Grant program: Mentorship Initiative Grant (Pilot)

Grant recipient: Nawal Musleh-Motut, School of Communication

Project team: Sheri Fabian, School of Criminology, Alysha Bains and Abdelrahman Fakida, research assistants

Timeframe: June 2020 to December 2020

Funding: $5,000

Course addressed: CMNS 452 – Race and the Media

Final report: Read Nawal Musleh-Motut's final report (PDF)

Description: The present moment offers a significant and unique opportunity to evaluate the successes and challenges of reimagining CMNS 452 as an asynchronous and remote online course, while still focused on meeting the course’s social justice-oriented pedagogical goals. Our students are not only struggling to manage remote social justice learning online while in quarantine, but they must also continue to engage with the emotionally and intellectually difficult course content and assignments directly related to current global events without the face-to-face and/or in-person engagement and support from their peers and teaching staff. Evaluating this transition has become even more pressing following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the subsequent protests it has ignited across the United States and globally. This unprecedented mix of global events has exponentially increased the emotional and intellectual labour already required of both students and teaching staff in CMNS 452, as well as the uneven levels of privilege and power therein.

Questions addressed: 

• Were the social justice oriented pedagogical goals for CMNS 452 successfully implemented in and/or transferred to the remote online learning environment?
• What course aspects and/or elements did students identify as best supporting their social justice learning?
• What course aspects and/or elements did students identify as least supporting their social justice learning?
• What additional course aspects and/or elements would students suggest as possible future opportunities to better support students’ social justice learning?

Knowledge sharing:  We have a number of plans for disseminating and building upon the findings and recommendations outlined in this report. First, we are planning to publish two journal articles based on the project – one about its pedagogical approach, findings, and recommendations and the other exploring the teaching staff’s experiences teaching CMNS 452 as women of color. Second, the instructor has also discussed the possibility of designing and implementing a series of social justice pedagogy and learning workshops via the ISTLD and/or the Centre for Education Excellence (CEE) with this project’s mentor, Dr. Sheri Fabian. Finally, we are considering presenting our findings at the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education and the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 2021 conferences.

Keywords:  Social justice; race; racism; anti-racism; media; representation