Thursdays

11:30 am – 1:00 pm

Berkshire Community College

1350 West Street

Pittsfield, MA

9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21 & 10/28

Six Sessions 

This course is offered in-person at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, MA. Please note that all in-person course attendees must affirm that they have been fully vaccinated when registering and must wear masks in class at this time. Thank you for your understanding.

This course is designed to encourage conversations with members of OLLI about the role of communicative technologies (e.g., social media, the Internet, artificial intelligence) in their everyday lives. The main approach of this course is community-focused, interactive, and conversational rather than an instructor-led, lecturing style. Through a series of 6 sessions, the course enrollees and the instructor will collectively discuss: 1) the evolution of communicative technologies, 2) the fundamental impact of communicative technologies on how we perceive, think, feel, and interact with each other and the outside world, 3) the role of users in shaping the media landscape, and, in particular, the enrollees’ fear and expectations of interacting with these technologies, and 4) building self-efficacy of the enrollees’ in efficiently and effectively living with communicative technologies.

Limited Registration: 20

Fan Yang holds a Ph. D in Mass Communication with a minor in Statistics from Pennsylvania State University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at SUNY Albany.  Her research interests include psychology of communication technology, strategic communication, and advanced research methods. She is interested in examining effects of new media on decision-making, with a special focus on information processing and attitude change. 

Her research papers won several awards from professional associations such as the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), and Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC). Her scholarly work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, including American Behavioral Scientist, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Communication Quarterly, Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Public Relations Review, and Social Media & Society.

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