By Bill Cassidy, Northern Illinois University | Newspaper
How to best offer our students the skills and knowledge needed for success in their careers is undoubtedly important to all the divisions and interest groups of AEJMC. Given the tumultuous nature of the industry, not to mention the media landscape, most—if not all—journalism schools, departments, and programs have made changes in their curriculums.
I think the issue of curriculum change and development is particularly important to the Newspaper Division in large part because traditional newspaper writing and editing courses have been the backbone of journalism curriculums. But, in today’s environment, that simply won’t do.
For the past two years, I and my dedicated journalism colleagues at Northern Illinois University have worked long and hard to update our curriculum in a way that would appeal to the rest of the faculty in the Department of Communication, university officials, and better serve our students. We are all happy that our new curriculum was approved and goes into effect in the next school year.
I won’t go into all of the changes made. But, basically we’ve “opened up” the curriculum which allows our majors to take courses in several different areas. While we never had formal tracks in our program, gaining substantive experience in more than one area made graduating in four years difficult. We will also offer additional courses focusing on the important role journalists play in our society.
So, while we’ve made some significant and much-needed changes in a program that was clearly outdated, there’s still a ways to go. But, in what direction?
Answering that question recently became much more daunting for me after I read a story about changes made by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in their undergraduate program.
“Instead of moving to a convergence-based media program as some journalism schools have done, MU is doing the exact opposite,” the story read.
Say what? Talk about throwing a curve-ball.
Actually, based on the story and after a quick perusal of Missouri’s new program, I think there is much to admire about it. But, it made me realize that this business of curriculum change and deciding what needs to be offered is tough. In fact, I dare say I may have a case of curriculum fatigue.
I’ve read that journalism programs should make sure students learn statistics and survey methodology. We should work with computer science departments to develop cross-disciplinary courses, and make entrepreneurship a vital part of our programs. Furthermore, we should make blogging part of nearly every writing course, not to mention Twitter. The list goes on.
While these are all excellent ideas, I wonder how do we incorporate them all into our courses and programs, especially when you throw in the fact that many students—at least at the three universities where I’ve taught—are lacking in some of the basic journalistic writing skills?
My head hurts just thinking about it.
That said, however, I won’t give up the fight trying to figure these issues out.