Academic Support Course Using Technology for Journalism

SI 409 is designed as an academic support program to help students get through Reporting 300, a historically difficult courses (for the past 10 years 22 percent of students either failed or dropped the course). SI 409 is a peer-led, non-remedial approach to increasing student performance and retention in Reporting 300. SI 409 is an informal seminar in which students brainstorm for story ideas, critique each other's writing and reporting, discuss and apply AP Style, review key concepts, develop organizational tools and prepare for a final examination. Ideally, students in SI 409 will learn how to integrate course content with their reasoning and study skills. More specifically, SI 409 should help Reporting 300 students explore and write about San Francisco and Oakland neighborhoods as journalists. They will work to learn about the areas' demographics, businesses, schools, politics, history, crime and city planning. Throughout the course, they will get an introduction to reporting and writing news for all media, including defining what is newsworthy. They should develop a mastery of the basic elements of newsgathering, interviewing and storytelling skills that conform to professional standards of clarity, accuracy and fairness. The goal of the redesign is to ensure students complete the class by being able to execute the student learning outcomes of news judgment, clear writing, accuracy, attribution, use of transitions, listening, interviewing and quotes, editing and rewriting, deadline writing, note-taking, research planning, and use of multiple sources. Additionally, it will provide students with other types of lessons that instructors see them lacking, such as time management and an ethical lens for journalistic practice.