Irony: keeping JMC curriculum fresh can take timeThe ways people consume information are constantly changing. So are the ways that information is gathered. That means the curriculum at Kent JMC also needs to change. The mechanism for change in academia, however, sometimes has a hard time keeping pace with changes in media industries. Social-networking sites Facebook and Twitter, along with news aggregators and RSS feeds, are changing the fields of newsgathering and public relations.
"The changes in the media are occurring almost daily. Probably the biggest thing is we've realized that, because of convergence, we need to have students in just about all of our majors trained in a lot of different areas," Blase says. Jeff Fruit, interim dean of the College of Communication and Information, says the JMC curriculum used to not have to change as much or as quickly. Now, however, evolution in the classroom needs to occur more often and with greater rapidity. "You used to have the idea that you change your curriculum every five or ten years. Our thinking today is it's a continuous process," says Fruit. "We're going to be changing curriculum every year from now on." Fruit says you can't stand still in a world that is not willing to slow down. Blase agrees, but he warns that changing the curriculum is not the easiest task. "I wouldn't call it difficult, but I would call it challenging. I say that because it is something we like to do. We like to constantly tweak our curriculum and make sure that it is teaching the students what they need to know." CURRICULAR CHANGE CAN TAKE TIME The process to create a new course, get it approved throughout the university and introduced into the official university catalog can take a year or longer. What Blase called course "tweaking" is sometimes the easier, and faster, path. The News Sequence faculty, for example, wanted to introduce more broadcast and Web writing into the traditionally print-oriented Newswriting course. Instead of creating a new course, it tweaked the old one. "Multimedia Newswriting" -- with some new course content and a modified name -- required less time to be approved. The new content will be taught in the fall. New courses created over the past several years include Public Relations Online Tactics, Online Journalism, Cybermedia Design, Visual Storytelling, and Collaborative Online Producing, Fruit noted. NEW COURSE BEING TESTED Another new course may have curriculum-wide ramifications, Fruit said. Multimedia Techniques, developed by JMC faculty members Joe Murray and Fred Endres, introduces students to shooting and editing video, capturing and editing audio, taking photographs and building a Web site. It's targeted at JMC freshmen and has been offered three times so far as part of the beta testing process. However, multiple sections of the course would be required, and that has raised concerns about such issues as equipment, classroom availability and who would teach the many sections needed. As technology plays a bigger role in how information is gathered, produced and delivered, Kent JMC -- and programs across the country -- will have some hard choices to make. And, usually not much time to make them.
James Buechele contributed to this story |
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WATCH VIDEO: CCI Interim Dean, Jeff Fruit, says students in the News sequence may need to learn different ways to get jobs. |
Other parts of the story
Technology, economy drive JMC changes
News students need to report across platforms
PR, advertising students need more online skills
Media production students learn about Web
JMC curriculum is changing, sometimes slowly