As having only run once (semester 2 2017), this course was quite disorganised and vague. I was going to give it 3 stars, but I think the subject matter and the course's potential are worth 4. David Musgrave is knowledgeable and friendly, but he needs to work on his organisation - in class examinations were confusing and rushed (he expected us to get through 3 pages of editing in 10 minutes because he said he could do it in 5! In reality it took us close to 30 minutes). The structure of the classes was confusing - the first hour was held in a classroom and the second half was in a computer lab down a level and at the other end of a hallway. It took away 10-15mins from class time just getting from one to the other. Computer labs usually have a set up where the lecturer can speak into a mic and demonstrate what they're doing on a large screen - however David would not use the mic, so people couldn't hear him, and he wouldn't use the screen. He would simply tell us what to do - which meant people were constantly falling behind or doing things wrong, and then he'd have to go around individually to fix problems. So by the end of the hour, we'd have opened a document and maybe added page numbers and a border and that was it. He did not supply many resources through Blackboard - no step by step instructions of how to open an InDesign file or how to calculate margins, no weekly notes of what he covered. If you missed class, you missed out. Online how-to videos for InDesign were often more useful. For an essay, because a few people couldn't submit it by the due date, he extended the due date by a month, making it clash with the due date of the final assignment, an editorial portfolio. The portfolio itself was confusing - he didn't tell us until about 2 weeks before it was due that we only had to edit one text, but that we needed to save a copy edit, a raw InDesign file and a PDF InDesign file, as well as a rationale (which could only be 6 sentences long!) that had to be written in a pop-up raw text file box. However, David was aware of how experimental this course was so he was lenient with his marking. What you learn in this course, the theory mixed with practical hands-on work, is what makes this course great. It has a lot of potential, so I hope it improves and continues to run.

Anonymous, Semester 2, 2017