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4. Contemporary Media, Getting Started, Fall 2021

Welcome to Media Studies 101, Contemporary Media, for this Fall 2021 semester.

This is a fully online, asynchronous course: we will not be meeting at a specific time. You will do the work on your own schedule, although you are responsible for completing the assignments and exams by the dates posted on the course website and on Google Classroom.

Each module will be available on Tuesdays throughout the semester and you must complete the work by the following Monday.

We will not be using Blackboard for the class. Instead you will use the following for this course:

• The course website at https://juanmonroy.com/contemporarymedia has all the information you need for the course. It lists the textbook you will need for this course, includes the course schedule for completing assignments, and lists the course policies that you are responsible for observing.
• You will be completing your assignments on Google Classroom, including watching the videos of the lectures and answering comprehension questions about each video, completing readings quizzes, answering a discussion question, and taking three open-book, open-note exams. If you don’t know what Google Classroom is, please read the course website for more guidance.

The course website explains everything you need to know about the course. Please read it in full so you are informed about the course.

This course consists of twelve modules, each module will be released on a rolling schedule:

1. Media, Communication, and Culture, available Tuesday, August 31
2. Books, available Tuesday, September 14
3. Newspapers, available Tuesday September 21
4. Magazines, available Tuesday September 28
5. Music, available Tuesday, October 12
6. Radio, available Tuesday, October 19
7. Movies, available Tuesday, October 26
8. Television, available Tuesday, November 2
9. Internet, available Tuesday, November 16
10. Advertising and Public Relations, available Tuesday, November 23
11. Media Economics, available Tuesday, November 30
12. Media Regulation, available Tuesday, December 7

For each module, there will be:

1. assigned readings from the required textbook
2. a reading quiz on Google Classroom covering the material you just read
3. a set of pre-recorded video lectures that you can watch on Google Classroom
4. comprehension questions on each video lecture
5. discussion session about a topic covered in the module

The material from each module is due on the Monday after it is are assigned.

Lastly, there are three exams, based on the previous four modules:

• Exam 1, covering modules 1-4 will be available on Tuesday, October 5, and will be due Tuesday, October 12. October 11 is a university holiday
• Exam 2, covering modules 5-8 will be available on Tuesday, November 9 and will be due Monday, November 15
• Exam 3, covering modules 9-12 will be available on Tuesday, December 14, and will be due Monday, December 20.

Your final grade will be calculated on the following:

• Reading Quizzes, 25% of your final grade
• Lecture Comprehension Questions, 25% of your final grade
• Exams, 50% of your final grade
  • highest exam: 25%
  • second-highest exam: 15%
  • lowest exam: 10%

Please read the entire course website so you are aware of all the policies for this course.

To get started for now, complete the following tasks. There are instructions for these on the course website .

2. Get the required textbook: Understanding Media and Culture, available from Open Textbook Library
3. Activate your QC G Suite for Education account. Students New to Queens College, Recently Transferred to QC, or Enrolled in another CUNY Campus: You must activate your email and Active Directory accounts at <https://cams.qc.cuny.edu> before you can activate your G Suite for Education account. The process takes about three (3) business days so please start this process as soon as possible.
4. Once you have a QC Active Directory account and a QC Google account to <https://classroom.google.com/a/qc.cuny.edu> and sign in using your qc.cuny.edu account, and join our course using the code eg3kaem. If you have any trouble, you should log out of Google and sign in using only your QC G Suite account.
5. Complete the Welcome Survey posted as an assignment in Google Classroom. If you cannot complete this last step by Monday, September 13, 11:59 PM ET, please contact me. Otherwise I will have to report you as not attending the class and you will be dropped.
6. If you have any questions, please contact me. You can also schedule an Remote Office Hours appointment for us to talk on Google Meet.

Best,

Juan Monroy