Teaching media literacy for non-majors

As part of a curricular overhaul in the Southern Methodist University division of journalism, I helped to craft a course dedicated to introducing ethical journalism to first-year and pre-major students from across the campus. The resulting course, Media Literacy and Democracy, was an engaging large-lecture class that taught students about responsible news production and consumption in the 21st century. By my third year teaching the course of 100+ students, it boasted the longest waitlist on SMU’s campus.

In collaboration with the George W. Bush Presidential Center at SMU, I arranged lessons on political power and the press. With resources from the News Literacy Project, I taught fact-checking and information verification in the digital age. Through interactive pedagogical techniques, I sparked class-wide discussions on everything from AI ethics to the role of the press in a creator economy.