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Assignment descriptions

Exams: mid-term, 'test re-test', final

There will be two exams, a midterm scheduled for Monday, Feb 7, and Tuesday, Feb 8. The final will take place on Tuesday, June 8 (7 or 8 am – 10 am). On the midterm exam, you will take the test Monday as you normally would. On Tuesday, you have the option of re-taking the test in a small group, where group members can discuss answers before turning in one exam for the group (still closed book, though). Same test. The individual portion of the exam (the first hour) will be worth 75% of your total grade for the test, and the group portion 25%, if it helps your grade. If your group during the second hour scores lower than you as an individual did the first hour, you’ll just receive 100% of the points based on your individual exam score. You can choose not to take the exam in a group and settle for whatever grade you end up with from your first attempt. In any case taking the group exam cannot lower your grade. If you’re entitled to special accommodations (see ‘students with disabilities’ below). We’ll discuss scheduling for the final and the prospects for doing both the individual and group exams (which would require expanding the Tuesday block from 8 – 10 to 7 – 10 am).

The point of this re-test is to, hopefully, make the exam a learning and evaluation tool.

The final will not be comprehensive, and will cover only material after the first exam.

Each exam is worth 100 points.

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Friday Discussios

Four Fridays during the term (weeks 2, 4, 7 and 9), we will spend Friday in small groups. You will have a reading assignment—a few short articles, generally based on the material we’re doing in class—and you will be asked to write a 200-word abstract that summarizes and briefly analyzes the reading assignments, and in class each group will be asked to respond to questions or prompts I give you. Each Friday is worth 25 possible points—5 for the abstract, 20 for the group work. You can make up one of these if you’re absent (by writing the abstract and completing the questions groups responded to in class). But you must turn it in before the next discussion occurs (last one is due Friday of week 10). Note: topics may change if something interesting is happening in the news.

Group term projects

There are two important issues that will likely have some long-term political impacts—the Tea Party movement, and the WikiLeaks phenomenon. The class will be split into two groups, and each group will subdivide to cover different aspects of these two issues—their history, important players, and how they are covered by the news media (including both news and analysis, filtering pressures, etc.). We will begin working on this early in the term. Groups will write a paper and present their findings during the 10 th week of the term.

The paper should provide summary and analysis from the activity of each of the subgroups. Six to nine pages in length is fine. The presentation should multi-media. Powerpoint isn’t necessary but you do need to use multiple forms of media in your presentation (some video works well, obviously), as well as provide a one-page handout to students covering the essential points they need to know. This will be used to help students study for the exam, so groups should choose carefully the information they choose to include on the handouts.

You'll want to:

• Document all the sources you checked —what sources of information did you use to do this assignment? What were your most important sources? How did information differ from one site to another (in other words, what did you use a particular site for)? The library has LexisNexis—a search engine that is perfect for gauging news coverage on either of these . You can look at differences in coverage over time, relate these to specific events, etc.
• Summarize the story—what’s it about? Is there any context that goes with it? Give us a sense of the history, the context (e.g., the Santelli rant and the Tea Party movement). In both cases, there are sites affiliated with both the Tea Party and WikiLeaks, which obviously should be included. A description and history could be two separate tasks for group members.
• Analyze —Explain how the story was covered. Some things to consider (this is not a complete list):
• Type of news media— any differences between how, for instance, commercial and non-commercial outlets are covering a story? TV versus print / web? Any relevant documentaries to consider? What about talk radio (he asked, innocently)?
• Pressuring filters— are some media outlets prone to ‘soft pedal’ some aspects of the story (for instance, the Government might portray news outlets as ‘unpatriotic’ for showing sympathy with WikiLeaks, or news outlets might fear a boycott of advertisers if they were to cover the Tea Party movement in a harsh light)? You’ll want to go through the pressuring filters discussed in class on this one.
• political risks —related—would media outlets incur the wrath of the White House, City Hall, or other powerful politicians by pursuing the story?
• importance —make a case for the importance of the story, in terms of news ratings, coverage, politics.
• Coverage— how has the coverage of this story developed over time?
• Individual contributions — I want a section that details what each member of the group did on the project, in sufficient detail to allow me to compare that with the quality of work in the paper and presentation.

Your presentation should be multimedia—at a minimum print and online sources, and with the prevalence of youtube it would be surprising if you couldn’t find some video footage of some sort to show as well (carefully chosen from all the possibilities …). If your group wants to put together a web page of links to use as visual aids, I will help put this together if I'm given enough lead time. You may want to use links, visuals, text, imagery. Radio (e.g., talk radio) is fair game, but here's the key—focus on substance, not style. The media you use should not be a distraction to what you're trying to convey—you wouldn't want to get caught in the same trap as commercial news media infotainers now, would you?

Here’s the point breakdown:

• Progress by end of week 6. Subgroups have to have made some significant progress by this point (25 pts possible).
• Turning in a paper: 75 possible points
• Presenting in front of your class peers: 25 possible points
• Individual contribution: 25 possible points (it is up to each individual to make sure their contribution is well-documented in the paper—you can easily lose 20 points here if not).

This assignment is worth 150 points.

Attendance

Yes, you get 1 point for every day you attend class (50 days, we’ll count MLK Day). Think of it as a reward for attending, not as punishment for missing! There is a certain collective responsibility a class of students should feel for making the class a success, and it’s my philosophy that the responsibility should be distributed fairly evenly, not burdened by the few students who would attend even in the midst of a post-nuclear apocalypse.

50 points possible