Syllabi: Production Schedules

Some people actually make money from production scheduling.  But first, reasonable goals.

An earlier post dealt with creating calendars for knowledge-based Media Studies courses, the pace and division of which are arbitrarily determined by the whim and interest of professors.  Media Production classes are importantly different.  Professors in these are apt to offer project-based skills training.  They are attempting to make of their students practiced, competent, or masterful editors and scriptwriters.  The adjectives are important and should mirror the Course Objectives section of the syllabus. 

• Practiced.  The class offers opportunities to try.  Students may practice non-linear editing.  They may practice writing a short script.  They may practice audio recording techniques.  The emphasis of the word "practice" is on what students my attempt, not on how good they are at the end of the term.
• Competent.  Reflecting a shift to assessment goals, this word seems ideal for describing a professor's hope for survivors of intermediate-level courses.  A competent audio engineer knows a microphone from a mixer and can probably map the flow of signal from one to another.
• Masterful.  This word appears too darn often in syllabi and departmental assessment docs.  Maybe the occasional advanced-level (or graduate) course strains in its direction.  But it feels like a word we might reserve for those whose technical skill-level reliably services an aesthetic sensibility.  You want masterful editing?  Call Thelma Schoonmaker.  Masterful cinematography?  Freddie Young's your guy.

Goals and the words which describe them have concrete implications for syllabus design.  In contrast to introductory-level exposure and practice, mastery implicitly demands more hours of homework, more weeks of the semester, a narrower focus of instruction. 

Previously:  Attendance Isn't Roll Call
Next:  Living Backwards