FEATURED CLASSROOM:
Professors Emily Yochim and Julie Wilson’s – CA376: Media Consumption Course
Goals include: learning ethnographic research methods like interviews and participant observation; learning how to tell important community stories through podcasting and website development; developing a sense of place and strong relationships with community members.
We’re going to spend the semester exploring how folks are building community in Meadville and learning strategies for researching their work and telling their stories. You all are officially members of a research team whose primary objective is to collaborate to examine community efforts in Meadville and to publish your findings in the form of a website and podcasts.
We’ll spend a few weeks early in the semester reading other scholars’ work on community formation and discussing methods for studying the Meadville community—namely, in-depth interviewing and participant observation, and ethnographic coding for analysis. You’ll put this knowledge to work in the research phase, when each of you will interview at least one community organizer in Meadville. You’ll be responsible for developing your interview questions, organizing your time with your interviewee, conducting and recording the interview, and transcribing the recording. When appropriate, you will also conduct participant observation, observing and taking notes while an interviewee is involved in some aspect of their community work. You’ll also be responsible for sharing your knowledge with the rest of the team, summarizing key findings from your interviews and/or observations. Finally, some of you will be taking photographs for use on the website.
The second phase of our collaboration will be the analysis and publishing phase, during which the team will collaborate to determine key topics for the podcasts, design and produce the podcasts, and design and produce the website. During this phase of the collaboration, you will break into smaller teams responsible for various elements of our podcast series and website. Most of you will be on a podcasting team, and each team will produce one episode for our podcast mini-series. I anticipate 5 teams of 2-3 students each, though this may change depending on our findings during the research phase. Some of you will be on a website team responsible for web design and building written content for the site. All students will contribute supplemental written or visual materials to the website.
Ultimately, we hope to showcase your work at a venue in Meadville; this showcase will take shape as the semester progresses and as we learn more through our research. Part of your work on this project will be in contributing to the preparations for this presentation of your work and participating in the presentation.
Meadiaville
/meadiaville/ adjective
Meadville’s youth media makers have a lot to say, so let’s listen.
This is the Meadiaville Listening Project
MEADIAVILLE HONORED IN THE MEADVILLE TRIBUNE
The second season of the Meadiaville Listening Project was dropped on 4/30/2018. To celebrate, over 50 students, faculty, and community members gathered at Foundry CoWork in the Parkside Commons to showcase the podcasts made to honor the people doing inspiring work in the community.
