Exercises
These exercises can be used with any level of journalism student. Educators should feel free to tweak the specifics of the assignment while making use of the playful structure upon which they are built.
Community Engagement
Theme: Community News, Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Students use their stakeholder maps to consider how reporting can better meet their information needs.
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Developing Community Agreements
Theme: General, Community News
Type: Exercises
Students and faculty create a set of classroom guidelines for effective communication in person and virtually, with the goal of building inclusive, equitable and trusting learning environments.
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Newspapers and Community
Theme: Community News
Type: Exercises
Students will explore how community newspapers have historically served their audiences.
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Empower the Audience
Theme: Community News
Type: Exercises
Students consider what the audience will do after consuming their stories, and explore how journalism can engage and empower communities.
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Syllabi
Below is a sampling of syllabi used in actual undergraduate Journalism + Design courses at The New School since the program began in Fall 2014. Some of these courses have been taught many times by multiple instructors, who continue to iterate as they teach them again. Others were one-time experiments. Whatever the case, each syllabus reflects events that were current at the time as well as the perspective and passions of the instructor. The syllabi also reflect access to New York’s rich professional communities of journalists and designers.
Designing Digital Communities
Theme: Experimental, Community News
Type: Syllabi
The Internet is a place for discussion and collaboration, but the experience can be difficult, confusing, intimidating, or downright hostile. This course will explore how we can design systems for better discussion, collaboration, voting and governance online.
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Expanding your audience: Designing for Accessibility
Theme: General, Community News
Type: Syllabi
This course will look at how to utilize new (and old) technologies to make news content accessible to as many people as possible. Topics covered include web accessibility, accessible graphics, closed captioning, and methods for engaging with different communities.
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Engagement Journalism
Theme: Community News
Type: Syllabi
Journalists need to understand audiences in order to best serve them. Journalists must learn how to use social media not only for distribution -- which is now essential for all newsrooms -- but also to communicate with and interact with audiences. This course will teach students how to create an engagement strategy, to use social media for newsgathering and distribution, to design crowd-powered projects, and to measure success through metrics and outcomes.
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