This blog post is part of your Communications Plan assignment.
Original Blog Post: (400-500 words) As part of the blog campaign outlined in your Communications Plan, write a professional blog post about your organization’s action, initiative, or event. Your blog post should include at least two relevant links embedded in the text of the blog.
HEADLINE: Do assignments that mimic real world challenges make for better learning?
The verdict is in: students want university programs that will directly prepare them for the working world. (NB: your LINKS should be embedded in the text). Companies are no longer prepared to train eager students in the ins and outs of their industry. Instead, they expect new graduates to enter the workforce with a very particular set of skills. As a new grad, I found nothing more frustrating than seeing an entry level job advertisement that demanded 2-3 years experience. So how do you get experience while still being a student?
On the one hand, universities team up with other organizations to offer experiential learning opportunities. At TRU, this can involve field school, where students are immersed in the experience of doing the work of an audience researcher, a geologist, or a journalist under the guidance of an instructor. Practicums, coops and work-study positions offer the opportunity to be trained directly by a company or researcher, furthering your education while giving you valuable work experience. But field schools that take students out of the university to far-off work sites can be expensive if you are already struggling to pay tuition. Internships often turn out to demand hours of free labour with little offered in the way of skill development. Work-study students may find themselves overwhelmed by balancing school-work and work-work.
To bridge work and school for Communication students, my Public and Media Relations course at TRU incorporates assignments that mimic the real-world demands placed on PR professionals. As part of their coursework, students are asked to create a digital media kit that allows them to cut their teeth on the kind of work they would be expected to produce in the real world. The dynamic, digital media kit is one of the key tools that a public relations professional uses to create interest and trust in their organization and communicate with stakeholders including members of traditional and emerging media outlets. As PR guru Gini Dietrich has pointed out, much of what PR professionals do today is about guiding attention on the fast-paced news cycles of the internet. Emerging from school with the ability to create a media kit means that students are a step ahead of other applicants for coveted communication and public relations jobs.
Everybody has to start somewhere. The media kits that students produce in CMNS 3550 are no doubt only the first of many they will create as they pursue careers in communication. But by taking this first opportunity to put together a media kit that is as close as possible to the real thing, students can work through the questions and tribulations that public relations professionals come up against every day. Who is the best spokesperson for the media to interview about my company’s new charitable giving program? What will make bloggers want to talk about our updated equitable HR policies? PR professionals need to constantly find new creative ways to make media kits stand out to editors, reporters, journalists, bloggers, and influencers.
By taking a stab at producing media kits under the guidance of your instructor (that’s me!) and a room full of supportive students facing the same challenges, students will emerge better prepared to take a seat at the table as professional communicators.
To sign up for CMNS3550 Media and Public Relations, contact me at Joceline Andersen, Assistant Teaching Professor in Communication, Journalism, and New Media at jandersen@tru.ca .
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