This project involves students in two winter 2014 term courses, Communication Research Methods and Introduction to Digital Journalism. Each course would contribute in distinct, but complementary ways, to research about the portrayal of women in The Ring-tum Phi, and produce a digital presentation of the findings as an online interactive timeline and/or e-book.
JOUR232, Communication Research Methods: Through this project, students would meet course objectives by learning and applying historical and content analysis research methods while integrating digital tools for data collection, analysis, and presentation. Newspaper content would be digitized using iPads and possibly scanners. Students would create an online interactive timeline with visuals and links to full articles and videos. I plan to evaluate students during several stages of the process, including conceptual framework, variable measurement (codebook and coding instrument), analysis, and presentation.
In Introduction to Digital Journalism students would create videos using photos and text from The Phi, gathered by the other class. In addition, the students would draw content from historical Rockbridge Report video in the professor’s archives as well as from the department’s collection. They would also conduct interviews with sources who could elaborate on the historical materials. Teams would focus their stories on three to five topics that emerge from the JOUR232 research. I plan to evaluate the reporting process as well as students’ writing and presentation.