fbpx
Uncategorized

Out for Sabbatical :)

Leave a comment

Welcome to Fall 2023. I’m excited to share that I will be on sabbatical this semester.

During sabbatical, I’ll be working on a project related to happiness. It is inspired by the special topics class that I taught last semester titled Happiness: Media versus Reality [If you haven’t yet, check out the happiness and media class syllabus]. The class was so much fun and its enrollment was over-capacity. It was originally supposed to be a one-time class. But, it went so well that it looks like I will get a chance to teach it every two years. Exciting!

At this time, I have no plans to post any teaching-related blog posts this semester. I swear I will stick with focusing only on my sabbatical (though I am on campus today). You can find past posts and teaching resources via the menu on this blog.

I’ve got a few other ideas for posts, but I’m not sure if this blog is the right place for those ideas or if I need to find a new space for those ideas if I am going to pursuit them.

In the meantime, I’d love to know where you go online or what media you use to learn about happiness or to find a little piece of happiness. Feel free to comment or send me a message on social media. I wish everyone a wonderful semester.

– Matt

Social Media Educators, Teaching Tips

Here’s My Happiness and Media Course Overview and Syllabus

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details.

Happiness: Media versus Reality Course Overview and Syllabus

This semester I will be teaching Happiness: Media versus Reality, a 400-level special topics course.  In recent posts (see here and here), I’ve talked about my growing interest in happiness broadly, and the relationship between happiness and media use specifically. In this post, I will share the course description, course goals, and the class syllabus.

I hope that sharing this information inspires you to discuss happiness and media use in one of your classes or, perhaps, create your own happiness and media class.

Continue reading Here’s My Happiness and Media Course Overview and Syllabus →

professors well-being, Social Media Educators, Tech Trends and Analysis

I Created a Class About Happiness and the Media: Here’s Why

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details.

I Created a Class About Happiness and the Media

In my last past, I talked about happiness, the pandemic, and higher education. I shared that I built a class about happiness and the media. That class is called Happiness: Media versus Reality. I’ll be teaching it in the spring as a special topics class. In the below post, I’ll explain why I created the class.

Continue reading I Created a Class About Happiness and the Media: Here’s Why →

professors well-being

Happiness in Higher Education: One Professor’s Thoughts

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details.

Happiness, the Pandemic, and Higher Education

Happiness. That’s the topic I’ve been thinking most about in the months since I last published a blog post.

Of course, the pandemic forced many of us to think about important issues like work-life balance, meaning, and what we should be spending our time doing. Yes, the pandemic altered personalities. So it is no wonder that it may have altered priorities, too.

The other day, I checked in on Twitter to find a thread by a professor who was expressing signs of burn out. She stated that she no longer felt the joy she once felt in her work. She wanted to find a way to get that back. She is not alone. Like several of you, I have been there. It stinks. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel that way. But I’ve spoken with, read about, or have been exposed to many people who are, directly or indirectly, expressing a desire for more happiness from their lives and their work.

Continue reading Happiness in Higher Education: One Professor’s Thoughts →

Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises

How I’m Teaching Public Relations with Karen Freberg’s PR Textbook

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details.

Teaching the Public Relations Class with Freberg’s PR Textbook, Discovering Public Relations

Karen Freberg‘s PR textbook, Discovering Public Relations: An Introduction to Creative and Strategic Practices, has been called a substantial advancement in public relations education (see Gallicano, 2021). It was published in time for the 2020-2021 academic year. But this semester is the first chance I’ve had to incorporate it into my Public Relations class. In the below post, I’ll discuss how I’m incorporating this textbook and share my new Public Relations Principles syllabus.

I had the privileged of writing the ancillary materials for this textbook, including a syllabus, and discussion questions and activities and assignments for each chapter.  You can get your hands on those materials from Sage when adopting the textbook. So rather than sharing specific assignments, below I share three ways that I’ve used this textbook to update my class.

Continue reading How I’m Teaching Public Relations with Karen Freberg’s PR Textbook →

Teaching Social Media

Teach Social Media book now available on Kindle Unlimited

2 Comments

This page may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details

Teach Social Media now on Kindle Unlimited

Welcome back! We have arrived at the spring 2022 semester.

Teach-Social-Media-Kushin
Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love

To kick off the semester, I am excited to announce that my book, Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love, is now available on Kindle Unlimited. This means that if you have Kindle Unlimited you can read the entire Kindle book at no additional cost beyond the price of Kindle Unlimited membership.  The book remains available for purchase in paperback and on Kindle.  I hope that this enables more people to get access to the book so that they can take advantage of its contents in preparing their social media class.

Continue reading Teach Social Media book now available on Kindle Unlimited →

Book Reviews

Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication by Carolyn Mae Kim [Book Review]

Leave a comment

This page may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details

Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication by Carolyn Mae Kim

Dr. Carolyn Mae Kim has a new book out about leadership and the role technology can play in building ethical leadership. Published by Routledge, this new book is titled Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication.  Below I review this brand new book.

But before we start, I must admit my bias up front in reviewing this book. In my social media class, I use one of Dr. Kim’s other books, Social Media Campaigns: Strategies for Public Relations and Marketing (I reviewed the first edition of this book in 2016. I currently use the second edition in my class).

Professor Kim is someone I have long-admired. She is a leader in public relations education and the work she has done in helping build the PR program at Biola University is an inspiration. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from her as well as work with her on a few projects and I know her to be a person of exceptional character. Lastly, I had the opportunity to make a small contributions to this book in a leadership spotlight (more on that below). So, again, fair warning: the review you will find below is biased.

Continue reading Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication by Carolyn Mae Kim [Book Review] →

A Social Media Education Blog by Matthew J. Kushin, Ph.D.