Pedagogy in Communications

Catalog description

The purpose of this seminar is to train doctoral students to teach in the communications discipline at the college/university level. COMM 502 Pedagogy in Communications (3)This seminar is proposed as a dimension of the emphases on TA training and teacher preparation for doctoral students in Mass Communications in the College of Communications. The course is one aspect of the College's Graduate Teaching Academy. The seminar provides a foundation in pedagogical research, theory and classroom practice for mass communications doctoral students. The Graduate Teaching Academy demonstrates our faculty's commitment to the integration of training in research and teaching. The work of the seminar focuses on the unique characteristics of undergraduate and graduate education in the communications discipline. The principles and practices covered in the seminar have applications for teaching communications in a number of venues including the academic, business and government professional settings. The course involves students in collaborative learning, assessment skills, powerful pedagogies, practical workshops and substantive reviews and applications of curricular and pedagogical research in the communications discipline. The Graduate Teaching Academy in the College of Communications involves students in a number of activities that will prepare them for teaching. This seminar is one of those activities. Graduate Teaching Academy participants: 1. Take coursework in communications curriculum and pedagogical development that stresses a teaching scholarship of learning theory and a pedagogy of active and engaged learning practices. 2. Study the scholarship of learning within a disciplinary context in order to understand the system of organized knowledge in the communications discipline within which our teaching takes place. This orientation encourages a critical review of the comparative costs/benefits of a disciplinary - versus interdisciplinary-based communications pedagogy. 3. Eligible doctoral students become Teaching Associates, under faculty supervision, for selected College of Communications courses 4. Teach an undergraduate course in the College as an instructor. 5. Develop a teaching portfolio. 6. Attend College colloquia.7. Have access to College resources like the Academic Services Center, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and University resources such as the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Penn State's Schreyer Institute.8. Complete the Teaching with Technology certification.