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ANNOUNCEMENT: The Senior Comphrehensive Exam for Media Studies Seniors will be held from 9:00 A.M.-12:00 P.M. on Friday, 22 January 2010 (location to be determined). Plan to arrive early; students must be in place on time. Students who fail the Comprehensive Exam requirement in January 2010 will be required to retake and pass the exam in April or defer graduation. For details on passing standards, go here. Only students who first take the exam in January are eligible for the April re-take, should that be necessary (i.e., first attempts are not permitted at the re-take). Students required to retake the exam must retake only the section(s) failed on the first attempt. Please note: If you are a student entitled to testing accommodations because of a documented disability, it is your responsibility to make an explicit, individual request for those accommodations by contacting the department chair at least three full weeks before the Comprehensive Exam. Consult with the Office of Disability Support Services for further information. |
Information about the 2009-10 Senior Assessment requirement for Media Studies majors.
All students in the School of Arts & Sciences fulfill a Senior Assessment requirement that is unique to their major field of study.
For all Media Studies majors, the Senior Assessment involves (1) Completion of MDIA 499 with a grade of C- or better; and (2) Completion of the Media Studies comprehensive exam with a grade of "Pass" or "High Pass."
(1) MDIA 499 is the Senior Seminar, which must be taken in the Fall of a student's senior year. The Senior Seminar requires each student to design her or his own research question and produce a paper (approx. 15 pp. plus bibliography, as described and approved by your instructor), while engaged in the intellectual exchange of an advanced seminar on a specific topic in Media Studies.
(2) The Media Studies Comprehensive exam will be given on Friday, January 22, 2010 from 9:00am-12:00pm. You will be excused from classes for the morning of the test. The exam will consist of three parts designed and graded by a faculty panel. To learn about the standards by which comprehensive exams are graded go here. The parts are as follows:
Part I. Essay.
You will be asked to write an essay on a media text that is shown to you at the exam. The question will be distributed, and you will be shown a brief film, video, or TV clip to analyze in answer to that question. Click here to view a sample question.
Part II. Terminology and concepts.
You will be tested on your knowledge of the critical terminology and concepts used in the field of Media Studies. Click here to view a list of terms. The list is drawn from core media studies courses. If a word on the list is not familiar to you, consult the suggested resources at the bottom of the list. Be prepared to define any term and apply it to an example. For terms that may have also have a commonplace meaning, be sure to define it as it is used in media studies.
Part III. Essay.You will be asked two write an essay on a critical text that you study on your own. The book for the 2009-2010 exam is Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games, by Ian Bogost (MIT Press, 2009). You may discuss the text with your peers before the exam, and you may bring your copy with you on the day of the exam. Underlining and marginal notes in your copy are allowed; post-its and loose pages of notes are not. You will be asked a question designed to test your ability to assimilate this new scholarly work into your knowledge of media studies.
Students who do not satisfy the Senior Seminar requirement during Fall 2008 must retake the course during Fall 2009. Senior seminar is never offered during Spring semester. Students who do not pass the Comprehensive Exam requirement in January 2009 will be required to retake and pass the exam in April or defer graduation.