Teaching

An increasingly important aspect of my teaching is devoted to theorizing and understanding the impact of digital media and technology on university education. The classes I teach at USC and the programs I have helped design serve as a laboratory for practice-based research on technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Although conventional wisdom dictates that junior faculty at research universities should not over-invest in teaching, I believe that I am in a unique position to help implement USC’s commitment to creating a learner-centered educational environment that is flexible and responsive to student needs.

As the university’s 2004 strategic plan indicates, new technologies are a key component of learner-centered pedagogy. But a strong technological infrastructure is only as valuable as the programs through which it is implemented, which in turn find value in technology only to the extent that it is integrated organically rather than imposed from above. Indeed, my work at the IML was often conducted in close collaboration with other USC entities, including the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the Rossier School of Education and the Keck School of Medicine; in each of these cases, my role was to assist in the integration of technology-enhanced modes of teaching and learning derived from research conducted in test courses at the IML. Based on this experience, I can assert that I am personally committed to continuing to develop strategies for innovative, learner-centered teaching and disseminating these strategies across the university.

In recognition of my efforts in technology-enhanced teaching and learning, I was honored to receive one of two Teaching with Technology awards from the USC Provost’s office in spring 2009. This award recognized my own in-class innovations with pedagogical technologies, as well as my years of research, teaching and faculty development at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Through my ongoing association with IML, I routinely organize and lead workshops on pedagogical technology, consult with faculty members on designing or redesigning courses to make them more learner-centered, and experiment with a wide variety of strategies for effectively using media and technology in classes and disciplines across the curriculum.

In my own teaching, I am convinced that the most effective way to engage with digital media is through the rigorous conjunction of theory and practice. In addition to gaining a solid historical and theoretical foundation, I ask students to develop a mode of critical practice that emerges directly from their engagement with theory, rather than simply exploiting the potentials of the current generation of tools. In their creative work, I strongly encourage students to move beyond the prescribed uses of both hardware and software to defamiliarize their relation to media, bringing questions of form and content into a relationship of productive tension and dialogue.

I have published and presented my work on pedagogical innovation at academic conferences and research institutions and consulted with faculty and administrators both at USC and other institutions engaged in designing multimedia curricula. Most recently, I have given invited talks on emerging forms of scholarship and digital media design at the Harvard Digital Humanities Center and the Getty Research Institute, and presentations on technology-enhanced learning at the American Comparative Literature Association and the New Media Consortium conferences. I currently mentor graduate students from three different programs in the School of Cinematic Arts and sit on doctoral dissertation committees in Critical Studies, the Annenberg School for Communication and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. I am very excited about the potentials of using the full range of interactive media, from mobile devices to virtual environments, to design new kinds of learning experiences and I see a great opportunity for USC to set new standards for cutting edge scholarship and teaching in the 21st century.

Courses taught

CTIN 532: Interactive World Design
University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts 

Fall 2009

ASIMS: Methods in Multimedia Scholarship

University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication 
Summer 2009
Co-taught with Sasha Costanza-Chock (Annenberg)

COMM 620: Mobile Phones, On-Line Community, and Social Change

University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication 

Fall 2008-Spring 2009
A year-long multidisciplinary research seminar co-taught with François Bar (Annenberg) and Murali Annavaram (Viterbi School of Engineering)

CNTV 603: Media Arts and Practice Professionalization Seminar
University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts

Spring 2009

CTIN 478: Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments
University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts 

Fall 2008

CTIN 534: Experiments in Interactivity
University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts 

Fall 2007-present

CTCS 505: Survey of Interactive Media

University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts 

Fall 2005-present

ASIMS: Methods in Community-Based Multimedia 

University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication 
Summer 2008
Co-taught with Sasha Costanza-Chock (Annenberg)

IML 101: The Languages of New Media
Institute for Multimedia Literacy: Honors in Multimedia Scholarship
2004-2007

CTCS 478: The Frenzy of Vision

University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television

Spring 2004
 
CTCS 478: Technologies of Space, Time and the Body
University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television
Fall 2003

CTCS 478: Technologies of History and Memory
University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television
Fall 2002

Film 313: History of the American Sound Film
Loyola Marymount University
2002-2004

FVC 21: Critical Approaches to World Cinema
University of California Riverside
2000

Graduate advising

PhD Dissertation advising

Veronica Paredes (SCA Media Arts & Practice PhD) Chair

Jennifer Stein (SCA Media Arts & Practice PhD)
Chris Hanson (SCA Critical Studies PhD)

Sasha Costanza-Chock (Annenberg School for Communication PhD)

Amaranth Borsuk (College of Letters, Arts and Sciences PhD)

Daniel Chamberlain (SCA Critical Studies PhD) completed spring ‘09

Andrew Syder (SCA Critical Studies PhD) completed fall ‘08

Allison de Fren (SCA Critical Studies PhD) completed spring ‘08

MFA Thesis advising

Peter van Dyke ‘10 (SCA Interactive Media)
 Chair
Taiyoung Ryu ‘10 (SCA Interactive Media)
 Chair
Maya Churi ‘09 (SCA Interactive Media)

Jamie Antonisse ‘09 (SCA Interactive Media) Chair

Jorge Mora Fernandez ‘08 (SCA Interactive Media)
 Chair
Susana Ruiz ‘06 (SCA Interactive Media)

Ashley York ‘06 (SCA Interactive Media)