Part I: My Takeaways
In the past four years, I’ve enrolled in four universities as a student on three continents and as far as group projects go there are at least four types of people present when a group is larger than five:
- Freerider: this goes without saying
- Leader: the person that usually calls all the meetings and pushes group member to meet deadlines
- Boaster: all talk and no work, this person never finishes anything they say they will do
- Lazies: performs minimal amount of work and pretty much ok with anything they are assigned
For my journalism course in the VSP, I was fortunate enough to be in a group of just four students to research the history of the CBC and how it reports on local news. This meant less effort coordinating schedules (imagine a group of 10) and clear areas of responsibility. What’s more, the entire team visited Squamish together so we really had the opportunity to bond as a group outside of class. We understood more about each other’s strengths and weaknesses so we could adjust to each other’s working styles.
Being in Vancouver, we quickly decided to focus our media outlet research on the CBC, a government-owned news outlet in Canada. We had the opportunity to visit CBC’s Vancouver broadcasting center, which helped us put fun facts into our presentation. The experience also made our research into the attitudes and history of the CBC a lot more relatable.
Through the course of our research, we discovered that Canada ranks very high on all indexes of freedom (not just press freedom). I feel blessed to be in a place where my freedoms and rights are guaranteed in a practical manner. It is often very easy to forget that the current living conditions that I have are not inevitable.
The other thing I noticed is the difficulty in framing a news story in a neutral fashion, which is especially important for a government-funded organization. In my experience in student politics, any decision, including the lack of decision, could be seen as a political statement, even though it may not have been the original intention. Hence, the articles of the CBC tend to be carefully worded to provide as much fact and as little opinion as possible – unless, of course, if it’s in the opinion section.
Part II: Presentations
I finished the first part of my reflection and found out that it had less than 400 words, the task requires us to write at least 500 words so I’m going to go all out and put in a few more words.
Boy am I glad we have freedom of speech in this country because not everyone will like what I say, even if I am being honest and telling the truth. After all, isn’t journalism partly about fact finding and presenting the facts especially when the subjects of those truths may not want the facts to be published?
The purpose of the class presentation is to demonstrate that the student has a good understanding of the content taught in class and to assess the ability to which the student can form a critical analysis when they apply the knowledge in a practical way. The presentations are not meant for one group to show off and outdo the other groups – whats the point? The marking criteria is based on absolute grading, not on a curve so the only real competition is yourself. I must start off by saying that while many groups analyzed over 5 articles, 2-3 articles analyzed to show full understanding of class content are already sufficient.
In my experience teaching after school science to grade seven I’ve come up with four main points when assessing a student’s abilities:
- Task Completion (Is the assignment handed in on time? Did the student finish everything they were asked to do? How well does their work conform to the project requirements?)
- Mastery (How well did the student understand concepts in class? Did they make practical applications of class theories?)
- Participation (How much effort did the student put in? Did they contribute insightful comments to class discussion?)
- Style (How well was the information presented? To what extent did they give a nuanced discussion of the topic? Were they able to disseminate complex information in a concise manner?)
Why am I making this a point? Well, at least half of the presentations overran or were handed in late, one of the presentations even ran up to 25 minutes when the time limit was 15 minutes. I find this practice repugnant, it is disrespectful of the class’ time, especially when the presentation is repetitive and using up extra time makes it unfair to other groups. I wouldn’t be half as bothered if we weren’t assessed, but a level playing field is imperative in order to assess every student on their own merit.
They should also be mindful of their audience and know that young people under the age of 25 usually have shorter attention spans, presenting for a longer amount of time will not help them retain information, but a clear and concise presentation would be appreciated. The shorter and more condensed the presentation the more you demonstrate that you have a mastery over the knowledge taught in class. If you can teach it well, you know it well.
Then there’s the aspect of timeliness, timeliness not only applies in the length of the presentation where we can draw parallels with the strict time limits of radio and television broadcasts, but also the timeliness of publication. Several groups submitted their presentations late, a minute late, at 7:01pm or later when the deadline was 7pm sharp. In my academic experience, professors would drop one letter grade for works submitted within one hour after the deadline and dish out “F” grades for anything after that. My editor in chief used to chew on my ass (and still does) if I don’t submit the articles I am supposed to compose the day before the deadline.
Two submissions were also fraught with compatibility issues where the graphics or transitions wouldn’t show up properly. Maybe it’s just me having the benefit of being an Information Systems major, but everyone should know the KISS rule – Keep It Simple Stupid. Get rid of all the fancy video graphics and stick with high contrast colors, text, and images, you never know if a projector might erroneously show a tinge of yellow or if the computer connected to the projector might use a dated copy of PowerPoint. Relating this to news media, we have to be mindful of cross-platform compatibility, especially in the digital era. Just because it shows up fine on your screen doesn’t mean that it’ll be readable on mobile, tablet, or e-paper, an unreadable article is no good to anybody.
Some, but not many, presentations also had simple errors in them. One of them had graphs with no titles or axis labels, then another one had formatting issues where words were too long to fit onto a slide and got cut off at the edge of the screen. The class had a whole week to complete the presentations, I find it difficult to believe that they didn’t have five minutes to proofread a 15-minute presentation. Part of professional journalism is to disseminate accurate information in a way that is easy to understand, and careless errors obstruct easy understanding.
I guess in Canada my two cents aren’t worth anything anymore since it’ll be worth 0¢ after rounding down – maybe we should start saying “just my two nickels”.
This piece does not intend to challenge the professor’s way of assessment, but shows the relevance between characteristics of class projects and some journalistic expectations. I hope other students will also treat class projects as training grounds for the workplace and treat it just as seriously. If Aequitas is looking, I hope she grants us fair evaluations based on a consistently applied marking criteria reflecting the true performance of each student.
Part III: Disrespectful Behavior
In a previous post, I outlined the three types of students most commonly seen in class. Of those, type 2 and type 3 students exhibited the most disrespectful behavior during the presentations. I know presentations are boring, but at least have the basic decency to pretend to pay attention. How do I do that? – you may ask. Simply put, stow all electronic devices under your desk, stare at the presenters and nod occasionally, even if all you’re hearing is white noise. Alternatively, you could do what I usually do – write poems in my notebook (scroll down to read one!) while I pretend to take notes. It’s really not that hard!
The professor applied the wise policy of disallowing laptop use, but still, students roam the realms of Instagram and communicate with their friends via WeChat. One student was called out for using her laptop, she lowered her screen momentarily just until the professor turned around, then lo and behold it was back up in less than five seconds.
On another note, there are a clique of type 2 girls that always come back late from the mid-class break while getting an overpriced cup of coffee. You can almost always rely on them being the last ones to reach the Anthropology breakout session, their lateness rate is worse than TransLink’s atrocious on-time rate. They don’t need coffee, it’s not a necessity, especially not two cups of coffee and a cup of bubble tea four days a week, if they want to fit in and be respectful at the same time they could get it during lunch where the break is 90 minutes long. But apparently, being respectful isn’t a thing anymore.
Then there’s this cute couple that always sits together during class and always chats during the lecture and always looks up irrelevant information online. Come on! They can look at outlet malls and plan their next shopping trip all they like after class. I have called them out for chatting a few times, but they’d just shut up for five minutes and resume their distracting conversation again. If they don’t want to learn, that’s fine, don’t deprive others of a focused learning environment.
If the professor works their ass off to teach, we should at least learn our ass off. Likewise, if a fellow classmate presents, pay attention, at least for the first 15 minutes, then feel free to glance at your watch when they overrun to express discontent.
If you’re disrespectful, I’ll call you out. If I’m disrespectful, call me out too. The first step to learning from your mistakes is to know what they are.
Maybe I’m too German, what with following the rules and calling people out for disruptive behavior. Or maybe I’m too Soviet, used to living under an unforgiving government bureaucracy in East Berlin. But everyone’s entitled to an opinion as long as the facts are right – aren’t they? Whatever the case may be, it’s just my two nickels coming a 45-year-old mind trapped in the body of a 22-year-old that complains more than Andy Rooney.
Part IV: Poem
In case you wanted to read one of the poems I wrote in class, here’s one for your enjoyment:
Conviction
Wrestling the chains that strangle me
I reach for the chance to become free
Destiny – there is no need to follow it
If I arm myself with an undying spirit
Through misfortune and hardships
I never allowed distress to eclipse
Nor allowed adversity to thieve
Me of the True North that I believe
In all the evils of this world
Its sin and folly all unfurled
Despite reality’s nightmarish days
I refuse to be dismayed
I choose myself the narrow gate
Carrying my soul’s heavy weight
The road perilous and hard
Forges my character and my heart
When they stab me with their trickery
Under false pretenses with bigotry
It matters not my injuries
Dead or alive – my soul prevails in victory
