Course Goals / Learning outcomes: This course is designed to provide an introduction to the skills needed to gather and evaluate information used in journalism and mass communication careers. The course provides you practical experience with archival, digital, qualitative, and quantitative data. In it, you will learn the vocabulary necessary to find, understand and critically evaluate information. You will learn to gather information from primary and secondary sources including major journals and publications in our field, interviews, observation, surveys, the Internet and the library. You will also learn to determine the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of various research methodologies, and to develop a method for problem solving through research.

Text: Ward and Hansen, Search Strategies in Mass Communication, 1997; selected reading as announced

Course expectations:

Attendance: You are expected to attend all class meetings and to be on time. If you are ill you must notify me via the department secretary (x2572) BEFORE class. If you miss a class, it is your responsibility to arrange to get notes from someone else in class. I will arrange to review information and clarify questions, but only after you show me that you have made an effort to obtain and review the missed information yourself.

Make Up/Late Work: Make up works and tests will only be given if prior, adequate notification has been provided to me. In order to be fair to others in the class, if you miss a test or assignment, you must provide a documented medical excuse or you will not be able to make up the work and your grade will be a zero (0). For a non-documented excuse, late assignments will be penalized one full letter grade and must be submitted by the next class meeting to earn credit for the assignment. You will not be able to come in late to take a midterm or final if other students have finished and left the room.

Course work:
All your assignments will involve information gathering in one form or another. The information topic which will guide the assignments will be the broad topic of "Media and War Coverage". Most of your individual information gathering assignments will deal with this broad topic. Each of you will be expected to come up with a research proposal that deals with this topic. You don't have to actually complete the entire research project, but you will be required to come up with a good, solid proposal.

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Revised 12/27/02