New Media Katho course – June09 evaluations

During the first week of June I was in Belgium again delivering for the second time my own course on new media. I had 14 Erasmus students from all over Europe, a dynamic, lively and very interested class that I have enjoyed teaching. It was a marathon class with 4 hours of teaching daily, tight deadlines, team projects, a company visit, small research tasks, and other academic assignments. It was also a class of novelties, the first time when I had a guest, Dr Mugur Geana, Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at the University of Kansas, joining us live all the way from the USA. 

Similar with the last semester, all students were asked to take a short online survey evaluating the course, the content, my delivery, the materials and technologies used, the relevancy of the course to their future careers and giving their suggestions for further improvements. 

What makes me especially happy is that the evaluations this semester are better than the previous ones. I am also glad to see that students liked the hands-on approach to the class and found it useful and challenging.

Here’s the overall evaluation for the course:

You can see the complete evaluation file here:

Play the Game 2009 Conference

Last week I was in Coventry, UK, to present a paper at Play the Game 2009, one of the biggest communication conferences on sport and society, now at its 6th edition. It was a busy conference with many speakers coming from a very wide range of fields and institutions, starting from sports journalism up to the IOC, human rights advocacy groups and up to academia. 

I was part of the Beijing 2008: Business and Politics session sharing the floor with Joern Hansen, Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Anders Hasselgaard, Researcher at NUPI, and Rowan Simons, author of the recently published Bamboo Goalposts and Chairman of several sports organizations. The session covered rather different views on Beijing, from the influence of financial interests on awarding the Games to Beijing, the flaws of China’s system of sports governance to human rights discourse and the presence, campaigns and influence of human rights advocacy groups in Beijing last year. However, the difference in point of views led to a interesting and lively debate afterwards. 

Check out my presentation below: