Fall 2016 Covering an Event Assignment

For Fall 2016, students in the Multimedia Writing course covered many events on The American University in Cairo (AUC) campus.

We used Adobe Spark to produce the web pages.

Here is the list of the events covered:

On Tuesday, Nov. 1
Makeup Workshop in AUC Reveals Beauty Tips
By Danah AlAnsari, Farida Kamal, Haidy Haitham and Yomna Abdelnasser

On Monday, Nov. 7
Directing Askar wa-Harameyya: A Professor's Experience
By Doaa Abdelghany, Mayar Magdy and Rania Yehia

On Wednesday, Nov. 9
The University Forum on Student Tuition
By Mariam Seif, Reem Mohamed and Hanien Gaballah

On Saturday, Nov. 12
Heated Discussion Breaks Out at Cairo Streets and Stories Event
By Lama Ibrahim, Kareem Ragheb and Kirillos Samuel

On Wednesday, Nov. 16
Egyptian Superheroes That No Longer Need to Fly
By Leila Nassar, Yasmine Ayoub and Yara El-Fayoumi

On Sunday, Nov. 20
Bridging the Gap Between Media Education and the Industry
By Mayar El Zanty, Jackline Said and Farha Tomoum

Professors Ask Students to Create Their Own Exams

By Nada Helmy, Nour Eltigani and Lobna Shrief

(Cairo, April 1) - The Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) held a workshop about student-generated exams facilitated by Professors Fady Morcos and Ezzeldin Yazeed on Wednesday, April 1, 2015 at the American University in Cairo (AUC).

Both professors shared their stories about the topic. Morcos created a Facebook page for one of his classes and let students ask and answer questions so the questions can appear in their final. On the other hand, Yazeed allowed his construction students to create a midterm with its model answers. Both professors found their techniques very effective.

According to Yazeed, a professor of structure of engineering in the construction engineering department, “This strategy helps the professor to know how much the students digest from this course.”

Also, Morcos, who teaches scientific thinking and creative thinking courses, emphasized to his small audience of professors, “Student- generated questions enhance knowledge gaps and identify inaccurate expectations.”

The CLT has facilitated several workshops that promote the application of technology in classrooms and coursework including “Gamifying Your Classroom” that was held in November 2014 and featured Morcos. The CLT will be holding other workshops during the spring 2015 semester.

At the end of the workshop, both professors sat down with the rest of the attendees and started sharing their feedback on the workshop. Even though the workshop only lasted for an hour, all of the attendees shared positive comments about the new examination technique. 

Associate Professor of Practice Maha Bali recalled that the idea of student-generated exams was sparked in another CLT workshop that she facilitated. Bali assured, “I feel that more people should try that kind of thing, I was really happy with the workshop.”

Attendee Hadya El Minyawi, an instructor of rhetoric and composition, believes that “the workshop today gave me a new idea of having students study for the exam and make them cognitively involved in the material as they generate their own exams and taking ownership for their own learning.”

Student-generated exams are found to be effective by Morcos and Yazeed. Both professors will keep using this approach again in their future courses and advise other professors to do so too.

Multimedia Writing Project Portfolios

Multimedia Writing Project Portfolios

Students in JRMC 2202 Multimedia Writing at The American University in Cairo were required to produce digital portfolios of the work they completed in the course.

Each portfolio should have at least the following components:

• Home page
• Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR)
• Twitter Scavenger Hunt (TSH)
• Interview
• Photo Essay

In the near future, some of the students will also create and post an infographic.

There were other assignments/projects in the course including the Covering an Events assignment, but these are the components that will be featured on their portfolios.

In the past I had used Epsilen, a platform utilized by the university. However, Epsilen has not kept up with the digital times and it's a bit chunky.

After some research, I determined that Weebly was the best platform for this task. This decision was reached after watching a few introductory videos and the ease of use in building a website via the Weebly platform. The drag and drop component is super simple. The best part is that the end result has the potential to be organized and professional.

Students were given some time in class to work on the portfolios. They were also given detailed feedback after they posted a 'draft' of the portfolio.

The goal of the portfolio:

It should be error free because it is a showcase of their work to share for prospective internship or job opportunities.

Students should also be proud to display their body of work from the course in a public platform and in a professional manner.

This semester I taught three sections of this course. Here are the students' digital portfolios:

Multimedia Writing Section 1:
Nouri
Haidy
Yara Al K.
Mireille
Yomna D.
Nora
Yara El.
Youmna El.
Nushka
Karima
Mohamed
Yasmine


Multimedia Writing Section 2:
Salma B.
Hania
Salma R.
Nour
Youmna
Sarah
Hanan
Rowaida
Hana
Mayar
Yehia
Norhan


Multimedia Writing Section 3:
Haneen
Farah A.
Hannah
Nadine
Passant
Alaa
Noha
Farrah
Zeina
Rawan
Amira
Nourhan
Eshraka
Farah T.

Congratulations to the students for their efforts. And good luck in to their future careers in the media.