Marcel Verhoeven, Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ):

The University of Zurich, as well as the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ), propagate and promote the utilization of research-based teaching and learning (abbr. RBTL). RBTL is in the project at hand deployed in a one-semester BA seminar in communication science. The seminar is aligned with one of three focal points of study at the IKMZ and investigates media processes, communicators and contents. The RBTL seminar investigates the development, production and distribution of TV series. A variety of sub-topics were introduced to evoke scientifically valuable research projects by students. Open to investigation are: business models and TV series landscape developments; influences on TV series’ content; processes and decision making in development and production; content of TV series, messages in TV series; success factors of TV series; societally relevant messages as success factor; mediation of messages and audience effects. The seminar consist of five phases: the first phase (one session) provides the introduction to the topic and the deployment of RBTL. The four following sessions consist of teacher’s input on theories, models, and ideas for research projects. The next four sessions consist of student presentations on their own topic, questions, literature, research design, method, and nature of the data the students want to investigate. The students can deploy science slam, have to ‘pitch’ their project and reflect on their initial experiences. The last four sessions consist of student presentations on the status of their research project: deployed method and operationalization of variables, data collection, first findings, and reflection of the research project. The milestones of the students’ research projects are a written project proposal (reviewed by teacher), two presentations and a final report of 12-15 pages. The final assessment of the students’ performance is composed of the weighted average of the marks for the presentations (25% of the final mark), the final report (50%), participation (5%), and the processing of mandatory texts (20%).

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