I know, from the few replies that have already come in concerning my Join the Conversation giveaway offer, that the amount of attention given to Web 2.0-ish tools and theory in college and university programs seems to vary WIDELY from school to school.
I'm launching a secondary appeal to students or teachers who are reading this blog post. Please tell me what you are learning or teaching in your program about social media -- blogging, podcasting, vidcasting, social networks, CGM, new media. I would love to get a national sense of just what the communicators of the future are learning -- in and out of the classroom.
For example, I know from Gary Schlee's A Class Act that Centennial College has an online PR course which mandates students to create a blog. You can check them all out on the course blog. I've already seen some comments from Algonquin College students, as well as Michael Allison at Royal Roads.
There's good old Chris Clarke. And I also know that Jill Pyle, currently blogging at inMedia, was blogging during her days at Mount Saint Vincent University. But what else is out there?
Ciao,
Bob.
January 30, 2008
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24 comments:
What's web 2.0?
THanks for your comment.
From Wikipedia: "In studying and/or promoting web-technology, the phrase Web 2.0 can refer to a trend in web design and development — a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services (such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies) which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users."
Hi Bob. I was led here through your recent twitter post.
I'm one of Gary's students at Centennial College. The Online PR course so interesting, and I'm honestly having so much fun.
Before each student had to create their own blog, we all had to set up del.icio.us accounts. One of the main purposes of this assignment is so Gary can keep track of the blogs we are commenting on. (We're supposed to tag these blog postings "comments.")
Not only are we being graded on the quality of our blog postings, but our comments on others' will be considered.
My classmates and I handed in a repurposing for the web assignment today. We took a print article from an employee newsletter and reformatted it using basic HTML.
Today, we learned about Bloglines, Google Reader and other aggregators. And, we continued our discussion about our online brands.
I'm not completely sure what I have to look forward to in the rest of the course, but I know we will be producing an audio podcast in the near future.
There was talk, at the beginning of the course, of interacting with students from a similar course in France. So, I hope that's still happening.
I hope this gave you some useful information about what PR students are learning about social media. Please let me know if there's anything else I can help with!
P.S. My blog URL is http://rlangdon.prblogs.org. I'm not sure how to link it in Blogspot.
Thanks so much, Rayanne. Gary S. certainly seems to be leading the charge on this, and you're lucky to be benefiting from his teaching. I'm going to work my way through all the student blogs... eventually.
This is exactly the sort of info I was hoping to get.
All the best,
Bob.
I'm currently enrolled in the PR post-grad diploma at Ryerson and so far there has been very little mention of social media at all.
This term I'm taking the first two courses, on campus. Perhaps SM is covered in some of the more specific courses, or if you took the class online, but it's had little more than a passing mention in my class experience thus far.
I know Ryerson does offer a "writing for electronic media course" with Broadcasting, that can count towards a PR diploma. The link for that is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2kz58m
I haven't been on the reader or twitter for a couple days, and when I come back there are all these posts for students! Thanks for bringing this topic up, it's a great discussion.
Thanks Tom -- If you can put on a detective hat, I'd love to get more info from you about what you're likely to learn in other courses. Ask your classmates, or your profs. And if they aren't teaching social media ... ask why not?
At MSVU, I'm happy with how the professors are showing a respect for changing communications tools to the extent of incorporating them into their courses. From mandatory blog posts, to wiki collaborations, to -oh yes- even discussions in virtual classrooms thanks to Second Life.
Of course the potential for growth is only limited by the dedication of forward-thinking instructors who are willing to take risks. Second Life alone caused a massive amount of lashing out from closed-minded students...
Jill Pyle and Lauren Oostveen were certainly the front-runners in Web 2.0 of our year at MSVU, but I've watched many more of our colleagues get involved both professionally and personally. We're on the right track!
Hey Bob,
I was led here through my friend Rayanne who I went to university with and my professor Peter who informed all the students of your posting.
I am a first-year public relations student at Algonquin College. I attended Carleton University previously for Mass Communications.
Right now in the first-year of the program where not much emphasis is placed on social media. It is presented as a outlet for promotion, but is not explained in detail.
Over the summer, I did a lot of research about Public Relations before considering the industry. I found and read many PR blogs such as Chris Clarke's Student PR, and Joe Thornley's Pro PR. I read these blogs religiously and learned about RSS feeds, blogging, twitter and more through them.
From what I understand, in second year of the program there is a course where students are required to write a blog and become apart of the community. Also, there is a scholarship from MediaMiser for the best written blog.
My blog is
kathrynboland.wordpress.com
At Niagara College (in Welland, Ont.) we're grappling with the concept of Web 2.0 but we're getting there. We are just beginning a unit on social media in our PR Strategies class, but our program still stresses more traditional PR.
I recently gave a talk on how to start blogging (for an assignment for the rest of the class) and fielded some questions from fellow students on the topic. Overcoming skepticism that blogs and other social media are the realm of "playtime" has been the greatest
challenge.
I know I would like to see an entire class devoted to Social Media (as we have with Mass Media) including creating and using media but at present we just have an exploratory unit where Web 2.0 is presented and students create and maintain a blog.
-Joseph
Thanks, Kathryn, for your comment. I was interested in your comment that at this point, 2.0 stuff is being mentioned as an "outlet for promotion." To my mind, that sounds a bit one-way, which gives me some concern. I'm hoping some second year students from Algonquin will join this conversation to enlarge on how the 'gonq is teaching 2.0.
Ben, I would love to know more about what you mention as "Second Life" backlash at MSVU. What happened there?
Procog: I'm glad to hear you're breaking ground at Niagara. Who was resistant to 2.0 stuff as a business tool -- fellow students? Profs? Were they aware of some of the real-world business examples of blogs/podcasts? Your post has got me thinking about how you design a course in 2.0. I think I'll post separately on that.
It was a funny experience to be honest. In our first year, closer to the earlier stages of blog popularity, we were told of how blogs are going to change the way organizations and individuals communicate. It took us til the fourth year to really see this come to fruition and all agree that our profs knew what they were talking about. The same process happened with wikis, social networks, etc.
That same semester in one of our last courses, a prof dictates that we complete 30% of our class through Second Life virtual meetings. Immediately, a good 60% of the students are outspoken about how ridiculous, impractical and creepy the idea is. The rest of the course became a constant struggle to encourage open minds and respect for the fact that we had the opportunity to test out a brand new communications platform in its infancy.
Without making this blog comment offensively long, I think that profs still have their work cut out for them when it comes to breaking down walls within their students. Post-secondary used to be a place of challenging beliefs and critical thinking but it seems that students are getting too comfortable (or lazy).
Hope that answers your question and thanks for starting the web 2.0 discussion!
ben.boudreau@gmail.com
http://bensprblog.blogspot.com/
Bob,
I actually stumbled upon your post when I googled "college students blogging" a few minutes ago. I did this because I am gearing up to write a post about the lack of participation from college students as a whole in the blogosphere.
I've been blogging now for only three months, and I'm the only student in my entire PR sequence with a personal blog. Unfortunately, social media has not taken hold at my university.
We have one professor who is an advocate of social media, and he incorporates blogging assignments into his curriculum and urges students to create their own blogs, but no one seems to be taking his advice.
The only way I've been able to learn about Web 2.0 in public relations is to read other blogs, but I am still missing out on topics like Twitter, podcasting, and del.icio.us. (I'm trying on my own, though!)
I guess it's all I can do until my school starts offering these types of classes... and I'm sure there are many others in my same situation.
Thanks for bringing attention to this issue!
Meg Roberts
www.megroberts.wordpress.com
Meg -- thank YOU for finding this post and commenting on it.
It may not be much concrete help at this point, but you will reap the benefits of what you're doing when you move into the career-finding mode at the end of your studies, and some of your students will be left behind, and wondering why.
Question for you: you say that "social media hasn't taken hold" at USF. Have your fellow students ignored it totally, or is there a disconnect between using social media for fun (ie posting pictures from the last game or party on Facebook) and recognizing social media as a powerful communications tool?
Keep doing what you're doing!
Hi Bob,
I'm quite new to the blogsphere (2 days to be exact) but I can't tell you how excited I am to read all the different blogs out there, and they all lead to another interesting blog. But I did dabble with 'Web 2.0' (I had never heard of this term before though) in my Online Reporting class. I was a member of the first graduating class of Ryerson's Online Journalism program in which we ran Ryerson's New Portal, produced multimedia content, and posted the occasional blog entry. It was a really interesting course and truly sparked my interest in online and social media. I'm now pursuing a post-graduate certificate in PR from Ryerson by distance education, and through some extra interest reading came across a book by David Meerman Scott called "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" which is what really inspired me to start a blog. But thus far, the Ryerson course has not mentioned anything of social media - which seems really strange now that I think of it...as it is an online course.
I'm on my local library e-mail list for that book. Looking forward to it.
Why don't you take the opportunity to ask your classmates at Rye High (sorry, couldn't resist) and your instructor when you'll be covering social media?
Keep me up to date.
Hi everyone, I've got an update on wed 2.0 and Ryerson. After some sleuthing, I've found that there is essentially no social media component to the Ryerson PR course. It is offered online (hello PRKeener!) but unfortunately the only web 2.0 content we receive is in passing mention during other classes.
I was speaking with one of my instructors, and she intends to bring it up and their next meeting. She agrees that it is very important, and can be very dangerous for companies to ignore Blogs and other forms of online communication. She also mentioned that university courses in general are slow to adapt to new developments, as are textbooks, and it takes time to develop a new course.
She also suggested that the CPRS and the IABC should offer more seminars and learning sessions on the topic, because they can afford it or charge for it, in order to bring in leaders in the area such as Thornley Fallis.
Sorry for the lengthy comment, but that seems to me to be the state of most university courses. Aware of the importance, and slowly (possibly apprehensively) moving towards incorporating it.
Hi Bob,
I am a second year Media Studies/Public Relations student at the University of Guelph Humber (or GH) in Toronto. The way our program works is that you get a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in Media Studies and a Diploma in Public Relations in four years.
Since the program is relatively new and basically combines a more theoretical university degree with the more practical PR diploma, Guelph Humber PR students have yet to be recognized in the industry. Right now most of my courses are theory courses -- I am taking only one PR course this semester. I'm not sure if that setup makes sense -- I want to be in PR but I'm only taking one PR course at the moment. Of course, we specialize more in third year and go for internships in 4th year, but if we want to be in PR, shouldn't we learn more about it early on?
While the theoretical side of it is definitely enriching -- we get to learn how the larger communications world plays out and how it's been studied by academics -- I have yet to to see how theory applies to real life. We've been taught to stay informed, but not to be engaged (not yet anyway), especially in social media. Reading PR blogs by students and professional alike really helps me get the bigger picture and learn things outside the classroom. There should definitely be a greater emphasis on engagement in social media in the school curriculum.
Thanks for the great post, Monad. (May I call you Monad?)
I have a question for you -- why not publish your blog under your name? It's great, from a quick scan (I actually just looked for my name), and I think you would find it good for your "online footprint" if you opened up your identity online through your blog.
Something to think about.
I think you should be talking to your profs about doing more proselytizing for social media engagement in your courses. To me, the true value-added is when you dive in -- as you are already finding out.
Thanks Bob, and please call me Glennie.
That's a great suggestion actually. I guess I am a bit hesitant to publish the blog under my name because of privacy issues. Also, truth be told I have yet to learn what Blogger.com's policy is regarding bloggers' posts -- is the content considered theirs or not? These are things to think about too when we do engage in (or rather, with) social media.
I'll definitely speak with my profs about this too. While social media has been mentioned in my PR class, (we briefly discussed Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book "Naked Conversations") it was really only in passing and in the context of communication between businesses and customers. It's becoming clearer to me now though that engagement is a must for all current and aspiring communicators -- journalists, PR practitioners, etc.
Hello Bob
- Here is a note from Fanshawe College's post-grad Corporate Communication and Public Relations program
Integrating 2.0 into established curriculum is a challenge. There are so many new options. Plus, the foundational concept of 2.0 is the relinquishing of the hierarchal structure of top down communications. It is no secret that schools are invested in this hierarchal model. Post-secondary institutions need to develop strategies to transition from top down to other models of learning. Web 2.0 is one way to help us with those transitions.
2.0 entered our world (Fanshawe College Corporate Communication and Public Relations post-grad program) about four years ago when we learned of a few students blogging. Three years ago Chris Clarke was a student in our program learning about blogging on his own, independent of our curriculum and his blogging helped him meet up with ThornleyFallis. The following year 2006/7 we had Terry Fallis and Chris visit the class and talk about podcasting and their visit became the catalyst for the class to create a blog.
So we’re trying things. It’s a work in progress and each year we see increments of change.
This year in our Trends and Technologies in PR course we’ve tried to move things along more: a report, presentations, a blog, and a test on PR blog and podcast visits. I’d say this year we hit the Web 2.0 “awareness” marker for all of the students but we are still working on integrating application: applying social media to curricula.
But the students will help drive the change further: this year when our class arrived for orientation, I found out that several of them had already met through the summer on Facebook. This was a first. I wonder what September ’08 will bring.
One of our group topics in the course was to look at SecondLife in relationship to teaching and learning and marketing the college. Fanshawe has an island in development and the student group (seven students) had access the island and had a field trip to the Island during a presentation to some Academic Managers. One of our PR faculty is taking a lead role in the SecondLife adventure here at the college. There is also the world of itunes U.
Fanshawe also has a new Social Media course that just started in January. Here is the course description:
INDS5002 – New and Social Media.
Students will examine media as a form of social construction and political and ideological control. Special emphasis will be placed on the intersection of new media and current social norms: the CD and DVD revolution, the changing role of television, the personal PC, the Internet, video gaming, and social media (MSN, blogs, podcasts, RSS, Second Life, vlogs etc.). Topics will include the new journalism, online communities, Internet and entertainment, FanFic, convergence of media format and ownership, and changing concepts of public and private discourse. Students will participate in new media and learn to critique and question current media practice.
Dana
Dana Morningstar, M.Ed.
Program Coordinator/Professor
Corporate Communication and Public Relations
Ontario Graduate Certificate Program
Fanshawe College
www.fanshawec.ca
519.452.4430 x4552
dmorningstar@fanshawec.ca
Hi Bob!
First of all, sorry for my English, I'm not perfectly bilingual, but I think you will be able to understand the most important ideas of this comment.
I'm a 3rd year student in Communications, Public Relations at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM). To respond your question, we had a course where we learned how to create a website (using Dreamweaver). We also learned how to use Photoshop and Indesing, and during one semester, we had to manage a blog, but that's all! I think during these last 3 years, social medias evoluated a lot and we should have learn more about their power. All I know about social medias is due to the way I use Internet every day, and because I have a personal interest in technology and beeing informed. In many ways, I'm very disapointed about the formation I receive at the UQAM and what's the worst, is that it's the best program offered in public relations in Quebec!
Thanks...
Canan Eoy
Marketing
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