Course Objectives (including grading)

Illustration Courtesy of Gavin Coates

Objectives:

Your weekly class notes, assignments, announcements, and other materials related to the course, will be posted on this site. Please make sure you check the site regularly! JMC6091 will be presented online. There will be no paper handouts.

Journalism | Calendar | Course Goal | Learning Outcomes | Attendance | Grading |

Journalism

This course is about on-line journalism.

It is not about producing pretty websites.

The multiple media skills you will develop during the course of the semester are designed to enable you to harness the power of the Internet to gather news and information and to present your journalism to its best effect in the most appropriate form on the web.

Calendar:

First Labs:  Section A: Tuesday, Sept 6 – 10-1 pm / Section B: Tuesday, Sept 6 – 3 – 6pm / Section C: Thursday, Sept 1 – 6.30 – 9.30 pm

Course Goal:

The aim of the course is to equip you with the skills to report and present hard news and features in the most appropriate media/medium be it text, photographs, graphics, audio, video – and/or a combination of the above for display on the web.

You will learn how to report, write, edit and lay out text and other reports, take and edit photographs, record and edit audio and produce multi-media reports using standard and web2.0 tools such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Audacity, Soundslides, WordPress and other content management systems, RSS, social media, plus the latest Web2.0 interactive applications.

These reports will be in a form ready for uploading to internet newsites.

You will also address online security and privacy issues and the ethical use of web-generated content and leads

Intended Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this course you will be able to:

1. Harness the power of the internet and online tools for reporting and research purposes. This means using online tools to track trends, develop topics, research background and data, and generate leads (including potential sources) while judging and checking the veracity of the source information.

2. Report and edit text, audio, visual and audio-visual articles and packages – this means developing leads (from online research and from fieldwork) to develop and cultivate sources, obtain information and further leads, re-check facts, and then edit the information gathered into news-ready packages. An important part of this process is developing your news judgement – particularly the need to decide what to include/exclude.

3. Produce and lay out these reports for web publications aimed at an international audience. Again, this means further judging the information to include/exclude and choosing the best format for the element of the story – text, audio, audio-visual, charts etc etc. You will need to be able to make ethically responsible decisions in the planning, editing and publication of news packages, aesthetic decisions in how to present it and technological decisions in how best to deliver the package to an international online audience.

4. Be familiar with extant technologies and be equipped with tools and skills to enable you to self-teach yourself new technologies as they emerge.

Attendance:

This is a 12-week long intensive lab course. Attendance is mandatory. You are expected to manage your time professionally whether you are a part-time or full-time student. You cannot make up missed classes. While faculty and TA staff are available outside lab time for advice and guidance, they are NOT available to provide private make-up tuition for individual students who failed to attend class without good reason. Missing class without good reason will result in a zero attendance mark AND a zero class participation mark which will affect your final grade.

• Medical certificates are required for those who seek to claim extensions for missing mid-term and/or final assignment deadlines on the grounds of sickness/injury
• Missing class in order to complete assignments for other courses or for family holidays are not acceptable justifications for absence
• It is up to you to decide how you wish to manage your time — and thus to accept the consequences

Grading:

• 20% – In-class work, class participation & ad hoc assignments
• 35% – Your group mid-term project
• 45% – Final individual project uploaded toyour class website

Assignments and projects will be graded according to the following criteria (depending upon context)

• Journalism (Journalistic merit, compelling headline(s), comprehensibility to non-HK viewers), sourcing, accuracy
• Attention to detail (avoidance of spelling and grammatical mistakes, choppy editing)
• Attractive and logical navigation and lay-out
• Coherence of storytelling
• Appropriate choice and utlilisation of apps, software and other multiple media elements
• Quality of photos and photo editing (given limits on equipment)
• Quality of audio recording and editing (given existing equipment)
• How well elements (text, pictures, audio etc) fit together
• Meaningful, appropriate, and accurate use of captions, hyperlinks, alt tags and other metadata

Note: assignments that contain plagiarism and/or copyright infringements will earn a failing grade (0)

Note: assignments that fall foul of the common pitfalls listed here will be penalised accordingly

Grading Scales:

• IN-CLASS WORK & CLASS PARTICIPATION: there are two components:1) you will be required to complete assigned tasks in class. These tasks cannot be completed or made up outside of class.2) you are expected to offer your ideas in class and demonstrate that you have done and understood the readings and assignments. You should upload assignments to your class website (when applicable).
• Regard your class website site as a primer for experimenting with different technologies and techniques and discussing what did and did not work for you.

•  MID-TERM TEAMWORK PROJECT: you will work in couples or teams to produce a text plus audio-visual slideshow package using SOUNDSLIDES on a topic related to this semester’s theme.

• FINAL INDIVIDUAL PROJECT:you will produce a multiple-media online package centred on this semester’s theme to be uploaded to your class website.