Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas

Short Courses of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas

Knight Center Concludes Spanish-Language Course: Mathematics and Electoral CoverageKnight Center Concludes Spanish-Language Course: Mathematics and Electoral Coverage

To prepare journalists to cover presidential elections scheduled for eight Latin American countries this year, and regional and state elections in several other nations, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas is organizing several online courses that focus on electoral coverage.

Instructor Sandra Crucianelli, a prize-winning Argentine reporter, just concluded the latest course "Mathematics and Electoral Coverage" in Spanish. The class was conducted entirely online.

The Knight Center has offered Crucianelli's popular “Mathematics for Journalists“ course five times in the past. The latest course was geared specifically toward reporters and editors who are covering elections this year. It was designed to help journalists improve their proficiency with numbers and statistics, and to prepare them to better understand the use of opinion polls and electoral results.

“Latin American reporters have shown extraordinary interest in the Mathematics for Journalists course, which teaches them to be more accurate and to report and write with more precision,“ says Rosental Calmon Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

“Students have given very strong evaluations for Sandra Crucianelli‘s courses. Even during the class, journalists say they put into practice the lessons they learn. This year, with elections scheduled for many countries in the hemisphere, the course was even more important and practical.“

Crucianelli‘s course integrated election-related exercises into its six main topics:

*Basic math operations
*Obtaining data
*Measures of central tendency
*Measures of proportion
*Interpolation of external data
*Infographics

The class included online video and text lectures, and no books were required. Students participated in discussions and performed all assignments, quizzes, and exams online. Participants who completed the course received a certificate from the Knight Center.

Students selected their own hours for working on the course and spent, at a minimum, four hours per week on course lectures and assignments.

The Knight Center has offered courses online in Spanish, Portuguese, and English since 2003 and has committed to expanding the scope and reach of its courses in 2006.

“Distance learning is an effective, economical, innovative way to train journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean,“ says Dean Graber, the Knight Center's program manager.

“These courses allow the Knight Center to reach journalists who are unable to attend our training workshops on the ground. We also want to help our partner organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean to develop expertise in offering distance learning to journalists in their countries.

Other members of the Knight Center's distance learning team who assisted with Mathematics and Electoral Coverage are Amy Schmitz Weiss, a doctoral student at the University of Texas School of Journalism; Paul Alonso, a Peruvian cultural journalist studying at UT's Institute of Latin American Studies; and John Lerma, developer of the Knight Center website.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas was created by Professor Rosental Calmon Alves at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism in August 2002 thanks to a generous donation from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Its main objective is to train journalists in the hemisphere and help them to develop self-sustaining training programs that will raise the ethical and professional levels of journalism in the Americas.

For more information about the Knight Center, contact Dean Graber, program manager, deangraber@mail.utexas.edu.

Added Jun 27, 14:02, 2006