Teaching philosophy
- I have taught undergraduate and graduate students in four institutions in the US, Spain, Hong Kong and Singapore. My teaching experience includes courses on global communication, multimedia journalism and quantitative research methods. Every summer, I teach a two week introduction to computational text analysis at the NUS-IPSA Methods School. Whenever possible, I make my learning materials freely available. Below is a (growing) collection. In some cases, these include previously recorded video lectures, while in others I share slides, assignments, or code. Since many of my classes are project-based, I've also collected some of the student work that came out of my classes: #proudprof.
- As an adjunct professor, I taught and designed introductory courses in the East Asian Studies Department at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona including “Societies of East Asia” and “Politics of East Asia”. I also have experience in teaching smaller, upper-division courses, such as “Mass Media in East Asia.” At City University of Hong Kong, I taught the courses “Video Production” and “Crisis Communication Management”. For close to ten years, I also worked at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) as online course instructor for several subjects.
- In my teaching, I place great importance on building a diverse and inclusive learning environment (more on this here), and on improving students' digital literacy. To do so, I like to incorporate new media and new information technologies in class. You can read more about my teaching philosophy in this teaching statement. In 2017, I was awarded the "Teaching Innovation Award" (graduate student category) by City University of Hong Kong's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS). The assessment panel cited my using of technology in class as one of the reasons for granting me the recognition. To learn more about my teaching philosophy and style, you can watch the presentation I gave at City University of Hong Kong's CLASS Awards Day in May 2017 (in English).
Current courses
- None -- On research leave until January 2022
Upcoming courses
- COMM6300: Quantitative Research Methods (Spring'22)
Previously taught courses
- COMM6300: Quantitative Research Methods
- Quantitative Text Analysis 1 & 2
- COMM6363: Media, Globalization and Social Change
- COMM3317: Multimedia Journalism
- COMM4397: Documentary Filmmaking in Kenya
- COMM6314: Issues in International Mass Communication
- COM2031: Video Production
- COM5403: Crisis Communication and Management
- 101525: Societat de l'Àsia Oriental [Societies of East Asia]
- 101527: Política de l'Àsia Oriental [Politics in East Asia]
- Japan Pop: la cultura japonesa de masses. Manga, anime i més [Japan Pop: Japanese popular culture. manga, anime and more]
- #Trending China: Deu Preguntes i Deu Respostes de la Xina que s'acosta [#Trending China: Ten Questions and Answers About Upcoming China]
- 25571 - Japonès i mitjans de comunicació [Japanese and the Mass Media]
- Els Mitjans de Comunicació a l'Àsia Oriental [Mass Media in East Asia]
This course is designed to introduce students to the basics of quantitative communication research. As such, it covers essential ideas in theory, hypothesis generation, research design, instrumentation, data collection, and data analysis. Related topics on validity, reliability, and ethical issues in conducting research on humans are also covered. An important portion of the class is devoted to a survey of univariate (and basic bivariate/multivariate) statistics, which includes topics on the nature of quantitative data, the logic of statistical inference, and various statistical tests such as analysis of variance, regression, and basics of computational text analysis. A set of computer lab assignments give students extensive opportunity to become familiar with the R programming language, its application to statistical analysis, and computing the various statistics reviewed in the class. Most importantly, students conduct a research project, putting into practice the theorizing, design, instrumentation, and analysis skills acquired throughout the class.
Over the last two decades, during which the world has seen the spread of digital technologies to almost ubiquity, and the sprawl of communication networks worldwide, humans have generated more textual data than in the previous 1,000 years combined. Not only has the production of text records grown exponentially in recent years, but also our ability to access, store and analyze them. Today we are able to seek answers to questions that we were unable to tackle previously; we can test hypotheses that require large amounts of computing power; and, we can revisit theories that were long considered settled science.
This course introduces students to some of these advances in quantitative text analysis methods used to systematically extract information from large amounts of texts. It starts with a very brief overview of traditional approaches to analyzing texts, such as manually-coded content analysis, before moving on to computational methods that treat text as data. Students learn different automated forms of text acquisition (e.g. web scraping, API...) and pre-processing techniques (e.g., tokenization, stemming, lemmatization); dictionary-based approaches, such as sentiment analysis, as well as scaling of political texts and supervised text classifiers. The course combines lectures with hands-on labs that allow students to practice and apply newly acquired skills on a daily basis.
If you are interested in taking this course, registrations for the 2021 online edition are open here. Below are some sample video lectures and labs.
Globalization is one of those words that can mean very different things to different people. To some, it describes multiple ongoing processes that have led to a shortening of time and space. To others, it is simply the cause of many of today’s societal ills. For years, mass communication scholars have been trying to make sense of these multiple competing discourses. They have also explored the role of the media in bringing about some of the political, economic, and social transformations that are often associated with the processes of globalization. The disruptive force of globalization processes has led to multiple waves of social and political resistance, from the anti-globalization movement in the 1990s to the rise of ‘nativist populism’ in the 2010s. As different as these forms of resistance are from each other, one thing that binds them together is the significant role of the media in their formation, popularization and, in some case, demise.
This course teaches students how to use text, still and moving images, sound and other visual elements to tell compelling news stories online. The main goal is to learn how different media can be combined to narrate stories more effectively. In order to acquire these skills, this course mirrors as much as possible the processes and dynamics of real news organizations and/or production companies. Students work in teams to conceptualize, produce and deliver high quality, engaging and ethical multimedia stories. They face tight deadlines, theu have to teach themselves new skills, and they need to face the praise and criticism of your peers and audience.
TThis course provides students the opportunity to participate in a journalistic & media production project overseas. Students will be assigned roles mimicking the division of labor in a ‘real-word’ media production. During the course students will learn how to perform the tasks associated with their roles, interact with other members of the group, and deliver a professional outcome, such as a multimedia story, an interactive website or a documentary. Moreover, students will gain experience in working in a foreign country, thus developing their intercultural communication skills and increasing their global awareness.
In the Winter’19 edition of this course, students travelled to Kenya (Nairobi, Amboseli and Mombasa) to film a documentary about the transformations and disruptions brought about by digital media. Students were involved in the pre-production and production stages, from developing an idea to writing a script, researching the topic, locating subjects, scouting locations, and acquiring footage on location. Upon their return to Houston, students had the opportunity to get involved in the post-production stage (e.g. editing, color correction, audio mixing…).
The graduate seminar traces the evolution of international (or global) communication since the mid-twentieth century and presents a selection of significant contemporary phenomena. As a field of study, international (or global) communication is interested in how political, economic, cultural, social and technological developments impact and are impacted by mediated communication exchanges that transcend the nation state. To account for this, this course will offer students a multidisciplinary overview that will have its geographic center in the Global South and will be structured around four core themes: (1) the evolving structure of the global media landscape; (2) the competing voices in the production and distribution of news; (3) the international flows of entertainment and mass mediated popular culture; and, (4) the transformative potential of digital technologies.
This course is an introduction to producing professional digital video content for the mass media (advertising, documentaries, news reporting and current affairs, digital media and public relations). As an introductory course, and through extended hands-on training, the course sets the foundations of video production that students will need in other courses. This course covers the three stages in video production (pre-production, production and postproduction), it provides skills to record and edit audio and video, and presents some storytelling formats for different media (short stories, documentaries, news reports, commercials, public service announcements...). This course not only provides an overview of different methods and techniques, but it also provides resources that will help students to independently learn more about those aspects of video production that are interesting to them.
Can companies prepare for unforeseen crises? What are the most effective strategies to manage a crisis? What can be done to turn crises into opportunities? How can social media be of use when communicating crises? These are some of the questions that this course tries to answer. It also trains students to be comfortable designing and implementing a crisis communication plan, and analysing and learning from previous crises. This course takes a two-step approach to the study of communicating and managing crises. First, it familiarises students with some of the most often used theories and models in the field. Theory-driven management helps minimize the costs during a crisis and it contributes to maximizing the opportunities for growth after it is resolved. Second, those theories are applied in the analysis of real cases of organisations and institutions hit by a crisis, some of which were successful and some of which were not. The focus of this course is on crisis communication and management in Greater China. Special attention has been paid in choosing recent examples that help understand the impact that new media, particularly social networks, have on the way crises are managed.
Societies of East Asia (taught in Catalan) draws on sociology, as well as social and cultural anthropology, to critically examine issues such as kinship (family, marriage gender, fertility, LGBTQI...), inequalities (work, education, rural-urban life, ethnic minorities), beliefs (religion, folklore, festivities) and the mass media in contemporary China. The main goal of this course is not to review every single topic, concept and issue regarding Chinese society, but rather to understand the complexities of today's China and acquire the tools to be able to independently study issues not covered in class. We are dealing with an object of study that is in permanent transformation. This is why a lot of attention will be put into developing a set of skills (theoretical, methodological and practical) that will enable students to critically evaluate social phenomena in China, be they current, past or future. To achieve this, this course uses a combination of lectures, in-class discussions and practical work.
This course (taught in Catalan) offers a theoretical overview of politics in China from a historical perspective. Students will get acquainted with the political processes, the political institutions and structures of governance, and the main schools of political thought in China since 1978. By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with the main political actors in contemporary China, will be able to identify the key events in the evolution of China's political system since 1949 and will be able to discuss the role of the different political organs. This class places particular emphasis on practice. In-class and take-home exercises will be given so that students can become familiar with primary sources relevant to the study of Chinese politics. As the saying goes: 师父领进门，修行靠个人.
During most of the late 1990s and early 2000s, close to 500 new volumes of Japanese comic books, or manga, were published in Spain each year. Some had circulations of over 40.000 copies/volume. On TV, in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, the majority of cartoons that are popular among children come from Japan. Manga and anime (or Japanese animation) are just two examples of how Japanese audiovisual culture has penetrated European markets since the mid 1970s. This course offers an introduction to this phenomenon, the global circulation of Japanese popular culture. It provides a historical overview of manga, anime and other cultural expressions, such as television drama (j-drama), horror films (j-horror) and music (j-pop). The underlying goal of the course is to introduce students to contemporary Japan through its popular culture. Being an online course, emphasis will be made on skills applicable to the broader discipline of the digital humanities.
This online course, suitable for both people who have no previous knowledge about China and people somewhat familiar with China, offers a critical overview of ten issues in contemporary China. It is increasingly accepted that China is to become one of , if not the, the most powerful nations in the world, however, the country remains unknown to most people outside China. In this course, we address such diverse topics such as the economy, politics, the mass media or the environment. In video lectures and resource-rich notes that draw from a variety of sources, instructors provide answers that escape the predominant narratives on contemporary China and highlight its complexities.
China, Japan and South Korea are heavy news and entertainment consumers, well ahead to most countries in the world. Japan has, for example, some of the largest newspaper circulation numbers in the world, while in China, the most watched TV shows surpass the 400 million viewers. In such mediated environments, what is the relationship between the media and society. In Europe and North America, the mass media are very often called the 'Fourth State.' Is this view also applicable to the mass media in East Asian countries? To what extent the way news are made in the region is comparable to journalistic practices in the 'West'? This course provides answers to these and other questions related to the mass media (newspapers, TV and new media) in East Asia. Lectures are grouped around three major themes: the interplay between politics and the mass media; the role of television entertainment in society; and, the impact of new technologies in the production and consumption of news and entertainment.
Other teaching experience
- GE225: Food and Fashion in Hong Kong
- COM4307: Television News Production and Anchoring
- Territori i població a la Xina i al Japó [People and the land in China and Japan]
- Geografia física i humana de l'Àsia Oriental [Physical and human geography of East Asia]
- 17027: Japonès I: introducció a la llengua i l'escriptura japoneses [Japanese I: introduction to Japanese language and writing]