Sometimes Umass makes questionable decisions. These decisions cause one to wonder if anyone really thought deeply on the resulting impacts, or if we as a university are being used as a big guess and check problem solving testing area. Decisions such as was assigning Orange is the New Black for the common read then not inviting the author to do a talk since they felt a prior convict was not a good role model for the students of Umass. Or, deciding to preach sustainability while contributing vast amounts to food waste in order to beat a Guinness world record. I honestly feel Umass’s decision to partner up with Amazon is another questionable decisions.

I have a few questions. Does UMass honestly believe the deal will result in less costs to the students? Are they really just profiting from this deal and hoping the students don’t catch on? Did they put any thought or research into how this deal would actually affect the students and the community?

I honestly don’t know which I would prefer, if UMass didn’t think about all these things or if they did and decided the deal would be more profitable for them in the end.

Since this is a subject that particularly bothers me, I did a small survey of students and their textbook expenses and usages as well as a separate one for faculty on how they make their textbooks available to students.

The links to each survey can be found at the bottom.

From these surveys I was able to see that students pay huge amounts of money for their textbooks but rarely use them.

In the readings and from the podcast that my peers made for their final project it is clear that the Amazon deal will not be helping students cut down on their costs. However teachers do not need to limit themselves to what Amazon intends to limit them to. I was in a number of classes this year in particular including Race, Gender & New Media that bypassed this system to allow their students more accessible reading or listening material. Between making the readings articles online, taking advantage of free online textbooks, and putting textbooks on reserve for students to use teachers can really cut down on costs for students. It also helps to increase how often the readings will get done. If for say you can’t afford to buy the textbook, you will not be able to do the readings. However if the material is readily available online for free, there is no financial barriers preventing you. Teachers need not bow to the Amazon deal, there are still other options that will promote learning without breaking student’s banks. Hopefully Umass will see that this deal with Amazon is unhealthy and decide instead to put their money towards promoting more efficient reading material models.

Faculty

http://goo.gl/forms/ClBZU4tfet
Student

http://goo.gl/forms/YJL14Zws5Y

Our discussion of cyber-bullying really shocked me. To begin with when I was doing the readings before class, the links were under the section titled twitch and gaming. I opened the intro to Citron and was completely shocked by the content. I was expecting an article on how twitch changed the world of gaming and instead jumped into a world of sadism and hurt.

Once I got over the initial shock of what I was tasked with reading, I was shocked by at how graphically the author chose to portray the effects of cyber-bullying in the intro of her book. I understand that this catches the attention but it seemed very aggressive to me. This is probably exactly what she was going for since the content of the book is aggressive and deserves attention. Honestly, since I was just so unprepared for the content it may have just thrown me that much off guard. Once past the initial shock I must say that the medium was very successful with relating the message. As a text it sucks you in, the twisted nature of the subject and the author’s gifted writing makes it hard to look away. You feel the need to keep reading just to find out what happened to these people, to find out what we can do to help stand up to their trolls and to ultimately never let this happen to anyone else.

The other link brought me to a podcast from “This American Life”. In class we discussed how the medium in which this topic is presented could help or hurt the message. I really believe the medium of a podcast helped the message. The subject material is so personal, it’s the story of how this woman confronted her troll. It brings you into the mind of the troll when she calls him up and speaks with him directly. I personally listened to the podcast in my apartment while doing housework. It almost felt as though the presenter was sitting at my kitchen table telling me this story of her experiences as I was washing the dishes. I really feel this was presently best in the form of a podcast. Hearing the emotion in her voice when she talked about her father and while she confront her troll is something that could not be captured through text.

I do feel each of these mediums was effective in getting their message through. I personally preferred the podcast for the intimacy but the book did a good job bringing out the aggressiveness of cyber-bullying.