Combining an arts-informed and textual approach to teaching information and communication theories

Abstract

This paper reports on an experiment of using a hybrid pedagogical approach to tackle the challenge of teaching "Information and Communication theories" to students enrolled in Master of Communication and Digital Content at the School of Communication and Journalism of Aix Marseille University in France. The hybrid pedagogical approach combines the classical textual/verbal approach with an arts informed pedagogy, augmented by creative writing and storytelling activities. The fact that the arts-informed approach was not used in isolation but in combination with the traditional textual/verbal approach and creative writing and storytelling activities offered students a wide choice of learning modalities through which they could express themselves. Our preliminary findings suggest that using a hybrid pedagogical approach rather than one single pedagogical approach improved students' understanding of the abstract concepts implied by the communication theories discussed during the lectures. Students illustrated their understanding of these theories by recasting them in various real life or plausible situations during the creative writing activity which we call "Communication Stories" or cStories.