Teaching HIV/AIDS
Posted by Tanja Estella Bosch | 24 May, 2007I've just finished teaching a brand new seminar on Health Communication to third year media studies students. The course content included discussions and critical reading on HIV/AIDS and the media, health communication campaigns, health reporting and narrative journalism. Students produced annotated bibliographies, a researched magazine article and a final academic essay or creative project of their choice. I'd like to use this category to reflect on this teaching experience, and to share some of the student work.
Teaching a seminar to worldly wise third year media students is challenging. Teaching anything to do with HIV/AIDS is even more challenging. But this has turned out to be one of the the best courses I've ever taught, and judging by the student feedback, it's been similarly stimulating for them. After the initial scepticism, by the end of the semester, these were some of the responses during an informal feedback session: "I am very surprised at how much I didn't actually know about Aids"; "This course was better than I anticipated and taught me not only about Aids but about myself as well"; "Very stimulating and I learnt a lot".
But more about this later...Here's the first installement of student work. Read a short story entitled Nosebleeds by Masande Ntshanga.
