Sabbatical Report
Lee McGaan, Professor of Communication Studies
September 16, 2009

In January 2008 I proposed three projects to be completed during my spring 2009 sabbatical leave.  This proposal was approved by the Faculty and Institutional Development Committee.  The following paragraphs describe the outcomes from each of the projects.

Project One – Development of a new course for the Integrated Studies Citizenship requirement, “Media and the Self-Directed Citizen.”  I observed in my sabbatical proposal that, “Media provide much of the substance for political thinking and individual engagement in nearly all civic understanding and involvement.  Yet, at this time, our citizenship course offerings do not address media and citizenship in any direct way.  …this project seeks to remedy that omission in the curriculum.” During the first weeks of my spring sabbatical I was able to complete materials to present my course plan to the Citizenship steering committee and the faculty Curriculum Committee.  The course was submitted and approved by the faculty for inclusion in the course offerings this year and is currently being taught during the fall semester.  During the remainder of the sabbatical I reorganized previously developed materials (and knowledge) on mass communication theory and traditional media practice for use in the course.  The bulk of my time, however, was spent researching “new media” (social and interactive use of the internet, etc.), familiarizing myself with the technology (“follow me on Twitter!”) and developing course materials and assignments related to this watershed change in communication methods and content.  My experience so far this fall seems to confirm that the course is involving students in the relationship of media to citizenship, engaging them in critical responses to media and has prospects for showing students how they may become users of media for civic purposes rather than simply functioning as passive receivers.

Project Two – Improvement of Teaching Effectiveness through the Pedagogy of Engagement.  As I noted in my proposal, “The students we see in our classes now come to us with an expectation that active learning will be a part of most or all classes and that multiple kinds of learning experiences will likely occur within each class session.  The days of the (effective) 50 minute lecture are over.  … [However] students have not developed well the ability to retain and reuse experiential learning.”  While developing materials for my new Citizenship course, I spent time reviewing literature on engagement practices.  Subsequently I focused on three courses, the Citizenship course, Organizational Communication (currently being taught in revised form) and Persuasion (to be taught in the spring).  For these classes I worked on constructing in-class, individual and group activities as means to engage students actively in the application of course content found in readings, course web documents, and mini-lectures.  Many of these in-class engagement activities are designed to prepare students for the skills and knowledge they will need to complete major graded course assignments. (In previous course revisions, I have attempted to develop major assignments in these upper division courses that parallel projects our students our likely to encounter post-graduation.)  As a result of attending an ACM Conference on metacognition (after I submitted my sabbatical proposal), I determined to collect and digest additional material on the role of metacognition practices in college teaching and to incorporate some metacognitive activities into my classes this fall as part of my sabbatical teaching effectiveness project.  The goal I have is to go beyond engagement in learning and develop students who can actively evaluate their own learning practices and can take charge of finding the most effective ways to accomplish learning goals for themselves. That process is happening now, will involve at least one student assistant and all of my current courses (albeit in limited and preliminary fashion), and will be on-going.

Project Three – Research on Copyright Law and its Effects.  My lowest priority project involved continued reading on copyright law and the role of “intellectual property” regulation and practice.  During this time I was able to digest a substantial amount of material going beyond law and first amendment writers and exploring the thinking of economists and “new media” figures. I was able to determine that my previous presentation on the philosophical and rhetorical underpinnings of intellectual property concepts is worthy of turning into a scholarly press article (yet to be written in journal style).  I also developed an outline of a potential popular press essay on the role of current copyright law and practice in limiting innovation and creative endeavors.