Ethical, Accessible Alternatives to Assigning New Media from Streaming Sites Requiring Payment8/22/2019 I am a cord cutter. My wife is a cord cutter. We are a cordless household.
We aren’t the only ones, and haven’t been for quite some time. Frankly, another decade of the cord-cutting phenomenon approaches. But, what have been the implications of cord-cutting on our pedagogy, on the way we construct our courses, and in the texts we choose to teach. I think it is important to pause here and note that this blog post concerns student access to pay-sites for streaming media, and does not broach what these companies do with user data once they have it. This is a tangential ethical issue that deserves further exploration, for sure. The list of films and television shows I have used in the courses I have taught range widely, and the classes in which I have used texts from these mediums is many. It doesn’t matter if I am teaching a freshman composition sequence, or a 200-level literature sequence, or a course focused on business writing, I enjoy adding a clip here or a film there. But, what about when you want to assign an entire film that is only available on one of the major streaming platforms like Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix? This is an ethical quandary with many different perspectives, sure. Sites like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu require payment for users to access their archives of new media, so is it ethical to require students to view, talk about, and write about texts they have to pay to access? There is a ton of work done on this topic, but, in a short answer: no. It is not ethical, and it is not fair. Often times I make the assumption that everyone has a Netflix account. The truth is, though, not everyone has a Netflix account. What is even more absurd—personally—is that I don’t even have a Netflix account! I borrow from a friend. I still think it is important to work new media into the curriculum. So, how do we do that ethically? Last year I taught English 145: Writing in the Academic Disciplines. This is a writing program elective with a variety of majors; I’ve taught it a few times and I like the class because the students have the opportunity to explore writing and research in their own fields and disciplines, which means they get to personalize the course. In my spring section, I used my SurveyMonkey account to set up a pole to let students choose as a class the documentary film they wanted to watch. I only chose films available through the streaming service Kanopy because all students at my institution have access to that platform through the university library. By assigning films available through Kanopy, I worked around the ethical issues concerning access that come with assigning films from mainstream streaming services. Moreover, allowing the students to choose the film we watched as a class was a good exercise in community building, and helped give the class a distinct personality. Ultimately, they chose “Normal Is Over,” a 2016 film focusing on the existential implications climate change. “Normal is Over” is a good film—an important film—but it was long. So, since our class met twice a week, I cancelled Tuesday to let the students have time to watch the film and then we discussed the film on Thursday. Before you choose to assign a new media text only available on Netflix, consider the alternatives to assigning films and television shows only available on streaming sites that require payment for access. Avoid Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix. There are work-around to this issue, sure. I have found using Kanopy to be quite successful, and the best part is that I have access to Kanopy, too, so I have this entire media archive to explore! Ok, I will include a list of movies and television shows I have taught as I begin my 8thyear teaching in higher education. Profiled: The Mothers of Murdered Black and Latino Youth Fences The Office The Shining Do the Right Thing A Streetcar Named Desire Good Will Hunting 12 Years a Slave Rent Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Psycho Normal Is Over 2001: A Space Odyssey Seinfeld
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Charles WoodsPhD student focusing on Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication at Illinois State University. Archives
October 2019
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