New year, new goals
Many changes are in store for Pop Academy, but most will not be visible on this site. For starters, I’m not teaching any courses with required blogging components this semester. Due in part to a changing of the guard with the required lower and upper level theory courses, I don’t have an elective this time around. With the quick turn around needed to teach the 100+ baby theory course plus the senior-level theory course I’ve been teaching a couple of years now, I didn’t want to spend valuable, scarce winter break time scrapping the existing syllabi just to work in social media. Further, I won’t be teaching the upper level theory course next fall, so no point in all that prep for a course I’ll be handing over to someone else.
However, I still plan on plugging blogs and Twitter as a great (ahem, all but necessary) resource for communication studies majors. Maybe I’ll even get some takers who want to build blogs from my WordPress multiuser account. Meanwhile, a number of my pop culture and/or theory students from last semester have moved onto their senior research, where they plan to incorporate social media theory and use into project design. I can’t stress enough how cool it is to still see at least a handful of them actively tweeting pop culture and current events topics.
The absence of student blogs linked from Pop Academy this semester means I need to step up my game as the site’s sole contributor. I’ve needed to do so from Day 1, but fall semester was my heavy teaching load. In addition, most of my conference prep for the Media Studies Interest Group of the Central States Communication Association is complete. The conference isn’t until near the end of the semester, which helps, too. With the course release from the large lecture course and a lighter grading load, spring semester will allow more time for research and active blogging—which are one and the same given my goal of designing a social media in the classroom research study. Once I get into a teaching and office hour rhythm, I’ll be working on my IRB form and then participant recruitment.
In addition to the new study, I need to complete the Tila Tequila essay that’s been on the back burner for a year. Essentially, in the piece I argue how popular media has positioned her bisexuality as a lifestyle choice for ratings and consistently asked her to “prove” her orientation via physical performance. I may also have a Mad Men edited volume to work on later in the term if my co-editors and I have success with a publisher. Finally, I’ll be prepping Pop Academy, well the Critical Theory and Popular Culture class, for a high-density online run for the first summer session.
Oh, and I must mention today is the first day of spring classes. I teach just once, in fact I only teach one class daily Monday through Thursday this term. Here’s hoping for a good start to Spring Semester and lots of good writing time.
