Time Schedule:
Kristin Louise Gustafson
B CUSP 118
Bothell Campus
Evaluates progress at the conclusion of the first year through the construction of a portfolio and offers an experiential learning opportunity, either on- or off-campus. Offered: Sp.
Class description
By conducting journalistic interviews, designing a first-year learning portfolio (which includes critically reflecting on three artifacts of learning), and critically reading and responding to popular and scholarly writing, students who take this course will draw connections between their own experiences and notions of civic/amateur/alternative journalism and public scholarship. Critical reflection on one's self, one's ideas, and one's work, all crucial for deep learning and engaged scholarship, will serve as a foundation for the course. Students will engage with the dialogue, interpretation, reporting, and aesthetics of journalistic interviewing in order to investigate and make sense of their first year of learning at UW Bothell. Articulating a notion of public scholarship or public intellectualism vis-a-vis their own experiences and work will frame their perspective on their future undergraduate studies. Students will have the opportunity to practice communication skills including critical reading; media literacy; and written, visual, online, and oral presentation.
Student learning goals
Be able to make and articulate the connections among journalistic interviews, personal reflection, and public scholarship
Be able to use and demonstrate a first-year proficiency in journalistic interviews as a way to learn experientially on and off campus about the people, culture, society, university, and world around them -- including asking and answering questions critically and creatively
Be able to engage in and demonstrate a first-year proficiency in public scholarship using technology, literature, media, public data, and information gained from journalism and interviewing -- including ways to dig deeper than usual to gain knowledge and understanding
Be able to create a first-year learning portfolio and demonstrate a first-year proficiency in the tools associated with portfolio-based learning -- including reflecting on the student's learning, engaging closely with that learning, and making a public argument about that learning
Be able to make effective use of and demonstrate a first-year proficiency of communication in ways that are critical and creative -- including journalistic interviewing, media literacy, critical reading, interpreting aesthetics, writing well, and visual, online, and oral presentation
General method of instruction
We will primarily use a variety of instruction methods: Portfolio, Role Playing Exercises, Peer Evaluation, Presentations, Exams, Reflection Essays
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
The draft agenda for class assignments involves students in three different ways of learning and demonstrating their learning:
1. Weekly readings and online discussion board responses on journalism, public scholarship, public intellectualism, interviewing, and current events
2. Two Interview Assignments, as discussed in class
3. Portfolio Assignment, which includes (a) building an E-portfolio using Google Site and CUSP guidelines provided, (b) writing/revising a reflective and persuasive essay discussing the three artifacts, and (c) collecting three artifacts
