Course Content and Outcomes Guides (CCOG)

CCOG for PHL 197 Winter 2025


Course Number:
PHL 197
Course Title:
Manufacturing Reality: Critical Thinking and the Media
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
40
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Addresses the growing impact of electronic media on our perceptions of truth and reality. Emphasizes skills to critically deconstruct and analyze the embedded values, messages, and techniques of electronic media as a basis for empowering students to formulate meaningful responses. Prerequisites: WR 115, RD 115 and MTH 20 or equivalent placement test scores. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Students completing this course should be able to:

  • Articulate key philosophical arguments in the fields of epistemology and media ethics.
  • Identify the influence of culturally based perspectives, values and beliefs to examine how diverse philosophical perspectives affect human experience through media technology.
  • Construct arguments on personal and social issues using critical reasoning to identify and investigate philosophical theses and evaluate information and its sources.
  • Respond to arguments on personal and social issues using critical reasoning to identify and investigate philosophical theses and evaluate information and its sources.

Integrative Learning

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.

General education philosophy statement

Philosophy courses ask students to use critical thinking and reasoning skills in multiple ways: to identify the content, structure, and influence of beliefs, to examine how diverse philosophical perspectives affect human experience, and to construct and respond to arguments on a variety of philosophical issues. They encourage students to both create and understand theirs and others’ frameworks of meaning, and to use this new understanding in their own lived experience.

Course Activities and Design

The course will be conducted in both the standard classroom and distance learning settings.  It will involve lectures, discussions, and other assignments such as exams and papers.
 

Outcome Assessment Strategies

Assessment strategies will include some of the following:

·       Essays in the form of in-class exams, short papers, or term papers.

·       Student presentations.

·       Class and small group discussions.

·       Portfolios.

·       Service learning projects.

·       Attendance.

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Course Content

Themes, concepts, Issues: The course will focus on the following topics and issues:

·       Awareness of audio and video technique.

·       "Reading" television programming and other forms of media messages (i. e., Media Literacy).

·       Television programming (including TV News) and other media presentations as constructed interpretations of reality.

·       Values implications of television programming and other media content.

·       Aesthetic issues pertaining to TV programming and other media content.

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Competencies and Skills: Students will learn to:

·       Analyze, discuss, and write about TV programming and other forms of media content.

·       Think critically about TV programming and other media content.

·       Identify and evaluate values content of TV programming and of other media content.

·       Make informed judgments about the aesthetics of TV programs and other media forms.