Over at PBS Mediashift, I have looked at how to get ready for the start of j-school this week.

During the summer, here at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism, we made a couple of significant changes.  We cut back on the number of required textbooks, and instead added a good quality digital audio recorder, the Zoom H2, as a requirement for students.

We also discussed how to teach students of the millennial generation, a topic of interest to educators and beyond:

These young people have grown up with choices and advantages all their lives and so they expect and demand the world on their own terms. They have also grown up in a world where technology and multi-tasking are a way of life, often learning through the trial and error process of computer games.

We acknowledged that understanding the cultural context for our students can make us better educators. So one thing we did was adapt the syllabus to builds in more experiential activities, where students learn through in-class exercises and field reporting coursework. We have provided more opportunities for teamwork on assignments, as students say they enjoy working together.

As I concluded in the piece for Mediashift:

Every new academic year provides new opportunities to learn and improve. University is not just a learning environment for students, but also for professors. No doubt, we will learn something during the first, and subsequent weeks, of the year.

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