JAMcArthur
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Teach Less Better
Students come to college eager to learn, but that eagerness can quickly become diminished. Some faculty members can even create the students they don’t want. What can faculty do to develop deep, lasting student learning? Dr. Peter Felten, Assistant Provost and Associate Professor of History at Elon University, presented at Queens University of Charlotte’s opening…
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Constructive Criticism for Faculty?
Books such as Academically Adrift, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, and The Marketplace of Ideas critically examine the role of colleges and universities. One of our issues on campuses around the nation is that we don’t take such criticism personally. But should we? Should recent analyses of higher education shape the way university…
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Connecting Assessment to Resource Allocation
Assessment has often been associated with terms like “busy work,” “waste of time,” or “pointless exercise.” What if an organization changed that perspective by associating quality assessment with “resources” and “money?” That’s exactly what happened at Queens University of Charlotte. Members of the university’s assessment committee – Jamie Slater, Tim Burson, and I – chronicled…
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Google Images doesn’t own images
Google Images is an excellent tool for searching and finding images from across the Internet. Unfortunately for students, the image’s appearance in a search does not authorize its use. I recently wrote an article titled Photos and Copyright Law in which I advocated for appropriate citation in student projects. One issue with citation has emerged…
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Event Hashtags: Lessons Learned from NCA
The National Communication Association (NCA) may have gotten it right – according to its Twitter followers. With the consecration of the #NCA11 hashtag, for this year’s conference, attendees on Twitter might finally be pleased with the selection. However, use of alternate hashtags by the association Twitter account threatens to upend the discussion once again. A…
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Photos and Copyright Law
If you find a photo and place it on your website, in a paper, or use it as an image in some other document, be careful. More likely than not, you are in violation of copyright law. My rule for photos: if you didn’t shoot it with your own camera, draw it with your own hand,…
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A History of Social Media
Technology and media have always been social. This was my message to the Dialogue & Discovery Group at Charlotte City Club, June 1, 2011. Van King, Dean of the Knight School of Communication, and I presented to a lively audience at the club. While the real focus of the presentation was the discussion that ensued,…
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Paying it Forward
Shannon Hames is using her degree to inspire youth to access, explore, and experiment with digital media. Hames, a graduate of the Knight School’s Masters program in Organizational and Strategic Communication, works with Right Moves for Youth, a Charlotte-area school-support program. She has taken her learning back to her job and to the community she…
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Becoming Blog Savvy
Ariel Hooper, now an alumna of Queens University of Charlotte, wrote this piece about her experience in my integrated strategic communication course for the Knight School of Communication website: Becoming blog savvy At the beginning of the Spring 2011 term, students in Dr. John A. McArthur’s Comm306: Integrated Strategic Communication class were assigned the opportunity…
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What can I do with a Degree in Communication?
Parents of prospective students often ask me the same question: What kind of job can you get with a communication degree? As the director of our undergraduate programs, I often respond that the possible answers are many, diverse, and can be highly rewarding. I created this wordle display for the Knight School of Communication website on…
J.A.McArthur 