“News Portfolio” as a creative course assignment

This guest post comes from Dr. Olga Burlyuk, University of Amsterdam.

Earlier on this blog, I wrote about two creative assignments that I use in my Bachelor and Master political science courses: “book club” and “creative foreign policy speech”. In this article, I will introduce the third quirky assignment – “news portfolio” – which was not a creative assignment in my original conception of it, but acquired a creative spin on the initiative of students themselves. The basic idea is quite simple: students follow the news regarding a particular subject (in my case, country) for the duration of the course, select the most significant news of the week to include in our “weekly newsletter” and discuss in class, and assemble all news items in one file accompanied by a reflection note at the end of the course (the portfolio itself). The first cohort of students came forward asking if I wished them to design their portfolio as a newspaper, if they may have some creative license in this, and if the “reflection note” may be as an “editorial” – and I thought these were fabulous suggestions making the assignment that much more creative, stimulating and, well, fun. So this is what students need to do since.

Below, I discuss the impetus for developing this assignment, its various components and how they evolved, and the assessment criteria.

Impetus for designing the assignment

I designed this assignment to use in two courses that I teach at the University of Amsterdam: “The EU and the politics of Central and Eastern Europe” (12 ECTS; Bachelor; 25-30 students) and “The EU and post-soviet space” (9 ECTS; Master; 25-30 students). There were several considerations that prompted me to turn this into a formal assignment for students.

First, I wanted to make my students follow the news; not read the news occasionally if at all, but follow the news systematically, week after week for the duration of the course (the BA course runs for 12 weeks; the MA course runs for 8). Multiple students over the years remarked that they have never followed the news at “such intensity” and many confessed that this was the first time in their studies that they had had to formally engage with the news in a course (!). Which is confronting, if not shocking. If you are assuming that your students are following the news: don’t.

Second, I wanted to compel my students to think about the news; not scroll through the headlines, but intentionally think about the current events in terms of the academic readings of the course and link “what’s on the news” to our weekly themes, (past) classes, assigned readings etc. This offered a straightforward way to bring abstract concepts and theories to life. I do not expect my students to read academic articles upon graduation (does anyone?); but I do hope that they will be able to seek out reliable news and process them.

Third, given the continuous (week after week) and collective (each student a country) nature of the assignment and our weekly discussions as a group, I wanted to teach my students to relate and associate what might seem like disparate events/pieces of information and so help them grasp the complexity and interconnectedness in politics and international relations.

Fourth, this assignment effectively familiarizes students with the countries in the region in focus. By searching for weekly news, they discover the existing media outlets and power blocks behind them, learn the names of key political figures, capitals and major cities, large companies and industry sectors, and so on. This is a rather painless way for them to build at least some knowledge base about the country they follow, first and foremost, and about all others through the work of their peers.

Finally, quite simply, this assignment offers an easy warm up for each class: the weekly seminar runs for 3 hours, and we dedicate the first 15-25 minutes to discussing the news of the week in relation to that week’s theme and readings (starting with the news that link up best), as well as previous weeks’ news, themes and readings.

This simple assignment serves multiple teaching & learning objectives.

Components of the assignment

The assignment runs for the entire duration of the course (12 or 8 weeks, respectively) and has a research, a discussion and a written component to it. The steps are as follows:

1) select a country to follow in class 1;

2) follow the news searching specifically for developments that concern that country’s relations with the EU/Europe (given the focus of the course);

3) upload one piece of news you deem most important that week to the “weekly newsletter” on our online learning portal;

4) come prepared to discuss the weekly news in class; and

5) assemble your weekly items in one document, write a reflection note on the exercise and submit this “news portfolio” for evaluation at the end of the course.

Let me elaborate on some practicalities of these.  

Since the courses in which I practice this assignment are about EU’s relations with a particular region and one of the objectives is to familiarize students with that region, structuring this exercise by country made most sense. However, this can be easily adjusted to any other course theme: instead of going by country, you may wish to go by subject area, type of media outlet, political association of media outlet, and so on.

With regard to assigning the countries, initially, I would let students choose themselves and sign-up on a first-come/first-served basis. I have since moved to a draw: I write country names on pieces of paper, and they draw one from a hat (yes, very analogue). Why? Some countries are considered more “interesting” than others; some are more “eventful”; some have more elaborate relationships with the EU; some are more widely covered in English-language media – and so students would complain of peers “having chosen easier ones”. Randomization leaves this to chance entirely. Also, while you’d hope for students to choose what they wish to learn about, they tend to choose what they already know – and so the exercise is stripped of some of its learning objectives for those students who got their pick. Randomization will usually pair them up with an entirely “new” country. Notably, the choice of the country for the news portfolio is not linked to their other assignments, e.g. they do not have to then write their final paper on the country of the portfolio assignment. Effectively, however, students may develop a strong interest in the country they follow or stumble on a research puzzle as they do. Finally, if there are more students than countries in a course, some countries are assigned to two students, creating a stimulating dynamic in which different students will have picked different “most important news of the week” for the same country, prompting us to discuss their reasons during in-class discussion.

Practically, the weekly items need to be uploaded on the morning of the day before class (in my case, the class is on Fridays, so they need to upload their items by Thursday morning). This gives everyone time to read through the newsletter in preparation for class and come ready to discuss.

As for in-class discussion, this is the most dynamic and perhaps most intellectually demanding part of the assignment. The first 15-25 minutes of each seminar are dedicated to discussing the news of the week – in relation to this week’s class theme and materials, as well as in relation to what we have discussed previously. I humorously call this part “improv theatre” because there is no scripting how this will go. One of the students will start – and the discussion flows from there. I take the lead in the first few classes, but as we progress students learn the drill and develop confidence, so there is less need for me to steer. Of course, I will have read the newsletter (and other news!) and marked some important items and/or connections I want pointed out, and I will ensure that they are (by me, if necessary). With Bachelor students and for the first few weeks with Master students, students are invited to voice their own news item. As we progress, however, I complicate the assignment for Master students by expecting them to voice news of other students rather than their own. This boosts engagement with the newsletter and thinking beyond one’s own country and selected news.

The assignment culminates with a written component: the news portfolio itself. My initial basic idea was for students to assemble their weekly news into one document and write a reflection note on the exercise and what they have learned from it. This final written submission was to give form and a clear finale to the assignment and facilitate grading, too. However, as I mentioned in the opening, the assignment had become much more creative on the initiative of students themselves! And so, the portfolio is to be designed as a newspaper; their reflection note is in the form of an editorial – or a separate article – in this newspaper; and they have creative license (read: permission from me) in designing this newspaper. Looking back, this has made the assignment not only that much more engaging and fun for students to work on (and for me to grade!) but also that much more intellectually, analytically stimulating. It also added visual presentation and graphic design skills to the list of what students develop in this course.

Over the years, students have come up with fun titles for their newspapers (sometimes in local languages and alphabets, complete with “mission statements”, issue numbers, cost of subscription etc.); included “clickbait” headlines, captions or remarks (linked to the content of the news items and/or with a nod to something we had read or discussed in class – e.g. “bipolar world order or bipolar disorder?”); included themselves as journalists, editors or made-up characters (the one that springs to memory: an UN official by name of Max Culpa); included references to something that has happened during the course; added humorous advertisements and weather forecasts (again, with intelligible clever nods to real-life events); and more. One news portfolio had a photo of me on the last page with a headline “Dr Burlyuk still thinking how to rename the course”: problematizing every word in the course title “The EU and post-soviet space” had been the subject of our first seminar, and the student revisited that having completed the course. Although I have been working with this assignment in two courses for several years, I am still surprised (and amused).

Assessment

Throughout this assignment, students are instructed to strive for / pay attention to / reflect on the diversity of media outlets, reputation of media outlets, ease of access to and availability of information, and diversity of themes resonating in the news. They are expected to upload their weekly news on time and participate in in-class discussions. The final portfolio must contain a critical reflection on the exercise (what they learned by doing this exercise, what they found and did not, how the news items connect to each other, to the themes and readings of the course, etc.); and the quality of this reflection is of importance. While the portfolio needs to be complete and visually coherent for a pass, being original and creative in this is not per se necessary but does bring a “creativity premium”.

This assignment counts for 10% of the final grade (with 20% reserved for seminar participation, 20% for another substantive assignment, and 50% for the final course paper). The allocation of formal points serves to mobilise and motivate students to actually follow the news and complete the assignment; but set at 10% it is not so high as to seriously impact their final grade for the course. One year in the BA course, I merged “news portfolio” with “seminar participation” into a combined 30% of the final grade, in order to take the pressure off of students and to reduce grading load for myself. However, this diluted focus and motivation for students and took away from the learning potency of the assignment; so I restored it as a separate assignment and returned to the 10% + 20% model.   

In my experience, this is a simple and straightforward assignment that engages students with news and current affairs, serves multiple learning objectives, is adaptable to any course so long as group size is small enough to accommodate in-class discussion. It does not require any material or institutional support. And then it allows for a creative spin as a bonus!