Teaching Journalism & Mass Communication

IntroductionDoctoral education is the cornerstone of academic life. It not only prepares future faculty for a career in scholarship in its respective disciplines, but it generally serves as the training mechanism for those who will teach. "Research is...

IntroductionFrom as early as elementary school age, developing leaders is a common slogan and part of many academic mission statements. Throughout middle school and high school, students are often told they will be tomorrow's problem solvers, decision...

Virtue Education, Echo Chambers, and Public Relations EducationThe rise of uncivil communication and polarizing dialogue via social media is a growing focus for scholars (Bacile et al., 2018; Kim & Hwang, 2018; Su et al., 2018; Theunissen, 2019)....

Textbook for Navigating Today's Journalism Lorrie Lynch, Exploring Journalism and the Media. Cengage, 2013.Teaching modern-day journalism is a difficult task. In the midst of of profound technological and sociological change, the media landscape continues...

Small Campus Depiction is Spot On by Richard Russo, Straight Man. Random House, 2007.An attempted coup against a department chair, male professors running around with their female undergrads, faculty members jockeying to see who will be the next dean,...

IntroductionDepending on the story, reporters either research and write stories on their own or in collaboration with other journalists from their publication or other media outlets (Dailey et. al, 2010). In journalism school, it is common for college...

As part of a five-year National Science Foundation-funded project at the University of New Mexico to recruit, retain and promote women and minority STEM faculty, a group of investigators is working to diversify STEM job candidate pools and prepare faculty...

Students enter the classroom with different levels of experience. Some have never used a particular software application and others are already certified. This makes it challenging to do technical training during class time and keep everyone engaged....

IntroductionIt's a great feeling for an instructor to see students get their first professional bylines on a story or video that has migrated from course assignment to real-world media outlet. But it can be a challenge to meet the standards of either...

Introduction: Journalists look at the futureThe things that journalism does right - or should do right - are proclaimed in textbooks, in news outlets' codes of practice and ethics, in journalism organizations' statements of purpose. Often unexplored,...

IntroductionPublic relations educators and practitioners agree that writing is an essential skill. As Kathleen Lewton said, referring to the 2017 Commission on Public Relations Education report, "There was universal agreement that writing is more important...

IntroductionCurricular models for college journalism programs vary greatly, from small programs with limited faculty support attached to communication programs and departments to independent journalism schools within a university. Debate persists about...

Jeremy Sarachan, editor, "Coding Pedagogy," 2019. Available online http://codingpedagogy.net/index.htmlIf you've never written a line of code or you've dabbled in HTML and CSS or you're adept at Python, the online "Coding Pedagogy" still has something...

Undergraduate students in advertising, public relations, and related mass communication fields can gain important knowledge and hands-on skills in a student-run agency. Student agencies have been in existence for more than forty years; their number is...

The scene was perfect: a warm, Grecian sun, the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean lapping on the beach, the smell of fresh gyros. The only thing missing in that lunch break between sessions at the International Conference on Communication and Mass...

Adult learners, or those over the age of 25, account for 71 percent of all online higher education students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). Additionally, online college courses consist mostly of adult learners (Silva, 2018), who find...

IntroductionTeachers must continually work to develop lessons that are interesting for students, to enhance motivation and active learning (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Patall, Cooper, and Wynn (2010) suggested that students who were given a choice of homework...

Introduction: Preparing For My First Fully Online CourseMedical Advertising was an online topics course that I co-taught at Virginia Commonwealth University where students learned the pros and cons of marketing medical products and services to consumers....

Online education is one of the shaping factors that will determine the future of higher education. In a time where enrollment in on-campus programs has dropped, online or distance education has increased for the fourteenth year in a row (Seaman, Allen,...

As professional journalism begins to fully embrace digital tools, there has been a delayed response in some higher education journalism programs to such a momentous shift in how news is collected, crafted, distributed, and consumed (Dennis et al., 2003)....

Officially I was classified as an expat on the campus of the American University of Nigeria, a 15-year-old private university in Adamawa state, in northeast Nigeria. 'ftiat classification reminded me of the depth of my foreignness-regardless of how perfunctory...

A few jaws dropped, some eyebrows went up and at least one smile turned into a frown. This was the classroom response as I answered a student's question: What was your first job in journalism?Students were taken a bit aback at my tale of working 11 p.m....

The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management identified listening as one of the top priorities for the profession. Subsequently, the largest global study of communication leadership to date found that public relations leaders...

IntroductionWhen undergraduate students from predominantly white, upper-middle class families learn that 25% of the population of their university's community is food insecure they conjure images of homeless people in soup kitchens. In truth, food-vulnerable...

The University of Missouri-Columbia opened the first journalism school in 1908. But the education of sports journalists - specifically sports journalists - did not come until much later. It wasn't until 1996 that Ashland University in Ohio began offering...

IntroductionRestaurant reviews offer journalism and mass communication students a rich opportunity to learn journalist values of fairness, thoroughness, and precision, as well as create and affirm "culinary capital," an extension of Bourdieuian theory...

IntroductionInstagram probably conjures thoughts of overly filtered selfies or copious snapshots of plate after plate of dishes from trendy restaurants. That is exactly how Instagram's more than 600 million members use the social media platform on a...

Evidence of political objectivity among journalists Lars Willnat, David Weaver, and Cleve Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the Digital Age. Peter Lang Publishing, 2018, 443 pages, hardcover, $94.95. 978-1-4331-2828-8This book is indisputably the foremost...

Dilemmas faced by student newspapers Kaylene Dial Armstrong, How Student Journalists Report Campus Unrest. Lexington Books, 2017, 216 pages, hardcover, $95.00. 978-1-4985-4115-2Although student newspapers have evolved in terms of content, design, delivery...

IntroductionThe purpose of this research is to seek an understanding of practices and ideas utilized in incorporating diversity content across undergraduate curricula in journalism and communication teaching, especially in non-diversity courses. Interviews...

IntroductionMultimedia storytelling has transformed news organizations and journalism classrooms in recent years. While this approach is popular, alternative ways of telling and sharing stories with audiences are being explored and adopted. One approach...

The number of online courses and online degrees is exploding across the country. There has been a steady increase over the past 15 years in courses, as well as the number of students enrolled, according to the most recent 2017 Allen & Seaman report....

Setting up the courseCrisis communication teaches students techniques for dealing with sudden and unexpected situations that have a negative impact on organizations and their images to key constituencies. Through the course, students are provided with...

But while there has been increased attention to ethnic and gender diversity in the media in recent years, both in representation and employment, these discussions tend to overlook economic class - taking the neglect of workers' lives and perspectives...

In my second news photography class at Eastern Illinois University (Photojournalism - JOU 3001) I make extensive use of guest speakers. However, my most impactful speaker is an award-winning photographer whom my students will most likely never meet.My...

The videosWe teach an introductory course called Digital Media Skills, which helps prepare journalism students for upper level multimedia courses, and serves as a university technology requirement for other students. We've developed a catalog of video...

Reporting tools frequently change in print and broadcast newsrooms. Students who are preparing to work in this fluctuating environment must be excellent writers and possess multiple technological skillsets (George-Palilonis, 2013; Powers & Incollingo,...

IntroductionThe presidential commencement speech provides an opportunity for the graduates of an institution and their families to hear from the commander-in-chief in person, which is an opportunity not frequently available to average Americans. At the...

At the World Journalism Education Congress 2016, Katherine Reed of Missouri Journalism School presented a metaphor shift that solidified this need into a growing paradigm of practice. She pointed out the flaws in the ubiquitous "teaching hospital" model...

Karen J. Freberg, A Roadmap for Teaching Social Media: All the Assignments, Rubrics and Feedback You'll Need to Present a Strategic Social Media Course! Available for $9.95 via Amazon.A Roadmap for Teaching Social Media is a comprehensive resource for...

IntroductionThe primary role of a journalist in society has long been to get out the truth to the audience, the most pertinent facts of what is happening in the world. Scholars have noted how the additional criteria of objectivity first arose in the...

Dionne, E.J., Ornstein, N., and Mann, T (2017) One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusion, the Desperate, and the Not-yet Deported. St. Martin's Press, New York. https://us.macmillan. com/books/9781250164056One Nation After Trump...

After a long professional journalism career, this author's teaching career began with a broad overview class intended mostly for journalism and mass communication majors, named Media Issues, which was undertaken armed with a copy of John Vivian's The...

Feedback is an important strategy of JMC writing instruction and coaching is one approach for providing feedback. This paper focuses on feedback through the lens of the coaching approach. Coaching has been accepted as a process-oriented feedback strategy...

According to Haeusennann (2013), who studied contracted companies producing branded content, content marketing utilizes "the writing standards of conventional journalistic products" but the "content is designed on behalf of an organization with an aim...

Trust in the media is eroding. Only 22 percent of Americans heavily trust the information they receive from local news organizations (Mitchell, Gottfried, Barthel, & Shearer 2016). The numbers are worse for the national media, with only 18 percent...

IntroductionMillennial learners have grown up in a world drastically different from the faculty who teach their courses (Gerhardt, 2014). The students graduating from universities around the country between 2018-2020 have grown up in a world of connection,...

In 1992, when the Manship School of Journalism at Louisiana State University changed its name to the Manship School of Mass Communication to better reflect its course offerings (LSU, 2013), it was among the first to reject its "journalism" moniker. At...

Finding an interesting and manageable way to incorporate undergraduate research into a one-hour first-year seminar led two professors to Twitter. They wanted an entry-level project that first-year students could use as a foray to larger future undergraduate...

Social media has been a growing influence in colleges and universities throughout the past decade (Amador & Amador, 2014; Junco, 2012; Hung & Yuen, 2010). From exploring social media's use as an educational tool within the classroom (Junco, Heibergert,...

The push to enhance journalism students' computing skills presents a welter of curricular and pedagogical challenges and opportunities. While growing attention and debate has been devoted to the teaching of particular skills such as scripting and programming,...

When I started reporting in the early 1990s, my reporter's toolkit consisted of a reporter's notebook, several ink pens of various colors, two highlighting pens, a point-and-shoot camera and maybe a microcassette recorder. Reporters scribbled notes furiously...

Scholarship of Application, Winter 2017Recent headlines about the Harvard cheating scandal and articles chronicling the rise in cheating culture and increase in academic violations over the past 30 years (McCabe, Treviño, & Butterfield, 2001) have...

Scholarship of Application, Winter 2017In his book Photojournalism: The Professional's Approach, author Kenneth Kobre describes and defines strategies for making great journalistic photographs based on a hierarchy developed by Joe Elbert, the veteran...

Scholarship of Application, Winter 2017OverviewThis media communication activity teaches undergraduates about Eisenstein's montage theory while building basic video composition skills. Students work on a time-based video recording activity that provides...

INTRODUCTIONThe role of diversity in U.S. media-and, indeed in higher education-has gained increasing prominence in the past few decades. More and more, both the media and journalism/mass communication programs have recognized the need for attention...

INTRODUCTIONMany educators have turned to video tutorials to help students learn material. The technology allows for distance learning, which has become more prevalent with the emergence of "Massive Online Open Courses," or MOOCs (Guo, Kim, & Rubin,...

INTRODUCTIONDesigning new courses can be both a daunting and invigorating endeavor. This study has its roots in one such course-a fourth-year capstone entitled Online Editorial Board in which fifteen senior students assumed editorial roles associated...

Much attention has been devoted towards improving the quality of education that a student receives, particularly with respect to those competencies and skills that are widely accepted as essential to a successful career. Regardless of the student's career...

Teaching* <http://aejmc.us/spig/category/teachplus/>, Winter 20'\Q<http://aejmc.us/spig/category/winter-2016/>Universities and colleges nationwide are working aggressively to help students prepare for the growing and changing demands of the...

Teaching+<http://aejmc.us/spig/category/teachplus/>, Winter 2016<http://aejmc.us/spig/category/winter-2016/>RationaleThe development of the Drake University converged journalism capstone began long before the first section was taught. The...

Teaching* <http://aejmc.us/spig/category/teachplus/>, Winter 20'\Q<http://aejmc.us/spig/category/winter-2016/>Introduction and RationaleStudents love specifics. They want to know exactly how their grade will be determined and what to do to...

Twitter BackgroundTwitter marked its 9th anniversary in 2015. The service has more than 288 million active users who send more than 400 million messages a day (Isaac, 2015). Developed in 2006, founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone created...

Journalism educators no longer seriously debate the merits of offering undergraduate courses in online, convergence, or multimedia journalism.1 News has moved online, prompting changes in readership habits and the journalism workforce. Nearly three-fourths...

Many academics can recall relationships with instructors, classmates, and professionals who were influential in their education and learning. Dewey (1938) wrote that learning is facilitated by the interactions one has through relationships. Sandler and...

INTRODUCTIONExperiential learning has always been an important aspect of a university education. On the most basic level, the experience of "going to college" provides learning in the form of being on one's own for the first time, making friends, and...

INTRODUCTIONMobile devices such as smartphones and media tablets present significant technical innovations to the news industry. The technology offers users the ability to consume as well as produce news. Mobile devices are powerful reporting tools that...

In a time when mainstream newspapers deal with declining circulation, university newspapers across the country appear to be weathering the storm. One study found that 60% of students have read their college newspapers, and 88% of those readers picked...

In 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated an increase of 12% for public relations specialist jobs over the next 10 years, with social media driving the growth. Students in communication programs may receive some knowledge and skills related...

Introduction and RationaleThere has been a significant and continual decline in foreign news reporting among America's news media during the past few decades (Kumar, 2011). That coincides with a decline in interest among the American public in foreign...

Adapting to the modern digital media landscape has not been easy for the field of journalism and the nearly 100,000 people employed by a news organization in the United States (Cohen, 2001; Doctor, 2010). Between 1991 and 2012, daily TV news viewership...

The landscape of higher education is rapidly changing. Faculty face growing numbers of students in courses and increased teaching loads, in conjunction with reduced budgets and fewer resources (Kelderman, 2008; Swanson, 2011; Rampell, 2010). Faculty...

IntroductionThe application of sunshine laws (also called open government or transparency laws) is extremely important for the journalist, who must practice the intellectual discipline of verification by gathering public information to write stories...

When students in my Intro to Mass Communication course showed an interest in "doing" something about their generation's dependence on technology, I thought we better seize the day. As part of the class, they read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death,...

Abstract: Like journalists, lawyers deal in facts. Both professions require the ability to transform complex fact patterns into compelling narratives to engage an audience. While the legal community in recent years has embraced storytelling techniques...

Fall 2014<http://aejmc.us/spig/category/fall-2014/>, Teaching*<http://aejmc.us/spig/category/teachplus/>More adults are watching news video, and at the same time online attention spans are shrinking. It's no wonder several major news outlets...

Abstract: This article describes the process used to develop a collaborative simulation for college students taking advancedlevel courses in public relations (PR) and journalism. PR students organized a news conference to convey information to "the media"...

Today, the word "crisis" is prominently used to address changes in journalism, the media, economy, and society. However, due to a dispersed and diluted use of the term, a differentiated analysis of the concept is required, particularly for journalism...

Every semester, I introduce students in my Introduction to Media Writing course to the concept of "personal branding." This is the first course that my department's likely majors take, and we discuss the current media job market and the need to be able...

Introduction: Multimedia Story Creation"We need to better prepare our Communication students for their capstone course in the major.''These words, spoken by my department chairperson and colleague, acknowledged a gap in our convergence curriculum at...

Advisers from almost half of the student-run public relations firms in the United States provide insight into transformations that occur for undergraduates working at the firms. Literature on service learning, internships, campaigns courses, problem-based...

The influx of smart phones in most college classroom is impacting instruction in a way that was never anticipated. Thus, a survey of full-time faculty members at a local university in the United States was conducted to test three hypotheses, followed...

This article compares and contrasts theories of dialogic pedagogy with Kent and Taylor's (2002) dialogic public relations model. Several possible explanations are offered to explain the lack of research on dialogic pedagogy among PR scholars and educators....

Motivating students to complete reading assignments is a problem documented across disciplines. Journalism and mass communication are no exception. This study used a Web-based survey to ask International Association for Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS)...

Social presence, the concept that individuals have a sense of others as "real people" in mediated communication, is a pivotal concept in online interaction and learning. Social presence theory suggests that social media tools, such as Twitter, should...