COMM 101: Writing for Mass Media

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  COMM 101
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in a Communication course for undergraduate students by Sue Schenkel at California State University, Fullerton. The combination of zero-cost course materials provides students with new materials appropriate for an introductory approach to writing for mass media, and including writing for advertising. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to save students money and find resources that could incorporate a new group of students on the advertising track into the class. Most students access the materials through the learning management system, Canvas. 

Course - COMM 101: Writing for Mass Media
Brief Description of course highlights:  Principles and practices of writing for major types of mass communications media. Content, organization, conciseness and clarity. All Fullerton campus lectures online, laboratory in classroom. Requires typing ability. (2 hours lecture, 2 hours laboratory)

Student population: Typically, first-year students are department majors, as this course fulfills a major/minor requirement. Students from outside the department can also take the course to fulfill a general education requirement. 

Course Prerequisites:  ENGL 101 with a “C” (2.0) or better.

Learning or student outcomes:  List student learning outcomes for the course.
1. Write in journalistic style, which is also used in public relations. This style emphasizes short, clear sentences and paragraphs that quickly relate information to the reader and is free of grammatical, punctuation and word-usage errors.
2. Make informed news judgments based on legal and ethical considerations.
3. Use critical thinking skills to comprehend information and to interpret it for others in a clear and precise manner.

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: COMM 101 

Brief Description:  The course recently became required for students from the advertising track, who previously only had an upper-division writing course. These materials provided introductory information on writing for advertising that would be appropriate for students in this track and general COMM students.

Please provide a link to the resource  Indeed.com’s Career Guides on introductory writing for advertising, eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World (7th ed. from 2022) open textbook. Library ebooks including Hey whipple, squeeze this: the classic guide to creating great advertising (6th ed. from 2022) by Luke Sullivan was also used.

Authors:  Dionne Solomons, Tania Kliphuis, Michelle Wadley

Student access:  Links within the learning management system, Canvas. 

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  $63 per student

License: Specify the license for the material.  (i.e. Creative Commons license). For more information on CC license go to https://creativecommons.org/ 

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. Save students money and increase student engagement with the materials, wanted to be able to customize materials to better fit the course, include more timely and diverse resources, and include more multimedia options.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? Consulted with librarians, consulted with other faculty in the department, consulted with journals and professional publications in my field, searched in library resources, searched in OER repositories

Sharing Best Practices: The sustainability of open education relies on sharing with others. Please give suggestions for faculty who are just getting started with OER or Low Cost options. List anything you wish that you had known earlier.

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. Sometimes, online resources change and become unavailable or altered in negative ways OR they become less accessible. Sometimes, parts of a resource may be great and work well for our class BUT other connected or included items do not adhere to our goals or to what we specifically are teaching our students. So, often it is hard to find a resource that works completely as a package for us and it is hard to edit or copy and paste and that kind of thing.

Instructor Name - Sue Schenkel
Part-time lecturer, California State University, Fullerton 

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://communications.fullerton.edu/comm/

Please describe the courses you teach:  COMM 101

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  Offer productive feedback and examples to clarify the goals of a writing assignment.