I approach teaching as a learning opportunity for me as well as my students. I like to provide the students with multiple ways of learning, in keeping with their differing abilities to learn from doing, hearing and, reading. Many of my courses involve projects and short assignments in order that my students can get to work in teams and that I might have a chance to get to know their work more closely early in the term. I also encourage my students to make use of the World Wide Web as an output for their projects so they can get used to the idea that their efforts can have a global audience. I do large and small courses, and try to create within my courses a gradual progression, from the wide survey course at the first and second year level to the special topics and intensive exploration at the fourth year and graduate levels.

Undergraduate courses

In recent years I have taught the following courses: CMNS 110 (as part of a team), CMNS 253 (Introduction to information technology), CMNS 453 (Issues in an information society), as well as numerous project groups and special topics courses (see my c.v. for details).

These courses are part of the technology and society "stream" in the school that includes my colleagues Peter Anderson, Ellen Balka and Pat Howard. We have worked together to rationalize and improve this stream. I proposed and actively participated in the discussions to make that possible. I like to see my courses integrated into the overall curriculum of the school and organizing the technology stream has been one of the ways of doing that.

I have also served on the undergraduate curriculum committee (see below, under service). All of my current undergraduate courses are designed from scratch and are extensively revised each year. This is in part the nature of teaching about technology, and in part my desire to explore new areas and aspects of the technology/society confluence. During the time that I taught CMNS 110, it was a survey course for new communication students. Six teachers provided two lecture introductions to selected areas, under the overall coordination of Donald Gutstein. I designed my two lectures as a channel for students into my second and fourth year courses and the technology and society stream in general. I divided the two lectures into a 'what is information technology" lecture and a "what does it mean?" lecture. The first lecture provided an introduction to the basic elements of information technology in a way that highlighted the potential implications of what they were reading about. For example, in discussing "Moore's Law" (the notion that microprocessor capacity doubles every 18 months), I helped the students see that this wasn't a physical law but rather the outcome of investment decisions by governments and companies. In the second lecture we reviewed some of the major "issues" relating to technology and society and the notable ways in which various scholars have approached these issues. While necessarily brief, these "issue" lectures were very well received and resulted in numerous students choosing to study with me further in CMNS 253.

Communication 253, "Introduction to information technology," takes the students on an intensive journey of discovery and forces them to grapple with the tension between making technology work and understanding its implications. When I took over this course there had been considerable discontent among students, who found the technical and theoretical aspects either too simple or too complicated. This discontent was in large part due to the varying abilities and interests of the students. Rather than focus on one or the other, I decided to confront this challenge head on and in fact turn the problem into strength. The way I did this was by getting the students to work in partnerships and in teams on a major project. In this way technical ability and theoretical interests could be shared, and in fact the stronger students were encouraged to use their skills to teach their partner(s). The team projects provided an outlet for critical reflection while requiring considerable technical expertise. The students, in effect, had to confront the challenges that technology designers and policy-makers wrestle with every day. The results have been extremely gratifying and many of these team projects (usually web-based) enjoyed global audiences and provided useful resources for many. Communication 453, "Issues in an information society," was my first course when I started teaching at SFU, and it was here that I discovered my love of teaching. I hadn't anticipated that, having been focused on research for so long. It was in this course, which generally attracts a group of dedicated senior undergraduates, that I have done the most experimentation. Prior to my teaching it, some of the previous instructors (Bill Leiss, Linda Harasim) used it as a way to approach a topic of special interest to them (risk communication, telelearning). In the first few years I taught the course I tended to encourage the students to explore a range of topics, although starting with a review of critical perspectives on the theory of an information society. Last year, however, I too used the course to focus on a single topic - video surveillance of public spaces. The experience was most gratifying, as it was an enormous learning opportunity for both the students and me. Our collective group project, called "Unveillance," will be an ongoing initiative for my teaching from now on.

Directed studies and project group supervisions

I do a lot of group projects and directed studies. In part, this is because of my interest in the Internet, which is an understandably "hot topic" these days and attracts many students who want to do something outside the usual courses. The directed study is also a place for my students to focus their ideas, quite often on a topic that has been introduced to them in 253 or 453. Recent project groups include one on "social capital," another on the use of the web in the publication of an ethnic student newspaper, and a study of networks and relationships in the software and new media industries in BC. Although project groups and directed studies have tended to overload my teaching requirements, I find that they are an inspiration and addition to my research and teaching as well as an excellent way to introduce my students to the world outside the university. For these reasons I continue to be involved in them.

Research training support

I have several large research grants and as a result I am able to employ numerous students. Some of these students have been employed on a short-term basis, others for longer periods of time, up to two or three years. I regard research grants as a key element in the provision of support for my graduate students and I try to involve them in projects that help them complete their theses and dissertations while providing them with income and work experience. Research grants also provide me with a unique opportunity to engage in mentoring and advancing the careers of graduate students. Not only are they able to work on the project itself, but they are able - through my strategic use of teaching buy outs - to work with me on my core courses and gain valuable course design, teaching, and research experience for their resumés. What I have done, for example, is include in my course selected components of doctoral candidates' dissertation research. I include the students in the course design process, where we work together to bring out aspects of their work that they would like to have examined. The graduate students gain in several ways from having this kind of opportunity to teach in their research area. Not only are they compensated at a level above an RA- or TA-ship, but they can list these courses in their teaching dossier when they go for interviews. I have done this with several graduate students recently, including Maria Bakardjieva, Susan Bryant, Mark Inhat, and Lindsay Hughes. This mentoring is an integral part of my approach to graduate training and, I believe, an invaluable learning opportunity for all concerned.

Undergraduate teaching evaluations

My teaching evaluations have been consistently good throughout my time at Simon Fraser University. I have used the university's facilities for improving my own teaching several times, as I regard teaching as a process of ongoing challenge and self-improvement. The courses at the Centre for University Teaching were particularly helpful when I had to start teaching a large lecture course with several hundred students - CMNS 110. My students seem to most appreciate my interest, dedication and passion for teaching. I have, from time to time, been challenged by students who wish for a greater degree of structure and detail in course outlines. While I am always working to address these concerns, I also consider it at least part of my job to "shake up" students somewhat. Encouraging my students to think in new ways is an important teaching strategy. When my "Issues in an information society" course got something of a reputation as being heavily Internet oriented, I took a different approach. I instituted a series of exercises at the beginning of the semester in which I asked students to hand write, carefully choosing both the pen and paper, a narrative on something they really cared about. Then, in a second assignment, I asked them to write about a meaningful event that happened to them.

I use this exercise to do two things. On a mundane level, the activity and novelty of pens and paper and stories of personal commitment requires that students think differently, and be aware of their capacity to think about new things or old things in new ways. On a more profound level, these exercises bring into focus the subtle and the dramatic aspects of the relationship between theory and practice. These are important realizations for students who are about to embark on an exploration of theories of an information society.

Graduate courses

I have taught three graduate courses in the past few years. While graduate teaching hasn't been a major focus for me, I will be teaching at the graduate level on a more regular basis in the coming years, as Ellen Balka and I have begun to work together to offer a technology and society course to be made available at least once a year. This coming year I will be teaching that course with a focus on technology and higher education, with Brian Lewis. I am a member of the Graduate Studies Committee and have been involved in the discussions relating to the challenge of responding to our students' desire for consistency in core course offerings and diversity in special issue courses.

Graduate supervision

I have about 10 active graduate students at present. As a recently appointed faculty member, I am just now having the experience of graduating a Ph.D. student, and have had three of my students defend in the past year. It is a rewarding and inspiring process and I am pleased to report that all three have jobs, one a post-doc in industry and two with Canadian universities. The complete list of my graduate student supervision is provided in the c.v., in the appendix. I make a point of remaining engaged in my graduate students' program of study at all stages of their work. I take the position that it is my responsibility to ensure that they have adequate funding, a place to work, and opportunities for travel and to present their research. Much of this is can be accomplished by involving the students in teaching and research projects. One of the byproducts of doing so many directed studies is that I frequently have "credits" in my teaching account. I use these to bring in Ph.D. students to co-teach my courses.

Another important interaction I have had in recent years with graduate students is in the role of unofficial advisor or mentor. I have had the pleasure of working with several student who, while not technically part of my supervisory load, are interested in my research or teaching projects. I recently worked out an arrangement like this with Alison Hearn, who was completing her doctoral disseration under the supervision of Rick Gruneau. A current example of this is Ph.D. student Jan Hadlaw (supervised by Paul Heyer), who has been sharing an office with me for the past few months. We've been using that time to become better acquainted with each other's work and may work together on projects in the future.

Online teaching

Despite my long-standing interest and active participation in the Internet as a communication tool, I have not taught a "distance" course yet. I have an online version of my "Introduction to Information Technology" course in development, but for the most part I prefer to use web and email technologies as a supplement to the classroom experience. This, in fact, is where I see myself (and hopefully our school and even the university as a whole) carving out a niche between traditional teaching without technology and the totally mediated learning experience that is being promoted by many. That said, I intend to experiment with on-line teaching next year. In my classes, the web is both a teaching supplement and a learning environment. So, for example, I keep my general course outline, detailed (week by week) course outline, some readings, and all my lecture notes on the class web site. I also send my lecture notes out as an e-mail after the class. I find this is a good way to accomplish two things. The first is that it allows me to accommodate the needs of text-based learners. The second benefit is that it allows me to optimize my time in the classroom. I can send, by email, those things that supporting or background information. I can then spend more of the valuable face-to-face time in discussions and explorations of the implications of what we have been reading, and the students' own interpretations about the material.

Another reason for doing this is that there are inevitably some things that you can't get to or only realize that you should have said after you complete the lecture. After class, I compose a "reflections on today's lecture and send it to my students as a follow-up to the lecture. I also use email to answer questions that the students might have. If one student asks a question it is inevitable that there are at least 10 more who should have asked the same question. This way they all benefit from the answer. I use group email as a way to extend the classroom discussion in time and space. We can continue a dialogue over the course of a week and not be so disconnected seven days later. I also use individual emails to reach students about specific questions or problems they might be having, or to suggest research avenues they might explore. I typically send 30 or 40 messages a week in my course, with at least 5 to 10 of those being to the whole group. Students are advised at the beginning of the course that email interaction is a significant component of the course and they are encouraged to experiment with the form. I also use the web as a project space for my students. I encourage them to create web pages out of their projects/papers and to work together in partnerships and teams in order to do so. I don't emphasize the technical side of web page design, but instead allow them to use the various easy-to-use tools that now exist. This enables students to experience creating work that the whole world can see. They also can see what their fellow students are doing.

These online activities wouldn't be considered breakthroughs now, many professors are doing similar things. When I started in 1994, however, I was among the first professors to do them at SFU, and in fact pioneered many of these practices locally. It is hard to believe now, but back then some of my students' first exposure to the World Wide Web was in my class. In the days before students were allowed to have their own web pages or mailing lists, I built facilities for these activities on my servers. (Thankfully, those days are past and I can rely on the services provided by the university.)