I provide "Enhanced Learning" opportunities for students: optional work that introduces a new case study for analysis or asks students to do more reading. This allows students to check their learning by working to solve a new problem, and it is an opportunity for curious students to learn more than the basic content available in the class.

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For example, in the class before this Enhanced Learning is posted, I talk about how media, culture, and society interact using the example of New York City's war on graffiti and graffiti artists in the '70s and '80s. This is an example of the ways that society (NYC) and culture (graffiti art/artists) influence each other. Graffiti artists start painting on subway trains and, eventually, the city begins to take actions to deter them - society responds to culture. Graf artists find ways to circumvent these measures - culture responds to society. 

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​In this example of enhanced learning, students use what they have learned about how media, culture, and society mutually influence each other to analyze a new case study: Chicanx murals in East Los Angeles. Students listen to an NPR story about the ways these murals represented Chicanx culture, how the art was often destroyed, and how muralists in LA worked to get a state law passed, preserving these works. They work to find society/society culture interactions in the story, and then talk about it in a dedicated discussion.