Q&A Respondents: Andrew Corcoran - Lincoln, UK - University of Lincoln Richard Bailey, Leeds, UK - Leeds Metropolitan University Phillip Young, Sunderland, UK - Sunderland University Thomas Pleil, Germany, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences Robert French, Auburn, AL USA, - Auburn University - Moderator 1. How important is exposure to software, particularly online software/resources, to a student's academic experience? Does your program teach graphic design or layout/style? Some examples of software are: Adobe, Macromedia and any audio/video programs. Tom Kelleher: Students should learn new programs, but not necessarily because they'll need to use these exact same programs in the work world. The specific skills of today can become useless in a hurry when technology advances. Learning these programs and skills should be seen as part of a larger process of learning. A focus on teaching specific subject matter, therefore, is only useful to the extent that we think about how we learned and how we can use our new knowledge to learn more and adjust for new information and technologies. Thomas Pleil: I think for PR professional knowledge in graphic design or layout would be helpful but in my opinion these are not the most important things. Typically they work together with experts in these fields, but they usually do not design/layout jobs their selves. But in general PR students should get along with standard software (Office, Adobe, Newsreader) and especially new internet applications very well. Further they should know picture editing software like Photoshop (basics), they should be able to work with a good database, and they should be able to use software helping them to organize their work (e.g. social bookmarking, project management, mind mapping) Philip Young: We teach PR theory and PR practice and it is hard to imagine many practitioners operating successfully without a range of software tools so, yes, we give them hands-on experience of a number of applications throughout the PR degree programme. Our students take a number of compulsory journalism modules and this includes design, currently Quark soon to be Adobe Indesign. They are also expected to research and design newsletters for real world clients so design skill are essential. They can also take optional modules in new media which include web design. Richard Bailey: The question is the perennial one of the right balance to strike between teaching principles (which remain constant from year to year) and teaching practice (which evolves along with technology etc). All of us struggle with getting this balance right. (For example, many of us teaching PR were used to sending press releases by mail, whereas current practice is to send them by email, if at all.) If I'd been taught how to use various software packages at university, then I'd not even have been shown MS-DOS, and certainly not Word or Windows. The tools change, but the principles don't. In general, we try to avoid too much teaching of technology, instead encouraging students to use appropriate technology when they tackle assignments or engage in work placements. Do students have access to / exposure to online PR resources like Bacon's, Vocus, PRNewswire, Factiva or other services? Should they? Tom Kelleher: In our PR Writing class, I often design activities that require students to go online and use resources such as PRNewswire. A big part of these assignments is to look at the information from a critical perspective as well as a tactical perspective. For example, how newsworthy is the news posted on PRNewswire? Which stories would journalists find useful? Then I ask students to search online for placements, which sets up a discussion of which releases get picked up, where and why. Bacon's offered me (and my students) free access to Mediasource for classroom use this semester, so I plan to give that a try. Thomas Pleil: In Germany we have some other services but at students should at least know them. In the best case they have collected some experiences with them. In our program of studies we use a service similar to PRnewswire and one similar to ProfNet, and they train using databases like LexisNexis for their research. Philip Young: Again yes. We integrate MediaDisk into many of our practical exercises. Richard Bailey: They have some access through the university; but much more through work placement experience. 2. Do you see a need of adapting the curriculum to reflect the current developments in public relations, caused by the rise of personal publishing (weblogs, consumer generated marketing, etc.)? Tom Kelleher: Yes, definitely. These developments are encouraging us to question the foundations of our field. For example, are bloggers performing public relations? Does this mean a different role for people who have been serving in traditional public relations positions? Will legal limitations de-rail the Cluetrain? We don't know the answers yet, but it's an exciting area of inquiry. In the long run, we may risk teaching an obsolete curriculum if we don't at least take such questions seriously. Thomas Pleil: Absolutely. That's why our students have to train blogging (PR-Fundsachen, http://mars.sdi.fh-darmstadt.de/wordpress/) - and to read blogs - and working with a wiki. Philip Young: Yes, definitely - and I suspect our sharpest students will have a better idea of emerging trends in what you call personal publishing than many PR practitioners in the North East of England. Richard Bailey: I confess I'm still rather skeptical about claims that Weblogs transform public relations. Instead, personal publishing increases the numbers of channels, and access to audiences. It also makes reputation management an even more sensitive and critical task. I don't see the need to adapt the curriculum, though I do encourage students to view Weblogs as opportunities for gaining writing experience. 3. Do you think it's possible / realistic to expect that the use of Weblogs by both PR academics and PR practitioners will bridge the gap between the two groups? Tom Kelleher: I think it's possible among small subsets of each group - this may already be happening. But I'm not ready to make a prediction about the larger professional and academic communities in general. At the broad level, the relationship between academics and professionals probably isn't a media issue. Thomas Pleil: Probably we need several bridges. But Weblogs are a good one. The weblog PR-Blogger (www.pr-blogger.de) seems to be a good example: Klaus Eck, the initiator of the blog, is practitioner and he invites other PR practitioners as well to blog as academics like me. This produces very interesting discussions and new contacts. Richard Bailey: I hadn't thought about this before, but I think it already has done this for the still rather small group of people who blog about public relations (and therefore, one assumes, read other PR blogs). This group includes practitioners and academics: both spend time reflecting on the practice. Blogging does bring them together. Is it possible for online relationships to prove beneficial in a student's development, especially with PR practitioners? Philip Young: I have been running - rather sporadically - a PR weblog, http://publicsphere.typepad.com/mediations/, for over a year and although I have had some very useful dialogue with fellow academics I am not sure how well I am communicating with practitioners. May be the problem is with my content but it can be difficult to talk to two rather different audiences. I would hope to have more success when more practitioners start to use RSS feeds. Tom Kelleher: Again, it's possible, but it will require an investment of time and resources from all parties - students, teachers, and professionals, thus making it a cost-benefit question. Adoption-of-innovations theory also might be interesting to apply to this question. Thomas Pleil: Generally yes. For example, students can get into discussions with practitioners on their blog postings. Philip Young: I am sure it would be - but I am not sure how this will happen in practice. Richard Bailey: Relationships, yes. But online relationships? Aren't we mixing channels and objectives? It's fine to contact people online if that's the best way to reach them, but strong online relationships will tend to develop into strong relationships. I had an email this morning from an Italian student who'd contacted a prominent European practitioner-academic (also a fellow Italian). I don't know how she contacted him (does it matter whether it was by phone, email or mail?) - but she was delighted to have initiated a dialogue that she hoped would prove lasting and productive. 4. Blogs in Classes: Do you use blogs in your classes? Have you considered using blogs? If you do, or have considered using them, what are the positive aspects to their inclusion? Have you considered the pedagogical considerations of the use of blogs? What would be the key issues to address? Tom Kelleher: I'm looking to use blogs as means for the reflective component in the service learning our PR Writing students will do this semester. They will work with non-profits in the community, and a big part of the service learning experience is "reflection." I'm interested to see the quality of thought that they might express via blogs. But I've already run into my first hurdle, and that's privacy. I'm wary of the potential snags in asking students to blog about their real experiences with real organizations such as hospitals, children's services, etc. Also, I'm not sure how candid students will/should be if they know their assessments of the "clients' will be published in the public domain. So this semester, I'm looking to do password-protected blogs, even though I question how blog-like these private postings are. Anyhow, I'm proceeding here with baby steps. Thomas Pleil: Yes, we are using blogs in classes. Therefore my colleagues and I developed different strategies. In one course students have to start an own blog, in an other course they use the established blog of a colleague, and in my last PR course we started a group blog from the installation. Within a semester every student should collect some experiences in blogging. And since we set up a blog dealing with PR my students are reading other PR weblogs, new magazines and papers. For more information on this please see my article for PR Blog Week. Philip Young: Yes, I run an 'internal' PR blog for our students but relatively low awareness of blogging means interactive responses are few and far between. Richard Bailey: I've learnt a valuable lesson from an academic colleague from another UK University. He said that our students already find it too easy to go online and are reluctant to use conventional sources of information (i.e. textbooks). I do make limited use of blogs in my teaching, but still feel it's more important to initiate face-to-face discussion and dialogue as a teaching tool. At present teaching is still a group activity, though there are considerable pressures to transform it into an asynchronous, online experience. 5. Internships. Have you considered allowing students to 'telecommute' for an internship? With the wired world, and virtual offices, is a virtual internship something to ponder for the future? Tom Kelleher: Not yet, but it sounds like an idea worth exploring. Thomas Pleil: To be honest I'm not sure if I understand your idea totally. I think, internships in the real world are very important to collect experience within this real world. It's not easy to simulate all those important social experiences you have when you work with customers, colleagues and your boss. Our students have to attend a 3-month-internship before they can take part in our program of study, and they attend a second internship during the program (currently six months). Philip Young: No - and I can't immediately see the advantages. I think one of the great benefits of work experience is having students see how the real world works and I think they have to be there to experience it. Richard Bailey: No. Humans are sociable animals, and PR students are more gregarious than most. Telecommuting is great once you have highly-developed, specialist skills. But not when you're learning the ropes from others. 6. Using blogs, where do you see their greatest potential for students in their future professional lives? How might you craft a lesson plan, class project, or term long project to give them appropriate exposure? Tom Kelleher: I think analyzing blog content, particularly corporate blogs and how they fit into public relations strategy, is probably a good place to start. Then having students try blogging, just to see how it works from a blogger's perspective, would be a logical next step. The systemic nature of blogging makes it important for them to get "in the loop" - participant observation of sorts. (See also Q4.) I'm guessing students would get a taste of the issues involved in managing strategic corporate public relations in an environment where the norm is more about expressing a personal human voice. Philip Young: A vague idea of technology always helps but I don't think they need to go much beyond that. 7. Is learning how blogs work (servers, software, installation) really important? Should they understand the costs involved in the various blog options? Tom Kelleher: Learning the user side of blog technology, and considering the general costs in terms of time and money, are important. But I would try to avoid getting bogged down in technical issues, unless that was part of the specific course curriculum. Thomas Pleil: I think it's hard enough to get an overview over the blogosphere, to make experiences in blogging and in reading blogs. Students should know important tools helping to get along with these challenges (e.g. technorati, Bloglines....) Philip Young: A vague idea of technology always helps but I don't think they need to go much beyond that. 8. CMS. So many companies now use internal CMS for project tracking, lead development, billing practices and other tasks, is that a form of software students should be exposed to? Tom Kelleher: This would take some more self-education on my part as a professor before presenting it to students. I'm not aware of CMS being incorporated in public relations curricula at many schools now, but this doesn't mean it shouldn't have a place. This question and your previous question show how an entire course in online public relations might be in order to make room in the curriculum for faculty to innovate with technical topics such as blogs, CMS, etc. Thomas Pleil: Sometimes I think some students are a little bit concerned about CMS. Showing them how to work with it makes it much easier. Philip Young: We constantly hammer home the need to keep up with current affairs and this is tested in the core journalism modules. My won blog is definitely on the reading list and I will be pointing students towards of resources week-by-week. I would also expect them to use Global PR Blog week discussions as a useful resource. 9. Current events. Do you give your students in all classes, or some, reading exercises in periodicals (newspapers, journals, magazines) on a daily or weekly basis? Do you add online reading to those requirements? Are any blogs on your reading lists? I'm wondering if blogs have helped to bring together the PR practitioner world with the student world? Tom Kelleher: Current events are a big part of class discussions, assignments and activities, but I normally don't include current events just for current events' sake (e.g., a daily current events quiz). If monitoring the online environment would be useful in the context of a specific assignment or discussion (say, issues management is the topic of the week), then I definitely can see a place for blogs on the reading list. It's important too that students learn to select online sources wisely on their own. Giving them an example or two would help, but I like to ask students to take an active role in developing "reading lists" when it comes to online assignments. Philip Young: We constantly hammer home the need to keep up with current affairs and this is tested in the core journalism modules. My blog is definitely on the reading list and I will be pointing students towards of resources week-by-week. I would also expect them to use Global PR Blog week discussions as a useful resource. 10. RSS. Do you cover that in classes? Do your students actively use RSS in their browsers or desktop readers? Or, do you expose them to Bloglines, PubSub, NewsGator and other online readers/aggregators? Tom Kelleher: Not yet, but I can see how this might be useful - if class time permits it and it makes sense in the context of the learning outcomes we're after. Thomas Pleil: We are talking on RSS and what it is. But most of our students don't use it in their browsers or desktop readers. But they have to use either a Bloglines or a PubSub account to be able to blog in PR-Fundsachen. Philip Young: Very much early days - I would welcome any suggestions as to how to do this with communal computers that can be used by many different people studying a variety of programmes / modules.