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No Laptops--No Cell Phones Allowed In This Class Class Lecture PowerPoint Materials Will Be Posted to the D2L Virtual Classroom Contact ONLY the MCOM100 Teaching Assistant, Mr. Andy Hamilton, at mcom100@winona.edu
Text: Folkerts, J., Lacy, S., Larabee, A. The media in your life: an introduction to mass communication. (Loose-leaf Edition--To Save You Money) New York: Allyn and Bacon.
This course is designed to provide students with exposure to concepts and principles involved in understanding the inter-relationship between the mass media and American society. Do the media simply reflect American society today or do they influence and shape it? Do the media "give the public what it wants" or do they actually determine what you will read, listen to and view consistent with identified social and political agendas? Perhaps at no other time in our history have the media played a bigger role in how we view our communities, our government, our nation and the world. What has been the result of this ever- increasing role of the mass media in our lives? You are watching the media change as never before...you will see the death of
long-standing leaders of public opinion, the rise of alternative sources of
information, and an erosion of media who compromise
This course examines these important questions by examining the mass media in America chapter-by-chapter and with supplemental information provided on video and live Internet links in the lecture by the professor. This is a large, auditorium-based survey course in the mass media. As such, the course will consist of lectures and audio/visual presentations and will involve quizzes almost every week to promote ongoing understanding of course content on the part of students.
Views of the evolution of the media and America itself in the process (photos above). From Andy Griffith's friendly and peaceful hometown of Mayberry, with a positive moral lesson in every episode, to Sex and the City, where nobody is really happy...or satisfied; from Father Knows Best in the '50s to Father Can't Find the Living Room; the approaching death of newspapers and the rise of electronic media for all things, including reading what used to be called books; Matt Drudge of the drudgereport.com, arguably the most important information provider in America today--the media read him first thing in the morning and HE (no longer the New York Times) sets the agenda for them all; Britney Spears in a new celebrity-obsessed culture--short on talent, long on marketing--presenting a super-sexualized image for millions of children and young teens in a world in which immature, unprincipled behavior goes uncritically reported.
BE SURE TO READ THIS: The professor plans to have the PowerPoint presentation used in each class lecture available on the Desire to Learn (D2L) website for this course in advance of each quiz. This greatly minimizes the needs for notes. This is a "Clicker Class." You MUST have a functional clicker (required as a Bookstore supply for this course) and have registered your clicker by the third class session. All quizzes will be given by clicker at that time and you will receive a zero for any quiz for which your clicker is not operational. YOU are responsible for making sure your clicker functions correctly and that you and it are enrolled in the class for that purpose. You can receive any assistance you need in that regard from Tech Support, Somsen Hall. Please do this right away...do not wait until the afternoon before the first clicker quiz to do this. No clicker technical support is provided by the professor or his TA before. during or after class/quizzes. We just won't know the answers to any technical questions about clickers. Tech Support is there for that purpose. Scantrons will be used for any quizzes during at least the first two weeks of class. The first PowerPoint will show you which kind. All arrangements for quiz makeups and all questions about grading should be directed to the Teaching Assistant. His contact information will be given in class and posted to D2L and can be found at the top of this page. You must notify the TA of absence from a quiz in advance to arrange a makeup. Do not email or call Prof. Weis. He will be happy to talk with you before or after class, but the class is too large for email/phone contact. Again, this is the largest class at WSU.
PLEASE NOTE: Again this term, you will be allowed ONE makeup for a missed quiz. After that, you will receive a zero for those not taken on the assigned evenings. Consistent with university College of Liberal Arts policy, laptop use is entirely at the discretion of the professor for each class. You do NOT need a laptop for this course. Use of laptops is not permitted in this class because of what experience has demonstrated is unavoidable misuse and distraction in so large a group and venue. I do not serve students well by making it easy for them to be distracted...or by getting thrown out of class (and perhaps school) because of cheating. If you have your laptop on at any time after the start of class you will be asked to leave and considered absent from class and any quiz/exam that may be conducted. "But I need my laptop for notes." Not really. Again, lecture PowerPoint content will be available to you on D2L. You must also turn off all cell phones and MP3 devices, etc., before you enter the auditorium. If your cell phone rings or you are seen using your cell for calls, text messages, games, etc., you will be asked to leave and considered absent for that class session and quiz/exam. If you are seen talking on a cell phone/text messaging during a quiz/exam for any reason, you will be asked to leave and this will be considered cheating and you will be failed for the course and other disciplinary action will be recommended by the professor to the dean. Do not have any notes (usually it's thumbnails of the PPT slides) visible during exams. We lose students every term because they refer to them during quizzes. Prof. Weis mixes up quizzes term to term, so having last term's probably won't help. Okay. Enough about that. You will find it impossible to do well in this course if you do not read the text assignment for each week. You will find it impossible to do well if you do not attend class and listen to the lecture material. You will find it impossible to do well in this class if you miss weekly quiz sessions. But this is not a difficult course; in fact, I warn Mass Comm majors that they may find this very elementary as their first course in that major. But that is because, on average, there are 50 mass comm majors in the class, for whom the material is directly related to their ultimate professions, and about 400 students taking the class as a "university studies," gen ed, course at the 100 level. As a result, I anticipate outstanding grades from among the Mass Comm majors, right? :-) Others who attend, pay attention, review the PPT on D2L and read the chapter material each week should also do very well, however. Grades in this course will be determined based on the following:
Grading Scale: A = 90-100 B = 80-89 C = 70-79 D = 60-69 F = <60
Gutenberg changes civilization forever (above, left) with the invention of movable metal type. It enabled the proliferation of knowledge in the form of reading materials like the incunable document (above, right) of Gregory the Great's work on the Book of Job, which can be seen in Prof. Weis' office. The three photos below show a Gutenberg era printing press, found today in Mainz, Germany. Is the Web and the new media revolution as big an innovation as Gutenberg's movable metal type and the resultant explosive increase in literacy beginning in the 1400s? Yes. It is changing everything once again. What is the relationship between the mass media and our society today? It is, in fact, evident and incredibly profound.
At the right is a graphic you will find useful in this course as we talk about "persistence of vision." This concept has presented the single greatest challenge to some students who have taken this course over the many years that I have been the instructor. I'm adding this picture again this term in another attempt to help students understand that motion pictures have absolutely nothing to do with hypnosis, voodoo, flashes of light or trances caused by darkened theaters. There is NO reason for you to have ANY problem with this important concept unless you are not in class, not listening at all, or not looking through the PowerPoint slides online.
Additional Caveat: This syllabus below is intended to be a general outline of the tentative class schedule and assignments only. It will DEFINITELY be changed to meet the specific needs of this particular class and its members. Students must be in class to make themselves aware of these adjustments. Material covered, content of the next quiz, will always be clearly spelled out IN CLASS. Students involved in cheating will immediately fail the course and the professor will recommend further action directly to the Mass Communication Department in the case of majors and/or the Dean of CLA.
Tentative Schedule
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This
course has nearly 400 students enrolled this term. MCOM100 will be the largest
class you attend at WSU because it is the largest class in the university's
history.
principles
of fairness and duty to the public for bias and ideology.
