How do public relations (PR) students learn the skills necessary to gain the attention of prospective employers?
My teaching and learning experience tells me they learn by doing. This spring semester I added a portfolio review assignment to my Bowie State University (a Maryland Historically Black University) Capstone Strategic Public Relations class, which provides racially diverse students opportunities to hone their PR skills. The projects are primarily team-based and students mostly volunteer for the projects and teams they want to work on. Projects range from managing and developing content for digital platforms (social media channels, a website, a podcast, blog articles, and an e-newsletter), project tracking, coordinating events, and working with clients who have specific PR needs. I continue to tweak, add and subtract assignments as the course evolves from semester to semester, similar to today's organizations and workplaces that are driven by changing technology, audiences, trends, policies and industries. I believe the portfolio review assignment will help my students to enhance their PR skills and to market themselves in the ever-changing employment landscape.
The portfolio review assignment builds upon the portfolio assignment that has been part of the class for several years. Think of the portfolio review assignment in three phases. Here is the short version of how it works:
Phase 1
Once I assign the projects, students must complete a public relations plan to outline the objectives, key messages, target audiences, tasks, timeline, and evaluation for their projects. I instruct the teams to make sure each student is responsible for at least three pieces of work to comprise their contribution to the project. This requirement ensures each student has at least three samples of work to include in their portfolio.
Phase 2
For most of the semester, students work on their projects during class and outside of class as necessary. The week the students are assigned to begin their projects, we begin our status update meetings for about 30 minutes during the first class session of each week through the last week before the projects are due to be completed. The meetings are similar to weekly meetings in the workplace where employees report on the status of their work and share other work-related updates. The meetings inform students about what others are working on, how to collaborate with others to perform their responsibilities and the importance of meeting deadlines.
I ask students to send their project materials to me via email and allow me 48 hours to review and provide feedback. Sometimes I ask the students to revise materials a couple or more times before final approval. This process helps students to recognize mistakes and improve upon them. Students must use only approved materials for their portfolio.
The portfolio is one of the final assignments due before the end of the semester. I encourage students to start working on their portfolio a few weeks before it is due so they have sufficient time to review it for mistakes and make sure it is of the best possible quality they can produce. My guidelines for preparing the portfolio assignment are simple; include a cover sheet, table of contents, save as a PDF and upload it to our Blackboard classroom.
Phase 3
This stage includes the new steps to the assignment. I will select six students to participate in the portfolio review conducted by a panel of public relations professionals who work for the Glen Echo Group, a Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm. GEG will have a week to review the portfolios (which I will send to them) before they meet with the class virtually. During the class, the six students will discuss their portfolios and receive feedback from the panel of professionals. The remaining students will join the class so they may learn from the professionals’ feedback.
Some of the students already know the GEG team because of the partnership our communications department formed three years ago with the firm. GEG committed to work with us to prepare our students for careers in PR. The partnership is one way our department can help to address the problem of the under-representation of African Americans in the public relations industry. According to the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, data shows that African Americans and other people of color are under-represented in the public relations industry in the U.S. (Tenderich, 2022). African Americans represent only about 10 percent and Latinos
13.6 percent of public relations specialists. The numbers are even lower in public relations agencies.
How has GEG contributed to the career development of our students?
They have supported four students to attend the Public Relations Student Society of America International conference. When students attended the conferences, they networked with professionals and other students, and gained insights about the PR industry.
Each year, I accompany a group of students to participate in GEG’s crisis simulation workshop at their D.C. office. GEG presents students with a certificate of completion at the end of the workshop. Every semester GEG partners with our Public Relations Student Society of America chapter to present a workshop that focuses on skills important for PR students. Workshop topics have covered resume building, networking, and how to use LinkedIn. This semester the workshop will focus on how to use Canva to enhance creative PR skills.
My portfolio review assignment is one more way to create opportunities for students to learn how to prepare themselves for careers in the PR industry. The key components of the assignment—the PR planning process, status update meetings, instructor review and feedback, preparing the portfolio, and the GEG review and feedback—string together a process through which students can learn by doing throughout the semester.