TEACHING REFLECTIONS

GINA GAYLE ~ Doctoral Candidate

S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

 Issues in Media Management – Instructor, Summer 2018

After taking Issues in Media Management the previous summer, Professor
Stephen Masiclat, Director of the New Media program, recommended me to teach
the class and the University hired me. This course is the first that the New Media
students take at Newhouse and builds their foundation for the rest of the program
so there was little variation from the provided syllabus. The course was a reading
intensive course with five books in six weeks, which could have lent itself to
lectures only however I endeavored to make it as interactive as possible by having
a required recap presentation for each class session done by the students. Each
day I asked for a volunteer for the next class or I would randomly pick someone.
After the first two weeks, students were volunteering. When we had technology
Thursday instead of them working on their own, I took colored sticky tabs and
had each student pick a color and those with similar colors worked together that
day. I also broke them up by other sorting methods in order to get the students to
engage with each other and not just their friends. I thought of this early on in the
class when one student was asking me if I knew of activities where they could
meet people to play tennis with. For the final book, I sorted the students
randomly into groups to tackle 3 chapters per group and present it on the last days
of the class. These class experiences allowed them to work on presenting
individually as well as working with others to present as a group. In the future I
would have them work more in groups in order to get through this much reading
in such a short time. Based on the feedback in their evaluations, some students
found that experience very helpful. Since the course is offered in the summer, I
would work on having us meet outside on pleasant days to break up the monotony
of the classroom.

Issues in Media Management_617 Syllabus.pdf

7- 3 agenda.docx 7- 16 agenda.docx 7- 24 agenda.docx

 Public Relations Research Methods – Guest Lecturer, Fall 2018

Dr. Dennis Kinsey, Director of the Doctoral Program knew of my interest and
recent class in ethnography, so he invited me to guest lecture to his two different
sections of the PR research methods class. My goal was to give information
about ethnography while also helping them to understand how to apply it to PR.
In order to do that I opened the class with asking them to explain to me what PR
is and how are they using it in the class. Although the first section was less
 talkative than the second, I was able to gain insight into their class client enough
to demonstrate and teach them how they could ethnography to their client’s
benefit and gain different and perhaps more information using this research
method. Since the first section was less talkative, I had to rethink how to engage
the students to get them more involved. I expanded on the opener by asking each
student to give me their thoughts on PR and how ethnography may work and to
have each of them give me some information about their client for the semester.

Public Relat ions

PR Research Methods Guest Lecture.pptx Research

 New Ventures in Media – Guest Lecturer, Fall 2018

I was asked by Professor Sean Branagan. Director of the Center for Digital Media
Entrepreneurship, while he was out of the country to guest lecture to his class of
graduate and undergraduate students in a variety of media and communications
majors. Because I had taken and enjoyed this class so much the previous year,
Professor Branagan and I both felt I knew the material well. For this lesson on
business structures I was able to explain the different structures media
professionals can think about in terms of entrepreneurial and corporate endeavors.
I used a PowerPoint presentation for visuals while interspersing my own story of
undertaking entrepreneurial ventures and working in corporate structures. I
engaged the students by having them give me examples of situations for each
structure and invited them to talk about their own plans. I feel the students
appreciated my real-life experiences and expressed to Professor Branagan that
they enjoyed the presentation.

New Media
New Ventures in Media Presentation.pptx Agenda.docx

 Entrepreneurial Thinking for Media Professionals – Guest Lecturer, Spring 2019

I was invited back by Professor Branagan to guest teach this on “solving problems
the entrepreneurial way” which involved the class working on two interactive
projects. I opened the class with an ice breaker asking them to tell me something
short and profound that I would remember them by since I would only be with
them for one session. It was fun and everyone interacted. I gave a review of the
five elements of Effectuation and Entrepreneurial Thinking while weaving my
own story into it so that the students could get to know me as well. The group
projects involved putting together puzzles in smaller groups and then constructing
a “quilt” our of various fabric pieces as one large group. Since this was one of my
favorite activities during my time in the class, I enjoyed the experience of guiding
students on this experiential learning experience.
 Ent reprenuerial
Thining for Media

 Visual News Reporting – Guest Lecturer, Fall 2018

Professor Seth Gitner, author of the book Multimedia Storytelling for Digital
Communications in a Multiplatform World asked me to speak to his visual news
reporting class about visual ethics. As a fellow photojournalist and multimedia
storyteller, Professor Gitner knew I had a background in visual ethics. I was
excited to be able to present this to his class while being able to deliver the
information in context to my dissertation research on credibility. I used a
PowerPoint presentation with many well know visual ethics instances as well as
using my own images to pose ethical questions to them. Additionally, I made the
class interactive and had the student get up out of their seats and move around in
order to answer some visual ethics questions. I was pleased to see the students
not only engaging in the activity but also, I could see them weighing their
decision in the way they moved from answer station to answer station. I heard
back from a few of the students that they enjoyed getting out of their seats and
moving around and that I should have included even more of my own personal
work in the presentation.

Et hics
Visual Ethics for Visual News Reporting Presentation.pptx Agenda.docx

West Virginia University

 Digital Storytelling and Media Tools and Applications, Online Instructor, 2011-2015
I learned how the logistics of online teaching work. The first semester was a huge
learning curve for me but as I became used to the system WVU used, I was able
to focus more on the content and the students. These courses were similar to the
multimedia storytelling courses I had taken and taught in the past. What I liked
about the online class was that the curriculum was uniform across the sections so
that all students were getting exposed to the same materials. I especially enjoyed
working with students from different parts of the country and walks of life while
being able to expose them to multimedia storytelling and the tools used in those
productions. This course was designed without the access to video chats or a
predetermined time to do a digital hangout, so it was all online writing and
 responding, not in real-time. That was the one downfall for this particular type of
class platform, however, more schools are now incorporating digital chats into
their online teaching design. I am interested in teaching online courses in the
future.

University of Southern Mississippi

 Multimedia Storytelling, Instructor, 2008-2012

When I began as a Professor of Practice in the Department of Mass
Communication and Journalism I was hired to create and build the multimedia
curriculum for the department. This meant researching how to teach something
that few departments were incorporating at the time. I used the skills I had
learned in workshops and seminars to guide me and each semester I tweaked the
course based on feedback from the students and my observations. I strove to
make the classes as close to what journalists were learning at news organizations
which meant exposing them to the fundamentals of audio, video, still
photography, text and ultimately social media. I gave students assignment ideas
based on topics in the news, in the community and their interests. Students had to
pitch their projects and worked in groups as well as individually. The course
evolved into a required course across all majors requiring me to understand how
advertising, public relations, broadcast and news students could best utilize these
skills.

Mulit media
St oryt ellingSP20 12

 Multimedia Production, Instructor, 2011-2012

This was the second class in the multimedia sequence which built upon the
foundation students learned in multimedia storytelling. This course required
students to take a semester long product from inception to production and even
distribution. The final semester I taught the class the students chose to do a story
on the different religions in the Bible Belt of Southern Mississippi. I was able to
watch these students work outside of their comfort zone not only in terms of the
technical and journalistic skills but in terms of reaching out and working with
communities so very different from each other and what they themselves were
used to. Their final story was accepted into the 2012 Sun and Sand Film Festival
on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi where myself and some of the interviewees
spoke at the screening.
 Mult imedia
Produc t ionSP20 12.

 Photojournalism, Instructor, 2008-2011

The photojournalism course was required for students on the photojournalism
track, but I often had students from all majors interested in the course. I liked to
run the class as if the students were staff photographers getting daily assignments
and being on deadline. We did visual stories on general news, breaking news, if
we could, sports, and lifestyle. I endeavored to have the students begin to
compile their portfolios which would be completed in their capstone classes. As
the digital media and online technologies continue to change, I had to keep up
with those technologies and I even relied on the students to let help me understand
what was new.

PJ_SP0 9.doc