Or perhaps you’re wondering if it mightn’t be kinda neat to include some work from Indian or Asian scholars…
On the CSAA list recently some of the contributors argued that we have a responsibility as scholars to raise our students’ awareness of the various ideological assumptions at work in John Howard’s intrusion into rural indigenous Australians’ affairs. On the one hand, I agree entirely, in part because it seems the ‘right thing to do’, but also because it seems the sort of thing that Stuart Hall would approve of. In other words, cultural studies has its roots in social activism (sort of), and issues of class and ethnicity and gender and sexuality have always been at its heart (well, for some people. Some cultural studies kids have decided that that stuff’s so last millenium). In this approach, then, you not only outline the various thinking at work in cultural studies, you present it as it if was ‘true’ or at least workable or something to aim for.
So, for example, when I outline concepts like ‘patriarchy’ (in a discussion of feminist textual analysis), I don’t present it as an abstract concept, but as a real context and ingredient in the texts we’re reading and in our lives.
Don’t get me wrong – I do agree with these concepts. I do firmly agree that patriarchy needs discussion (and dismantling?), that we should be getting very angry (or at least very active) about Howard’s policies, that we should be thinking critically.
It’s just that I wonder whether I should be teaching these things as if they were all ‘true’ (ie from a ‘biased’ perspective), or ‘objectively’, as if they are ideologies we should engage with and discuss, but not necessarily believe.
Part of me also worries if this is an entirely arbitrary and bullshit line of thinking. I wonder if it’s even possible to do a decent job teaching cultural studies (and gender studies and so on) if you don’t present them subjectively. I mean, that’s kind of what they’re about.
If I do attempt an ‘unbiased’ approach, am I not simply obscuring or ignoring my own personal beliefs about the world and politics and preconceptions? And if that’s the case, what the fuck am I doing calling myself a feminist, if I’m prepared to pretend that an objective approach is possible anyway? I spend three quarters of my time telling students that objective approaches aren’t possible – that we’re steeped in culture and that to really do ‘fair’ analyses we should begin by addressing (and stating) our own ideas about the world and how they affect how we read and write and think and talk about culture.
I wonder if this is part of the problem of tertiary education.
Teaching first years basic concepts like active readership, I say things like “Meaning isn’t an inherent and static quality of a text, but made through readers’ interaction with it” and “There is no single ideology or idea about the world, but multiple and competing ideologies” and adopting an approach in the classroom which explicitly emphasises the idea that ‘every reading (or opinion) is important and valuable’ so that students feel comfortable speaking up.
With this in mind, it seems logical to rework assessment to make it more achievable for students with ‘special needs’ (which is all of them – whether they have reading problems, aren’t comfortable with English, have to work two jobs to feed their families, care for elderly relatives or whatever), and to use a range of teaching tools and approaches in lectures and tutorials to meet the needs of such a vast range of learning styles and students’ needs.
But at the end of the day, the arbitrary marking system necessarily involves being unfair and making it very clear that not every reading style and every ideology and every mode of self expression is valuable or worthy. In fact, the entire marking system, the tutorial/lecture/assignment structure is constructed to encourage and valorise a particular approach to knowledge, a particular way of learning and teaching.
Teaching ‘inclusively’ (ie practicing what I’m preaching in a cultural studies subject) seems like holding back the tide. Fairly fruitless at best, self-deception at worst.
To this point I’ve been taking a mixed approach. I present particular ideas as if they were ‘true’: “patriarchy is…” rather than “some believe that patriarchy is…”, and, when the students ask, I clearly state my own ideas and beliefs. I don’t think it’s possible to canvas every ideology in just twelve weeks, so I present the ‘good ones’. I don’t think first years are really up to being presented with competing ideas (they’re still learning how to learn – getting over that ‘just memorise what I tell you’ thing and moving towards ‘what do you think about what I’ve told you? Do you agree? Why not? Why?’), so it’s best to present a more consistent approach. I also think we should be teaching Australian cultural studies – using Australian readings and ideas. With exceptions for obvious people (like Stuart Hall, who had such an impact in Australia)… but is that just cherry picking?
I wonder if perhaps we should think of the people teaching these subjects as resources in themselves. Not just a pair of legs for walking ideas past the students. We should regard their ideas and work as resources, and expect them to teach those ideas – to bring that** – when they’re in the classroom (whether they’re in front of 200 or 10 students). Which is really why I think that the very best and most experienced teachers should be teaching first years. …and why I think we should have the very best teachers teaching beginner dancers too, btw.
But in both dance and acadamia, teaching beginners or first years is seen as grunt work, the lowest status, least important teaching. Crowd control. The stuff we can farm out to pgrads for guest lectures or get in sessional staff to teach, rather than getting the most experienced, highest profile staff involved.
Which is a very great shame, because it’s a great opportunity to reach a very large number of students all at once, to fire their enthusiasm for the area, and to – if we’re thinking like those CSAA doods – actually encourage critical discussion of the culture we’re actually living in.
I also think it’s a shame that experienced staff take the least interest in these large introductory subjects. I know I’m only new to this, and probably don’t have a clue, and will change my mind as I get more experience, but aren’t these the most important students in the university? They’re harder to teach because they aren’t familiar with universities, and they don’t know any of the basic stuff that eventually brings them to more complex research of their own. But they are the people who have new ideas and fresh and unjaded. They don’t know what media studies is like. So if you come in swinging, using enthusiastic teachers who have mad teaching skills, really love what they do (and what they’re reasearching), surely that will spill over and infect the students (to mix a metaphor)?
And if the people teaching these subjects are also doing their own research, teaching first years will keep them in touch with the basic, fundamental work in their field. If the people doing this teaching are also the big names in publishing and research, won’t their enthusiasm for their work also be infective?
This semester, half the readings on the course are by people who taught me in my first year subjects at UQ – Tony Thwaites, Lloyd Davis, Graeme Turner, Frances Bonner, John Frow, etc etc etc. They’d teach subjects in their special areas, but they’d also be our tutors in first year, and they’d do one-off lectures in their speciality area. So we saw and heard and worked with these guys up close.

Now, when I’m teaching these first years, crapping on about how great Graybags is, I realise that these guys are just names to the students. They have no idea why Graybags is neat as a person as well as as a researcher. So they don’t really care.
I try to make these guys more than just names for the students – I always use photos of them in my slides, and I try to add in interesting details to keep their attention (I love the story of Roland Barthes for this sort of talk). If I’m talking about uber scholars like the Frankfurt School doods, I describe their social context as well, and how that might have influenced their work. I make sure I show a picture of Stuart Hall and tell them that he wasn’t born in Britain.
And I hope that helps them be interested in these people. But really, it would be far easier if Stuart Hall was standing in front of them telling them the story of how he got into talking about media.
This is an introductory subject, so half the job*** is selling media studies to them, making them want to learn more. So it has to be interesting. They have to care. They have to see how they could contribute to the area, how their ideas and experiences are important and worth talking about. And if that means pimping out cultural studies rock stars, so be it.
*Which is, of course, one of the reasons why it’s important to be researching while you’re teaching, and to have decent collegiality happening in your department.
**The Squeeze suggested the students might laugh less in my lectures if I lay off the ghetto talk. I reject the idea: I am totally street.
***The other half is skilling them up with some basic methodological and theoretical tools.
Textual analysis? √
Feminism? √
Cowboys? √