 The biggest problem was we were using a singular text and the singular text had one voice that, although it was very good, was not necessarily effective. And the biggest part of it not being effective was these solid-based texts cannot accommodate multiple accessibility issues, being students that might need to upload documents to a Brailleite or students that need to enlarge texts. It also didn't accommodate for students to be able to access online from any platform. So arriving at a new remodeled structure for the course required understanding that I was not going to be teaching cinema in the same way that I had always taught it. This became easy because I had already been reading these articles and quickly figuring out that it's like a garden. There's trees there and there's roots and there's really good soil. But sometimes you just have to rip that whole thing out, shake off the dirt and replant the seeds. So I got all these digital marketing textbooks and they just struck me as being at best three or four years behind the times. And so, well, I saw that some of the topics were good. A lot of the topics were, you know, I don't want to lie. In 2012, I saw some textbooks that were referencing MySpace and GeoCities. On that first day of class as I go through the syllabus, I reiterate, there is no textbook for this class. Everything that you will access for this class is free. And I would say that that makes me a fairly popular professor on the first day of class. When you tell students that their readings are podcasts, you get all kinds of looks. Like this is different. Students tend to prefer the podcasts because they feel like it is authentic. It is an actual dialogue that matters and that your average person would want to listen to because they don't have enough of an audience. It's not going to thrive, right? Whereas with textbooks, they're mandated that you buy them. So while you have enough of a customer base, it's driven by an institution that's making those decisions, right? And so students feel like this is an authentic piece that the average person wants to listen to. So if the average person wants to listen to it, they almost feel privileged to be able to count that as schooling as well. The second half of class usually involves a video chat. I started inviting people who were doing the job for real to talk about that job. In 2013, I would ask people that were like me to do the hangouts because I felt like they had been doing this for 15, 20 years. But then I realized the students hear enough of people like me. What would be really valuable for the students is for them to hear about the topic from people that were like them. I try to be strategic about who I ask to do the hangouts because I want to make sure that every student in the class sees someone who reminds him or herself about him or herself at some point during the quarter. One of the ideas that you'll hear me say a lot in class is multiple perspectives. And it's easy to smile a nod at someone when they say multiple perspectives. But to actually embrace in someone's understanding of a work that is different than your own understanding of the work is different than saying, yes, I accept multiple perspectives. And more so with podcasts than with textbook readings, I find that students interpret it differently. But how do I get them to then embrace that and discuss that and come out with not a shared understanding but a mutual respect? Most of the students who were creating the vlog of the individual option to have their own voice in their own space were generally feminine or non-traditional students. Whereas other students who were often white affluent male or female would create the scenes, the more creative works. And they would definitely mimic some of their favorite directors like Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino. However, once I changed this process and started really thinking about who was writing the articles, who was narrating the video tutorials we were looking at, and which films we were watching in class, I instantly noticed that we had more feminine voices creating scenes. We had more non-traditional students gathering together and creating scenes. But it's a different view. It's someone doing something other than just mimicking a director that we've already seen, Adnazium. And what's really important about that is it's also giving voice to a group that didn't necessarily feel they had a voice. Another part that's really interesting when I implemented podcasts is that when they found a podcast that they personally connected to and they thought was really exciting, they shared that link with others. They shared it with their peers, sometimes with their parents. But then they would choose to bring it up and they'd go, remember when we read that podcast? Well, now I had a chance to hear somebody else's perspective on it and that makes a connection to the current topic that we're talking about because, and so when students can connect different readings and can remember different readings and build those connections in the classroom, that demonstrates your ability to find those connections outside of the classroom and really take your learning beyond the confines of the classroom. Part of my job as a being a professor is to encourage them to be lifelong learners. And so I want the students to know that they can be lifelong learners without taking classes. They can be lifelong learners without buying textbooks. To be a lifelong learner, you need to know what is good content and what is bad content, and what is a good resource and what is a bad resource. And by not using a textbook, which has this some sort of, it's been blessed as some sort of holy book, that's a really good thing for them to realize, oh, I don't need to just be in college to be a learner. A lot of what I'm trying to do with the class is to, again, is to reiterate, you know what? The stuff you're learning in this class is going to be out of date really quickly. You know, two years best. But that's fine, because what I'm really teaching you isn't just how to do this today, it's about where are the resources so that you can be always learning. None of us have these original thoughts for ourselves. I mean we may connect dots in different ways, but we're all pulling from each other's ideas. And it's how we teach those other ideas for each other. For them to understand that I'm sourcing my references the entire time, and teaching them how to do so, so that they're recognizing that it's not just a song that they used in that scene, but it was someone else's thought process, someone else's idea. So it starts at these base levels, and it keeps us all in check, which is not a bad thing. Being humble in our academic understanding is not a bad thing. Being aware that there aren't these golden entities that just shine out knowledge that we just kind of sucked in. I think it's really important, and I think it's time there's no reason to not do these things. We have the resources, and it's so easy.