The 2012 presidential election is well underway and students at colleges and universities across America are paying close attention. Everyone knows how much of an impact college students had on the 2008 campaign, particularly their enthusiastic support of Barack Obama and his quest to make history as a groundbreaking candidate promising hope and renewal for the country. It is and was no different at Marquette University.

This semester, I'm proudly co-teaching a seminar course with my Diederich College of Communication colleague, James Scotton, that focuses on how the media report on political campaigns and local, state and national elections. Among the course objectives are gathering and curating social media to tell and present stories about campaigns and elections; developing a journalist's blog that offers fair and accurate commentary about media coverage, and analyzing how candidates use the media – and money – to shape their campaign messages.

The course textbook is "The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election." Published in 2010 by Oxford University Press, the book is authored by three scholars – Kate Kenski, Bruce Hardy, and Kathleen Jamieson – and addresses why Obama's election will go down as among the most pivotal in U.S. presidential history. As this is primarily a writing course, each student will write a weekly analysis of a book chapter and attempt to apply its findings and concepts to the national campaign underway four years later.

Each of the 12 students this semester will also offer a 10-minute presentation about a hot-button election issue; the choices were abortion, civil rights, civil unions, criminal justice, the economy, education, the environment, family values, foreign affairs, health care, homeland security and immigration. They will also each present their findings about an assigned contested congressional, gubernatorial or mayoral campaign; live tweet from a couple of political events on campus, and blog at least once weekly about political coverage from an assigned news media website.

Here's hoping the Republican presidential nomination isn't decided any time soon, as we'll have much deeper and more relevant discussion if Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich continue to pummel one another with their political ads and the media get to demonstrate their strengths and weaknesses in the heat of battle. I'm slated to teach the course again in the fall, when the GOP nominee tries to keep Obama from being re-elected. Looking forward to it.

This is my third semester teaching Digital Journalism II in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University and so I hope to build on the success of my previous class in the fall. The course objectives remain the same: producing and promoting digital news stories using text, images and audio; understanding key industry trends, technologies and multimedia reporting techniques; working solo and or in teams to produce stories and packages for the Web, and using social media to build a following and "brand" as a digital journalist.

Once again, the course textbook is the second edition of "Aim For The Heart: Write, Shoot, Report and Produce for TV and Multimedia." Published in 2011 by CQ Press, the book by Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute is great for students because it stresses, among other things, finding memorable characters, writing inviting leads, using active verbs and objective adjectives, learning to listen during interviews and why pictures are so powerful.

Each of the 10 students this semester will pursue a Digital Journalism Basics certificate from Poynter's News University, write a weekly blog post related to their assigned news media website; produce a Storify from each of four events on campus they will live tweet; produce two multimedia packages called "One at Marquette" and based on The New York Times' extraordinary "One in 8 Million" collection; and, with a partner, produce a multimedia package about a local nonprofit organization and assigned by the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

The students will share and promote their coursework on their respective digital portfolios created via Weebly.com. Those portfolios can be accessed collectively from the same webpage here. Check their progress often.

In November, I reported that my Digital Journalism II (JOUR 1550) students had been assigned to produce two multimedia reports for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (MNNS). With yesterday's unveiling of a report by Kyle Doubrava and Eric Oliver about a veteran preschool teacher at Neighborhood House of Milwaukee (see below), the news service has published nine of 18 reports the class produced in the fall. The remaining pieces will be made available for the public on the new organization's website in the coming weeks.

This was the first time Sharon McGowan, the news service's editor-in-chief, and I teamed to enable my students to practice digital journalism in neighborhoods near Marquette's campus. It was definitely a learning experience for all involved and McGowan and I aim to collaborate again with my spring JOUR 1550 class.

In an email expressing her appreciation, McGowan said the students impressed her as motivated to do their best work. (Disclosure: their final grade was tied to being published.) "Your class has provided valuable content on some of the many organizations and people in Milwaukee’s central city who work every day to make a difference in their communities," she wrote. "I was also grateful for the opportunity to participate in the class critiques of the audio slideshows, since it allowed me to hear your students’ thoughtful comments on each others’ work. I learned a lot."

The most significant thing McGowan and I learned this time, especially related to my end: have the students' companion print stories submitted sooner to allow more time for editing and additional reporting. She also wants only one print story; this time, it would longer (650 words), multi-sourced and packaged with separate, single-sourced audio slideshows about both a provider and beneficiary from the assigned community group. We also will insist students move onto Plan B if an organization, for whatever reason, fails to provide timely access.

Here are the other JOUR 1550 reports the news service has published: Our Next Generation (Sarah Butler and Tessa Fox), Art Works for Milwaukee (Andrea Anderson and Rebecca French), COA Youth and Family Centers (Elizabeth McGovern and Benjamin Sheehan), Select Milwaukee (Erin Caughey and Heather Ronaldson), Habitat for Humanity (Sarah Hauer), Centro Legal (Kathleen Doherty and Allison Kruschke), Next Door (Alec Brooks and Ryan Ellerbusch) and Urban Ecology Center (Benjamin Stanley).