I’ve been working hard this semester on modifying my teaching approach in my media courses. I’m trying to incorporate many more active learning opportunities into my classes. While I never just lectured in any of my classes, I am making a concerted effort to do more classroom activities that require students to come to class prepared and to put more energy into mastering and applying course topics together.
This semester’s Intro to Mass Communication course has 28 students in it, and it’s a great class size for all kinds of different activities. An important early topic in this course is media economics — how media companies structure themselves to maximize their success, while also operating within the limits of government regulation.
I had a great time developing and using a new activity to draw students into this topic. I made up 14 fictional media companies of different sizes and with different interests, and assigned each a budget (to spend on mergers/acquisitions with other companies) and a cost (to be acquired). I printed out play money ($10 million bills!) for the companies’ budgets.
Students then worked in pairs to evaluate their assigned company and determine which other companies would be logical buyers or acquisitions, given the concepts from their reading that we’d discussed in a mini-lecture at the beginning of class (e.g., convergence, consolidation, vertical/horizontal integration, synergy, cross-media promotion).
As they discussed, I posted signs with the companies’ names around the room. Students took their positions by their signs. I then opened a buy/sell period. As the companies were bought/sold, students moved around and taped their signs under the parent companies’ signs. During a fun, hectic flurry of sales, we watched as 14 smaller media companies rapidly became 4 major multinational conglomerates. Just like reality!
I then asked the student pair representing each of the remaining major companies to explain why their company had made the decisions it did. To wrap things up, I asked students to write briefly on an index card what they’d learned about media companies’ structure and ownership from this activity. Their responses were dead on and even more insightful than I’d hoped. A few also spontaneously commented that they had fun doing this, which was nice for me to see.
I allowed about 30 minutes for this activity, but would definitely suggest taking a bit more time with it. Next time, I’ll aim for about 45 minutes. You can print out play money by searching Google Images for a million-dollar bill. Here are the other documents I created for this activity, including the directions, company descriptions, and signs for the room.
If you give this a try, let me know how it goes! I’m sure there are lots of ways to improve upon this, and I’d love to hear about them in the comments.