How do you teach fieldwork methods when your students are suddenly prevented from entering the field? This was a pressing question faced by faculty at Guttman Community College who were teaching "Ethnographies of Work," a required first-year course centered on the observation and analysis of real-world workplace dynamics. During the…

Growing a media department with involved students is not just about enabling them to make their work, but to cultivate critical viewing and passionate film spectatorship by experiencing film in a public setting. A film screening series serves the entire campus by building community, both amongst media students and the larger college populace, but…

In this article, we discuss a media discussion group for female students with disabilities, which we created and facilitated using fairy tales to discuss and critique gender norms. Disability was not the primary focus for our media sessions; however, participants occasionally extended dialogue to include intersections between disability and…

Offering art education and art experiences to marginalized student populations provides a break from the academic familiar and creates space for radical possibility both in the art classroom and across academic contexts. This article shows the value of artists-in-residence within community colleges, which tend to serve low income, racial minority,…

This narrative inquiry examined how students developed critical thinking skills for nursing from viewing and discussing a commercially produced film. Community of Inquiry was the theoretical model and demonstrated the development of critical thinking when the teaching presence pulled the social presence (students) into the cognitive presence with…

It is necessary to develop digital literacy skills with which students can communicate and express their ideas effectively using digital media. The educational sectors around the world are beginning to incorporate digital literacy into the curriculum. Digital storytelling, one of the possible classroom activities, is an approach which may help…

This article informs about a multidisciplinary learning community targeting first year students from diverse cultural backgrounds at an urban community college. The combination of English, art, and philosophy of art in a "Creativity Cluster" offers an excellent opportunity for great teaching and learning experiences. Yet, how can faculty…

The experience of the combat soldier and the road back to civilian life are recurrent themes in American literature and cinema. Whether the treatment is tragic (Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage", Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried", or Tony Scott's "Blackhawk Down"), satirical (Joseph Heller's "Catch Twenty-Two" and Robert Altman's…

Popular media represent outlets for shaping and informing public perception of institutions and institutional actors found in our society. Community colleges and their students have been featured in a number of fictional works. This paper provides an analysis of the portrayal of community college students in the fictional works of novels, short…

This article reports on the re-emergence of some historic films from the '60s which creates excitement amongst Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe people and inspires them to launch a project to digitize and edit the old media. The "Audio Visual Production Project" began to take shape in the fall of 2006 when the tribal vice chairman, Rusty Barber,…

Catawba Valley Community College has introduced digital storytelling (DS), an innovative instructional method that has produced extraordinary results. Digital storytelling uses affordable software to craft powerful multimedia presentations of student writing. Students create 3-to-4-minute movies with images, voiceovers, and music. This project…

This study describes the efficacy of a novel tool, mini-lecture movies, in teaching Web based general chemistry. The analysis shows a marked improvement in student learning, as evidenced by a corresponding increase in homework and final exam scores. Students with access to mini-lecture movies scored 11.2% (p = 0.016) higher than students who did…

This author delineates an alternative to traditional textbook teaching of economics: using contemporary films to bring concepts and practices to life. (Contains 5 notes.)

In light of research on diversity learning and teaching, this article describes how an introductory course on cinematic depictions of African Americans taught at a predominately white, rural university campus leads students to see the impact of history and Hollywood on their own local and statewide communities. Like others who teach courses on…

This article, based on a presentation made by the author at the 2003 California Library Association conference, provides examples of how librarians and teachers can use Science Fiction to provide catalysts for discussion in a variety of subjects; teach students how to question intelligently; and stimulate their imaginations, thus motivating them…