Developed by Allison Hahn, Department of Communication Studies, Baruch College, CUNY
In Professor Hahn’s summer session of International Communication (COM 3076) , she asked students to use the online platform “Global Voices” in two ways – as a frequently used source for weekly reading assignments and as a required resource for the research project.
The oer & Course Artifact
Global Voices describes itself as ” an international and multilingual community of bloggers, journalists, translators, academics, and human rights activists.” Professor Hahn choose this platform because it has a global perspective, better coverage than many newspapers, and is more accessible than online newspaper sources. All work on Global Voices is published under a Creative Commons Attribution- Only license.
Professor Hahn has provided her open syllabus for International Communication and discussion board questions based on Global Voices open resources.
International Communications (2018) – Syllabus & Discussion Board Prompts
transitioning to and Teaching with oer
Professor Hahn had been working on ways to improve and update her COM3076 course. The course previously used Daya Thussu’s International Communication Reader. She realized that the Baruch College library had access to many of the articles in the reader; when she took over the class she assigned those articles rather than Thussu’s text. She also wanted to include a few interactive and more up to date texts and resources in her class, hence the OER project.
Professor Hahn’s sections of the class are fully online and include weekly readings, short weekly blackboard posts, a mid-term research project, and a final exam. For the weekly assignments she recorded video lectures that address key topics, vocabulary, and reading questions. She recorded the course lectures in two parts, one speaking about the academic journal article (which won’t change from semester to semester) and one about the Global Voices article. This will allow Professor Hahn to quickly update the course, adding new Global Voices articles each semester as a way to include current events without having to re-record the entire lecture.
The blackboard posts and final exam are given through Blackboard and were easily transitioned to an online format. The midterm research project, however, was more difficult to transition from face-to-face to fully online. For this project, students examine the ways that new and social media are used in a foreign country (it cannot be their home country or the US). Some students have had problems with the part of the project that ask them to identify one social problem that is being addressed through social media use. Because of these discrepancies, Professor Hahn has been looking for freely accessible databases that students could use during the research part of the project.
Faculty Information
Allison Hahn, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College, CUNY.
Licensing information
The syllabus for International Communication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States (CC BY 3.0 US).
Global Voices is an OER.