David Poulson
By David Poulson
The guard burst from the presidential gatehouse with his gun drawn.
“Stop that,” he yelled as he pointed his weapon at me.
Stunned, I slowly lowered my phone to the ground. I was dressed for an early morning run in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi in Africa. As I often do when working out-of-town, I had combined my morning run with a little sightseeing.
Knight Center Senior Associate Director David Poulson was recently interviewed for a story about teaching journalism online. See story here.
The article was produced for the EJ Academy section of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ online newsletter. It interviewed several university instructors about the challenges and opportunities of moving courses online. Michigan State University and most all universities shifted classes online because of the outbreak of the coronavirus.
Poulson has taught online before. But the pandemic crisis in the middle of the semester required a significant shift for a course that had been designed for a traditional face-to-face environment.
Still, he said the move was relatively seamless and prompted him to adopt successful techniques that he may not have tried without the motivation of a sudden switch in platforms.
One tip: Require students to turn on their own video when using a remote conferencing system like Zoom, he said. They take the class more seriously, pay better attention and are more likely to interact with the instructor and each other.
Dave Poulson, Senior Associate Director Knight Center
Knight Center Senior Associate Director David Poulson was recently named to the advisory board of a new climate reporting initiative of the National Catholic Reporter.
The independent religious news service describes EarthBeat as a place to tell stories at the intersection of “where ecological concern and moral conviction meet.”
The initiative, which just launched, features a column by Poulson that weighs the relevance of personal decisions to limit individual contributions to climate change: On the train to Omaha: Why individual action on climate change matters.
Andrew Blok, Dave Poulson, Brian Bienkowski and Andy McGlashen
Knight Center director Eric Freedman and senior associate director Dave Poulson represented MSU at the recent annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Fort Collins, Colorado. At the conference Poulson finished his second three-year term as the academic representative on the SEJ’s board of directors.
The MSU team included, in alphabetical order:
Margie Bauman and Natasha Blakely
The SEJ conference, “Headwaters to the Plains: Where Rivers, and Politics, Change Directions,” took place October 9-13 at Colorado State University.