Teaching

Current Role & Teaching

connections I teach in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. In first semester 2010 my main teaching role will be running Web Communications 101 which is the new flagship unit for the Internet Communications major; Web 101 is taught in three parts, the first introduces the Internet and World Wide Web, the second looks at the emergence of "Web 2.0" (looking at blogs, wikis, Twitter, social networks and content sharing) and culminates in an examinations of social media, including guided hands-on use of most of these tools and approaches. The unit is also available at the graduate level as Web Communications 501. Web Communications 101 is also available online via Open Universities Australia and runs in all four study periods of 2010 (Web 101 replaces Net11 in the per-2010 Open Universities Australia system). In 2010 I will also be finalising Web Media 207 which will initially run in Study Period 4 via Open Universities Australia and then on-campus annually beginning in semester one, 2011.

In 2009, semester two, I taught Internet Studies 202/502 (which also runs through Open Universities Australia as Net11) ‘Internet Communication & Collaboration’ – which is a completely rewritten unit aimed at introducing students to today’s internet – and Internet Studies 213/513 (which also runs through Open Universities Australia as Net23) ‘Internet Politics and Power’ – which examined topical political issues from privacy and internet filtering/censorship through to piracy and copyright (see some examples of student work in 213 here). In first semester I taught Virtual Communities (Net 213/514) and Network Culture and the Virtual Society (Net395/695); these units had face to face and distance modes for Curtin students and were also offered via Open Universities Australia.

Teaching History

I taught at the University of Western Australia in various capacities between 2002 and 2008. In semester two, 2008, I coordinated iGeneration: Digital Communication and Participatory Culture at both honours and masters level. I also tutored and lectured in Cultures, New Media and Communication (Comm2202); tutored Communications Project unit (Comm3302); and gave invited lectures in Designing Virtual Play (Comm3304), Human Technology: Debating Communication (Comm1101) and the Women’s Studies unit Self.Net: Identity in the Digital Age.

In the first semester of 2008 I returned to full-time lecturing in Communication Studies at the University of Western Australia. I coordinated the upper-level undergraduate Digital Media (Comm2203) unit on both the domestic Crawley campus and in Hong Kong. You can see some examples of the Students News Project completed by the students in this unit here (the top eight projects were also collated into a half an hour programme ‘UWA Student News’ broadcast on Channel 31 on Friday 11 July 2008 at 8pm). All of the final Digital Media Projects completed by students in the Digital Media unit are available here and here (along with a few comments from me here). In first semester I also taught the Creative Selves: Reflection, Practice and Presence unit as part of our Honours programme.

In 2006 & 2007 I was located in the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning as an Associate Lecturer (Higher Education Development) where my role included co-coordinating the Foundations of University Teaching and Learning programme, Postgraduate Teaching Internship Scheme, and running the Introduction to University Teaching course. I was also involved in a number of new initiatives including some in the area of eLearning and participatory cultural tools (such as blogs and podcasts). In this capacity, I was on the steering committees for MyResearchSpace, the NODE Project and the Social & Cultural Studies iPod Project.

In the 2007 I gave several guest lectures for the both Ecotexts: Nature/Writing/Technology and Sex, Bodies, Spaces: Gender and Popular Culture and I tutored Comm1101: Human Technology: Debating Communication, lecturing on Media Violence & Videogames, and the Special Effects of Communication (focusing on the way CGI is used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy).

In the second semester of 2005, I wrote and taught a brand new Communication Studies honours unit "iGeneration: Digital Communication & Participatory Culture" at the University of Western Australia. The unit was, to the best of my knowledge, the first university course in which students created podcasts as a form of assessment; it was also centred around a course blog (which remains online both as an archive of the students’ work, and as a possible exemplar for future courses; the content is re-usable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license). The unit’s blog was nominated for a 2005 Edublog Award and on the basis of student nominations, I was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award: Early Career Teacher by the University of Western Australia.

In the first semester of 2005, I taught Digital Media 203 and Sex, Bodies, Spaces: Gender and Popular Culture in English, Communication & Cultural Studies and Communication Studies at the University of Western Australia (I also participated in offshore teaching of Communication Studies at the Hong Kong University, Space in the Centre for International Degree Programmes).

In the second semester of 2004, I wrote and coordinated the upper level undergraduate unit Self.Net: Communicating Identity in the Digital Age at University of Western Australia within the discipline of English, Communication and Cultural Studies and the Centre for Women’s Studies.

[Image courtesy of lumaxart; CC BY SA]