What I have learned throughout Oakland University's multimedia journalism course

L2 Reflection Lab

Initially, when signing up for this course, I knew it was going to be a mixture of many different topics. However, with each assignment, I have learned so many skills that I can take into the future.

Beginning the course, I didn't know exactly what or how much I'd learn.

I remember one of the first things Dr. Adina Schneeweis told us we'd be doing was creating our own website.

She didn't expand much further. Dr. Schneeweis told us to create a site and upload it to Moodle a couple weeks later.

I remember being confused as to why she wouldn't show us how to do it or really give us much guidance. At first, I was a little worried. I didn't know how to feel about a course where I was teaching myself so many skills.

Later that week, I went on my laptop and pulled up Wix.com and began the creation process.

I searched for many things online and watched multiple YouTube videos trying to figure it all out.

I eventually set everything up, and by the end of it, I couldn't help but feel super impressed with myself. That's when I realized Dr. Schneeweis's intentions for the course.

She wanted us to adapt to learning new things on our own and realize how rewarding that process is. Especially because in the working world, you won't always have someone next to you showing you step by step.

Later on in the semester, we began to explore more concepts we might need for our future, one of which was audio.

I had no initial experience creating podcasts before. I did have some video editing experience, so I used those same software programs to create my podcasts.

I decided to have fun with my first one and base it off of a dating article, which kind of played into our inequity topic.

The podcast was called Should men be expected to pay on dates because women earn less in the workplace?

Needless to say, I definitely had some trial and error. Figuring out editing and uploading was a bit of a challenge at first, but quite a learning experience.

After uploading, I felt really excited about it. This was work I knew I was proud of.

It even paid off because, as embarrassing as it was to listen to my voice in front of a group of people, Dr. Schneeweis played my podcast for the class and said I did a really nice job.

Leaning more into the topic of inequity, I learned a lot about that as well this semester.

When I heard that our final project was about inequity, I was confused, to say the least.

Quite frankly, it was a term I hadn't heard before. At first, I thought our final project was about inequality—inequity was a term I definitely had to research.

I then learned how it is a similar concept to inequality in the sense that it regards issues that are unjust or unfair.

Then, I was paired with a partner for the project, Kurt, and we agreed to focus on the gender pay gap.

Learning about this has been very interesting. We decided to look at the pay gap in media professions, which I must say is still very prominent.

Throughout the course of the project, I have even learned many multimedia skills.

I have always liked taking pictures, but it has been cool to take journalistic-style photos. Taking photos of people in action has really pushed me out of my typical comfort zone with photography.

What I have also loved is collaborating with my classmates and bouncing ideas back and forth.

Throughout this class, I have stayed in touch with many classmates so we could discuss what each other's different approaches were for different assignments.

It has been cool to see how a bunch of students with all different experience levels have really improved in so many ways.

This course overall helped not only with my multimedia journalism skills but also with my critical thinking and adaptability skills.

This class is certainly something journalism students should look into to help advance their learning.

If anyone is looking for an interesting class that actually challenges them a bit, this would be the course for them.