Another Dr. B: Blog #13

As my scholarship on Marshall McLuhan has evolved, so has my teaching philosophy. McLuhan’s concept of “media temperature” massages my thinking about teaching; classrooms can be hot or cool, assignments can be hot or cool, and whole courses can be hot, cool, or some mixture of temperature. My classes tend to work at the interface of print and screen, and tend to mix hot and cool. [need to add definitions; need a paragraph or two of philosophy]

The assignment I have included here represents this mixture of temperatures, as well as working at the interface of print and screen. Students are required to do significant research and produce the highly formalized, high definition genre of “proposal.” I go so far as to give them a fairly prescriptive outline for the genre, allowing them to focus on the research, collaboration, and understanding of their topic. The demands of doing research, precise presentations, and working with prescribed formats all make for a hot assignment. Along the way, however, I tried to keep things cool with an interactive, hands-on “Sticky Note Exercise,” and encourage lots of “cool” collaboration through the use of a project wiki and lots of good team-building exercises. I try to get students to think about the medium, and working across the mediums, by having them write their proposal, present their solutions, and design a short, high-impact visual message that captures the essence of their proposal.