Java Grant
2024/06/21

Communications 103

I am the tutor for Communications 103. It was a class I took myself in 2020, however it was a third-stage course at the time: Communications 301.

The course was reworked into 103 in order to fill a new spot within the fresh Bachelor of Communication (BC) and is a core course of the major of Communication and Technology.

In 2020, there was a teaching assistant who was also a student of the course. They were a computer-science student there to help debug our twitter bots and support out other class projects.

As I had experience with programming (specifically Javascript) I reached out to Ethan and inquired about the teaching assistant role for the future. Next year Ethan got back to me with the position and I was a co-teaching assistant for 2021 with another student. In 2022 I became tutor for the course and have continued in this role for 2023 and 2024.

Students do really well in this course! It has a very flexible and forgiving rubric and allows people to include their passions to enhance their projects. However, approaching computers and programming for Arts students it is certainly scary–but those who give it a go come out much more confident in their abilities to learn and problem solve. Hopefully this encourages students towards a Growth Mindset.

Growth Mindset

A student with a growth mindset tends to believe that learning and growth are possible in all areas tackle tasks with confidence that they can manage them explore new subjects and interests relish challenge, struggle and hard work because they believe this means they are improving acknowledge and reflect upon errors and mistakes as a means for improvement withstand setbacks, stay on track, and apply more effort when they face difficulties understand the value of effort and using strategies to overcome challenges see school as full of opportunities to learn. The Education Hub

Communications 301 (and now 103)

Topics

Practical and creative approaches to digital communication. The capacities, affordances and limitations of digital platforms. Creating platform-specific outputs, such as podcasts, gifs, vlogs, mobile films and digital storytelling shorts.

Making digital objects (e.g., Twitter bots, animated GIFs, data visualisations, slideshow presentations) Critical discussion of online platforms Conceptual frameworks for understanding the roles digital media play in society.

Unit 1: “Digital logic & computational thinking”

Explores different ways of thinking with and about computers. Includes basic programming skills in the JavaScript language (no prior experience necessary). This portion of the course concludes with creation of a Twitter bot and discussions about artificial intelligence.

Unit 2: “Digital media & configurable culture”

User-friendly tools for creating and remixing multimedia work including animated GIFs, data visualisations, slideshow presentations and more.