About Multimedia Course

Teaching Multimedia Writing (and previously Writing for Mass Communication) has been one of the highlights of my faculty life at the University of Florida.

And now I’m retiring after teaching for 28 years at the University of Florida. Thanks to all of you who have been part of my UF experience.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with more than 10, 000 undergraduates who have taken JOU3109 or MMC 2100. Teaching a course with such practical skills — from interviewing to writing to editing — has been rewarding, as I know we’re helping everyone prepare for professional goals, whatever those goals are.

I’ve worked with more than 200 graduate teaching assistants and adjuncts as lab instructors. I’ve enjoyed creating teams of instructors to help students have a good learning experience and also providing the opportunity for the graduate students to discover teaching as a potential career.

The course has been a great learning experience for all of us — students taking the course and instructors teaching the course.

We’ve taught and reinforced the fundamentals of professional media writing — from news stories to news releases to correct grammar. We’ve worked on keeping up with trends in the communications field by adding blogging, Twitter and photography to the course.

I started my first blog — Thoughts on Teaching — to learn about blogging so we could include blogging in the course. I’ve worked on my own blogs and also have become a blogger for other blogs, including the Friends of the Smokies blog.

Together we’ve figured out professional use of Twitter, including being the Twitter Team for the inauguration of President Fuchs.

Part of my continuing to learn process was creating an online version of Multimedia Writing for UF Online. The course will be offered starting Fall Semester 2016. I really learned a lot through that experience — figuring out how to convert face-to-face activities to online and including more than two dozen former students in the course, including on-site video lectures.

What a great last class day in JOU3109! The lab instructors gave me a lovely bouquet of flowers. Rich Shumate created a great video of testimonials of current and former students. I knew they were up to something, but they definitely surprised me. And then I surprised the class with Hyppo Pops at the end of class.

Thanks to all of you — former students and lab instructors — for our positive learning experience together!

This will be the last post for this Multimedia Writing blog.

I will continue to be posting for my own blogs — Thoughts on Teaching and Successful Teaching — and for the Friends of the Smokies blog. One of my retirement activities will be hiking, including completing the Hike 100 Challenge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I will stop tweeting on my @dodd3109 Twitter account. I hope you’ll add me to your Twitter feed with my other account — @profdodd.