Teaching Experience

TEACHING FELLOWSHIP

My educational training during my graduate program at Brown University culminated in a Teaching Fellowship, an opportunity for departmental support to design and run my own course (Spring 2007). The resulting class, "TV on the Internet: Private Property in the Public Eye," was a seminar with the goal of building a critical framework for analyzing how the convergence of television and the internet are changing the production and consumption of media. It introduced a range of methodologies from critical theory, cultural studies, media studies, and political economy and applied them to media production, texts, and reception across a range of phenomena. Overall, my objective was to promote digital media literacy as well as general skills in critical viewing, reading, and writing. I devised a structure and requirements for the course to foster specific aspects of these skills:

• To encourage an active and collaborative learning environment, where students facilitate productive conversations with their peers, I devoted our Thursday meetings to student presentations on the week's material, and designated a respondent for each presentation who was responsible for leading discussion.
• To encourage familiarity with the internet as a medium for interaction and creativity, both within the class and as part of a wider public, we maintained a blog for sharing course information, presentation notes, papers, and other thoughts and comments. I also required students to produce a web-based work directed at a general audience for their midterm project.
• To encourage an understanding of writing as a cumulative process with several stages, I asked students to approach their class presentations as an opportunity to work through questions and debates. They then turned in a short essay based on the concerns of their presentation. Their final formal paper was an expansion of one of these short essays.

The course also consisted of Tuesday meetings, for which I prepared informal lectures and initiated discussion, and participatory lab/screenings on Mondays to introduce the week's object of analysis.

Students' evaluations indicated that, while they would have preferred the lectures to be better organized at times, they greatly valued my responsiveness and enthusiasm. Although some would have appreciated more guidance about assessment, they found the structure of course material and assignments to be extremely productive. In future courses, I will take this feedback into account by preparing lectures more systematically and by increasing the amount of in-class time devoted to reviewing writing methods and expectations.

TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS

I served as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University for five semesters, covering the following courses:

• Television Studies - Fall 2006
• Cinema and Stardom: Image/Industry/Fantasy - Spring 2006
• Introduction to Digital Media - Fall 2005
• Introduction to the Study of Television - Spring 2005
• Introduction to Modern Culture and Media - Fall 2004

In my capacity as a TA, I led one to two weekly discussion sections, which called for me to provide explanations of course material, to solicit and respond to questions, and to facilitate dialogue among the students. Additionally, I was responsible for evaluating and grading papers, and for working with students to improve their writing through feedback and individual meetings. For most courses, I also prepared at least one lecture. Being a Teaching Assistant was invaluable in refining my educational approach and in mastering the heterogeneous demands of the classroom. Students' evaluations suggest that I was very effective at clarifying readings, leading discussion, and advancing writing skills.