21st Century Journalism XXI: NewsU Healthcare Course
I've begun working my way through the preview version of a new course on healthcare reporting offered at the News University website.1"On the Beat: Covering Hospitals" is free to any registered user of the NewsU site. The content for the course — a simulation in which a rookie reporter covers a hospital story with help from an editor and a more experienced reporter — was developed by Charles Ornstein and Karl Stark. Ornstein covers public health and health policy for the Los Angeles Times; Stark is National/Foreign Editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The course aims to improve critical thinking skills and to help the learner acquire beat-specific knowledge necessary for effective coverage of hospitals in the local community.
There are seven learning objectives, namely, to improve your ability to
- Uncover sources at hospitals, local associations and goverment agencies.
- Work with sources to get the information you need.
- Work with your editor to get to the heart of the story.
- Interpret reports, statistics and tricky government forms.
- Extract information pertinent to your story from lengthy source documents.
- Tap online resources to flesh out your reporting.
- Detect trends across years and among documents.
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1 NewU is a project of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. You can access the complete list of NewsU courses here.
Labels: Critical thinking, eLearning, Journalism, Learning resources
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:37 PM
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