MDST 2000

I really don't recommend taking this course with Prof Siva unless you actually need to take it to pursue a Media Studies major or something like that. This was Prof Siva's first semester teaching this course, so maybe in future semesters this class will get better and he will actually bother organizing the class and administering it well but until then DO NOT take this course with Siva Vaidhyanathan.

My largest complaint throughout my time in this class was the tests. The course was honestly really easy for everything OTHER than the tests. First, Professor Siva would often be late by multiple weeks in releasing the tests because it took him too long to write the questions for the test, which would result in taking tests nearly a month after the schedule originally listed them and more importantly taking test on content we hadn't covered in over a month. Our last 2 tests were taken within a week of each other (the week being the last week of classes btw) because he had to get 4 tests out as per his grading policy and had only finished 2 the entire rest of the semester. The actual content of the tests themselves were kind of ridiculous. I took incredibly extensive notes throughout this course, and yet the (few) questions about content from class often lacked the depth of thought he put into the lectures and if you actually approached these questions with the depth of thought and nuance that Prof Siva would say to do in lecture, then you would more often than not just get the question wrong. He based the tests almost entirely off the textbooks, which was nice since they were open note/open book, but also makes you question why it took him so long to write the tests if more than 70% of it was copy pasted from the textbook. He often had unfair or plain wrong questions on tests, many of which never got resolved despite numerous complaints to TAs about these questions.

Another complaint is his email/contact policy. He was really weird about not wanting students to directly contact him about the course itself, but said he was interested in talking with students otherwise. Not necessarily a large problem (outside of exam complaints, which would be mostly launched via discussion sections), but it's kinda your job to teach this course to students so it's just a bit weird to want as little to do with the course outside of lectures and tests.

Finally, the way he structured his classes was just really messy and bad. His lectures often felt unstructured and sometimes felt like they had been put together the morning of the presentation. He would trail off or ramble and frequently would forget to bring up or talk about points on the actual slides he prepared, which was annoying but not a big deal because almost none of the test contents were about the lecture. About halfway through the semester we switched to vaguely hybrid style learning, which was just a weird and kind of sudden/random shift to take halfway through the semester. I would definitely have preferred a more structured experience, like if he had had a long term plan for the semester from the beginning or close to the beginning. He changed his grading policy once after the first test, and would frequently apologize about the weight of the tests in comparison to timed writings during discussion sections because tests weren't a good measure of understanding of the course, but he did nothing to reflect that in the grading policy that he clearly had control of.

Reiterating that I don't recommend this class with Vaidhyanathan unless you absolutely need to take it for your major. It's unfortunate that this experience wasn't the best for most people that I know who took this course, because it's clear that Prof Siva really does care a lot about the subject he's teaching and he even got pretty emotional on LDOC, but at the moment the way he runs this course is so bad that his passion is easily disregarded in the face of a bad course. I actually thought a lot of the content we were learning about was interesting, I just couldn't stand how he executed his teaching. I hope in the future he can clean this up and actually have a good intro course for a great subject.

TLDR; Don't take unless absolutely necessary. Tests were bad (in many ways), unorganized schedule and lectures, pretty annoying experience overall.

(I also don't know how important having a good TA is for the discussion section portion of the course, but I really loved mine and got full discussion section points with pretty little effort. Don't know if that's true of other TAs though)

DONT TAKE THIS CLASS!!!! Overall, I believe this course was poorly organised and designed. As an introductory course, I came in expecting to gain a deeper understanding to what the study of media study entails as well and the scope of the subject. However, the professor's lectures were very unengaging, repetitive and did not have much substance and relevance at most times.

Moreover, the tests were poorly designed and given. At first, we had a 10 question multiple choice exam that was worth 10% of our entire class grade, I believe this does not adequately offer students the opportunity to showcase their knowledge in the subject, particularly because it was only 10 questions long. Additionally, professor Siva expressed time and time again that multiple choice questions are not the best way to test students in this subject as many topics are subjective and nuanced and therefore cannot be reduced to "right" or "wrong" answers. The professor's organisation was also very poor as we were supposed to have 4 exams across the semester however up until the last week of class, we had only completed 2. He consistently posts the exams late and also does not offer adequate ways for students to communicate with him because he does not want students to send him emails.

Tl;dr a manageable/easy class depending on background knowledge, take if you need the credit and have an interest in media studies

Disclaimer: Some of this information may be outdated since I took it fully in person instead of the hybrid format he said he would use in Fall 2024.

I took this course to complete the BACS integration elective and social/economic systems gen-ed requirements. The courseload was easy in terms of size, as it just consisted of taking notes in lectures and a weekly sometimes-skimmable reading (~20 pages usually). The exams were all multiple-choice and open-book/open-note, and while some questions felt obtuse, you could easily grasp the professor's writing style as the semester went on. I imagine that he will get better at writing questions in future renditions of the class. The in-discussion writing assignments were also easy as long as you did the reading.

Professor Vaidhyanathan himself was enjoyable to be around. He does have some quirks during topics that he isn't as familiar with since this is a survey class, but if you can get past that, the lectures are quite enjoyable. He also often brings in guest lecturers from the UVA Media Studies department, which were the most enjoyable parts of the class for me.

#tCFS24