Words Du Jour: An Analysis of Traditional and Transitional Course Descriptors at Select J-Schools

Abstract

Journalism education may be at a tipping point. It is unclear, however, what new form curricula might take. Through an analysis of individual course titles and descriptions that appeared in the 2013-2014 undergraduate catalogs of 68 selected universities, this exploratory study finds that most departments/schools are not offering classes that reflect pedagogical approaches recently promoted in professional literature (e.g., hospital model, entrepreneurship, apprenticeship) nor are they responding to calls for greater integration between the classroom and industry via quasi-professional experiences. Journalism programs are, instead, relying on historically recognized and accepted models—such as practicum and capstone.

Keywords

journalism education curriculum undergraduate program of study content analysis course catalogs

Introduction

Journalism education may be at a tipping point—the critical moment when significant change is inevitable. There is “deep division,” according to the spring 2014 NiemanReports, over what skills future journalists need and how these skills should be delivered (Marcus, 2014). This pedagogical disagreement in journalism is not new. In the early 1900s, the University of Missouri championed a laboratory approach, Columbia University incorporated liberal arts courses, and University of Wisconsin emphasized the importance of social science research (Folkerts, 2014). The broader debate continued mid-20th century when some criticized the “narrow regime of teaching” and challenged educators to prepare students for a lifetime of ill-defined, complex problems that require critical thought and engagement (Freire, 1970). In the early 21st century, educators have been increasingly pressured to teach to tests, and pedagogical assessment often is measured in numbers rather than through narrative evaluation. Paradoxically, industry professionals often value an entry-level employee’s ability to problem solve and be resourceful in novel situations (Baldoni, 2010) and bemoan the lack of innovation in curriculum, especially in the face of changes brought about by digital technology (Folkerts, 2014).

Henry Giroux (2010) posits, “Rarely do educators ask questions about how schools can prepare students to be informed citizens, nurture a civic imagination or teach them to be self-reflective about public issues and the world in which they live” (para. 3). Aspiring journalists need a forum where they can experience their discipline and work with others, and as Jean Twenge’s (2013) research demonstrates, a different approach is needed to reach millennials: “The old model of two tests—a midterm and a final—is not effective for this group. Generation Me’s self-confidence and easy access to information leads them to prefer interactive learning” (p. 67). Those who teach lecture classes may be locked into the midterm-final model; however, those who teach skills-based courses likely engage in more interactive pedagogy. Twenge’s research posits that interaction beyond typical skills-based instruction could benefit the current generation of college students.

To be sure, universities are trying new pedagogical approaches to journalism education, but it is unclear just how many have been innovative. This exploratory study will fill that gap through a review of related literature and a content analysis of university course descriptions. The content analysis will show the extent to which university educators are responding to calls for greater integration between the classroom and industry via quasi-professional experiences. A brief analysis of approaches that are illustrative of current trends also will be included.

Literature Review

The “professionalization of journalism” and the concept of “real-world” learning have deep roots in journalism education. Whether it is the early 20th-century approaches noted above or today’s push toward the hospital method, certain models traditionally have informed the literature: experiential learning, immersive learning, project-based learning, and work-based learning. The concepts of a capstone class, a practicum, or an apprenticeship also have been heavily utilized. To some degree, most of these classes integrate professional experience with academic learning but tend to differ in three areas: where the learning is taking place, who sets the direction of learning, and how much emphasis is placed on theory versus practical experience. Although these terms have varied denotations, some are used interchangeably in academic curricula. Summative descriptions of relevant terms grounded in hallmark studies provide the foundation for this analysis.

Immersive, Apprenticeship, Practicum, Experiential, Capstone

The term immersive learning is found extensively in game-design and health care education. For example, Chris Dede (2009) suggests that simulation takes students to a realm outside the physical classroom and into a virtual learning environment or digital immersion. Although a few instructional journalism exercises and games developed by Poynter’s News University and others (e.g., designers at conferences such as Meaningful Play) have touched on digitally created environments, this method has not been used extensively in journalism education.

Although apprenticeships allow students to “immerse” themselves in their fields while learning from an expert, they represent a different approach. David Boud, Nicky Solomon, and Colin Symes (2001) categorize apprenticeships as focusing on acquiring skills in a real-life workplace, allowing universities and organizations to collaborate on work-based learning opportunities. The goal of an apprenticeship is to use a professional setting, albeit confined by specific course/curriculum requirements, to meet student learning outcomes as well as the needs of the organization. A practicum bridges the divide between theory and practice and largely comes from two schools of thought: the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge acquired in a campus setting to a learning situation or using issues and problems to prompt an investigation of the related theory and knowledge. The latter is more closely aligned with the idea of reflective practicum (Ryan, Toohey, & Hughes, 1996).

Experiential learning, according to Alice Kolb and David A. Kolb (2005), is a philosophy of education based on John Dewey’s theory of experience. This approach is based on the belief that although actual practice is important, learning is a process, where the student experiences, reflects, thinks, and then acts (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). The term experiential learning suggests that the experience is of a professional nature and outside the classroom. Research by Jeffrey A. Cantor (1997), however, also identifies hands-on laboratory activities mimicking the professional world in an academic setting as experiential learning. Capstone courses are primarily used to measure students’ achievement in their majors and transition the student from the academic world to the professional world. The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications in A Guide to Assessment of Student Learning in Journalism and Mass Communication, defines a capstone project as a course that “synthesizes and updates the knowledge, values and competencies acquired by graduating seniors of a sequence or department” (ACEJMC, 2012). Capstones, according to Jean M. Henscheid and Lisa R. Barnicoat (2003), are generally taught by an instructor or groups of instructors and include significant, disciplinary-specific projects that are evaluated for a grade. In a survey of capstone experiences in broadcast journalism conducted by Andrea Tanner, Kathy Forde, John C. Besley, and Tom Weir (2012), 92% of 105 ACEJMC accredited schools with some type of broadcast news program taught a capstone course.

Service-Learning, Community Partner, Collaboration

Service-learning, community partnerships, and collaboration are pedagogical terms that have strong roots in educational research. Robert Bringle and Julie Hatcher (2009) define service-learning as a course-based, organized educational activity that has a reflection component and enhances civic responsibility. Susan Waters and Karen Anderson-Lain (2014) contend that students must understand the community partners’ goals and objectives as well as their responsibilities toward the service-learning project for the engaged activity to proceed efficiently.

However, Jacob Bucher (2012) criticizes the dichotomous role that often occurs in service-learning environments. Bucher instead advocates for community-based learning. This brand of pedagogy provides students with an opportunity to interact directly with populations they are studying—and not just through a company or organization—and to have a hand in effecting change in the community. Specifically, community-based learning involves critical reflection and collaboration. Bucher emphasizes that for projects to be successful for all parties, clients should be actively involved in the community-based learning initiatives, which is in contrast to service-learning where students act on behalf of a client.

Collaboration, as defined by Mary Askim-Lovseth and Timothy O’Keefe (2012), is the interdisciplinary pedagogy that occurs in a collegiate setting, which adds further complexity to quasi-professional pedagogy. “Collaborative learning that incorporates classes and students from different disciplines creates a richer, more complex, more realistic learning environment that cannot help but improve student outcomes” (p. 64). However, in the Askim-Lovseth and O’Keefe (2012) study, collaboration still involves a client, which is similar to other terms previously outlined in existing scholarship.

Hospital, Innovation, Entrepreneurship

Sweeping technological change and strong economic pressures have forced journalism practitioners and educators to rethink traditional approaches and to embrace innovation and entrepreneurship. Likewise, the teaching hospital model for journalism education has received close attention in recent years, but not everyone supports the approach. Proponents suggest that news professionals train aspiring journalists much like physicians instruct medical students at hospitals and help patients/news consumers in the process. In 2011, a report from the New America Foundation urged journalism educators to rethink their missions in the face of technological change that allows more people to become journalists and more people to produce media content (Anderson, Glaisyer, Smith, & Rothfeld, 2011). Specifically, the foundation report suggested that journalism programs “become ‘anchor institutions’ in the emerging informational ecosystem” (para. 2). The authors agreed that the hospital model had value in this ecosystem, but suggested that teaching was only part of the equation and that journalism programs should encourage research, become laboratories of innovation, and develop community-based reporters (Anderson et al., 2011).

The hospital model was further legitimized in an open letter to America’s university presidents, penned by senior officials at foundations responsible for significant grants in journalism education and innovation (“An Open Letter to America’s University Presidents,” 2012). They called on the presidents to work with accreditors to update standards and eliminate administrative roadblocks to reform journalism education and cited the hospital model as having potential in the future. The officials identified the Carnegie Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education (“An Open Letter to America’s University Presidents,” 2012) News 21 program at Arizona State University, where students in special topics classes worked alongside professionals to produce in-depth investigative journalism. “This (approach) better connects journalism schools with the rest of the university, encourages deep subject knowledge and involves the teaching of digital innovation and development of open collaborative work models,” (para. 3) the authors wrote. Eric Newton (2012) senior adviser to the president at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation believes the hospital model could be promising in journalism education. He believes that top professionals should also be integrated into the academic structure at universities and that they be treated equally with top scholars—which could be a significant challenge at schools that favor academic research over practical experience. Vocal opponents such as Donica Mensing and David Ryfe (2013) say the hospital paradigm may not be the perfect fit for all journalism education. They say the hospital metaphor implies that today’s journalism is well defined and has rigorous rules, which is simply not true in the uncertain media environment of the 21st century. Also untrue, they say, is the assumption that undergraduate journalism students have equally well-defined career goals as do their medical student counterparts and that there are well-paying journalism jobs waiting for them after graduation.

Innovation in curriculum, while considered desirable, is less well defined and documented. A 2013 Poynter report, Rethinking Journalism Education: A Call for Innovation (Finberg, 2013), confirmed that journalism continues to be disrupted by changes in technology and approach. According to Poynter’s Howard Finberg (2013), “Journalism education will undergo fundamental shifts in how journalism is taught and who teaches it. Those who don’t innovate in the classroom will be left behind. Just like those who chose not to innovate in the newsroom” (p. 1). Finberg worries that the value of a traditional journalism education may decline, spurred in part by skyrocketing costs and economic conditions that do not ensure employment. He suggests that universities embrace new delivery models (e-learning, innovation labs, and hybrid learning; Finberg, 2013).

The blending of innovation with entrepreneurship and business practice also has received attention. For example, Clayton M. Christensen of Harvard Business School has applied the theory of disruption to news organizations. Christensen theorizes that nimble newcomers into any business (e.g., Huffington Post, BuzzFeed) succeed because of their low overhead, smaller budgets, and less need for high profit margins. They eat away at the traditional businesses, Christensen suggests, by offering products that are more in-tune with audiences and that attract new audiences (Christensen, Skok, & Allworth, 2012).

The review of literature suggests that while certain pedagogical terms are well defined, a research void exists in how journalism educators are identifying and using newly developed educational pedagogy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that quasi-professional experiences exist, but the number, types, and terms being used to describe these experiences are undocumented. This study will examine journalism course descriptions in university catalogs to identify the number and frequency of traditional and transitional terms, previously defined in the literature, being used in journalism classrooms.

Research Questions

The literature review informs the following research questions for this exploratory study:

RQ1: How many select journalism/broadcast/mass communication programs have courses that involve traditional (i.e., customary or time-honored course descriptions such as capstone, practicum, service-learning, etc.) or transitional learning typology (i.e., evolving or emerging course descriptions such as entrepreneurial, innovation, hospital, etc.) that may or may not have longevity?

RQ2: What evidence exists that select journalism/broadcast/mass communication programs are embracing transitional course structures that reflect industry trends and pedagogical developments?

Method

A content analysis of university course descriptions and brief discussion of exemplars illustrative of educational trends in journalism provided the foundations for this study. A platform-agnostic, geographically representative sample of 68 colleges and universities was selected. The colleges and universities analyzed represent 33 states and range in size from Arizona State University-Tempe, with an undergraduate enrollment of 39,968, to Washington and Lee University, with 1,890 undergraduates in 2014, according to U.S. News & World Report (n.d.). All schools were members of the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) and also were accredited by ACEJMC. Twenty-five of the schools were ranked as the highest research (R1) universities (where the most research productivity typically occurs), according to the current Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (n.d.-a). Another 19 were ranked as high research (R2) universities (Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, n.d.-b). Although this study focused on undergraduate curriculum, it should be noted that 56 of the 68 programs also had related graduate programs.

The unit of analysis was individual course descriptions that appeared in the 2013-2014 undergraduate catalogs available on the websites of the selected universities and that contained words (apprenticeship, capstone, collaborative, community, cooperative, entrepreneurial, experiential, hospital, immersive, incubation, innovation, partner, practicum, and service-learning) selected as being representative of the pedagogical trends identified in the literature review. Internships, independent studies, and experimental courses were not included in this analysis. The frequency that the word appeared in individual course descriptions was not recorded. The exemplar programs were selected through a search of academic and trade journals.

Results

Content Analysis

An analysis of individual course titles and descriptions that appeared in the 2013-2014 undergraduate catalogs of the 68 selected universities showed that most schools are not offering classes that reflect pedagogical approaches recently promoted in professional literature, and are relying instead on historically recognized and accepted models such as practicum and capstone (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Terms Used to Search Course Catalog Descriptions for the 68 Institutions That Hold a Membership in the Broadcast Education Association and Are Accredited by the ACEJMC.

	Number of Schools using the term	Number of course descriptions using the term
Practicum	37	66
Capstone	14	20
Community	17	21
Immersive(ion)	6	7
Cooperative	2	2
Apprenticeship	2	2
Entrepreneur(ship)	4	5
Collaborative	5	6
Service-learning	4	4
Innovation	6	7
Experiential	4	5
Partner	2	2
Incubation	0	0
Hospital	0	0

Note. ACEJMC = Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

As evidence, 37 schools (more than 50%) used the term practicum in their descriptions, making it the most frequent word utilized to describe traditional or transitional learning typology. In general, practicums provided students with hands-on, practical experience and often replicated work done in professional newsrooms. They also emphasized production, focusing on practical opportunities to apply classroom concepts (see Table 2). Twenty percent (14) of the selected schools used capstone—courses designed to conclude students’ studies through skills application. Phrases such as “to demonstrate professional proficiency,” and words such as “synthesize” were often used in the capstone course descriptions. Seventeen of the 68 schools used “community” as a descriptor. Some of these classes had distinct outlets with whom the students worked; however, it was not always clear whether these courses were faculty supervised or student led. Six schools provided courses that touted immersive experiences.

Table 2.

Terms Used to Further Qualify Practicum, Which Was the Term Most Frequently Utilized to Describe Traditional or Transitional Learning Typology for Journalism Courses.

	Number of schools using the term	Number of course descriptions using the term
Lecture	2	7
Practical experience	17	26
Application	1	1
Hands-on	2	2
Field	5	6
Produc(tion)	9	15
Professional	9	16
Faculty	11	14

Only two schools used the word “cooperative” in course descriptions. In both cases, the word was used as a title for what was essentially an internship. Two universities had one class each that used the word “apprenticeship” in the course title, although the course descriptions did not specifically outline how the apprenticeships were implemented. Of the four universities (five courses) that included “entrepreneurship” in descriptions, one focused on entrepreneurial techniques in media management; the second asked students to develop and apply new business models for journalism in an attempt to capture new audiences; a third required students to take a broader look at entrepreneurial concepts such as risk assessment, resources, and planning, whereas the fourth emphasized the development of digital media startups and the creation of multimedia products. The fifth course, in entrepreneurial photography, was listed but not currently offered.

All five schools that included “collaborative” either in the course title or course description sought to boost students’ abilities to work with others on multimedia projects. One of these courses required the students to work as a team and collaborate with a resident scholar or artist; two focused on packaging stories for various media, and two others required work on a collaborative visual and/or research project. Another focused on collaborative online producing.

Four schools offered classes that included “service-learning” in the course title or description. One focused on communications for social causes with a service-learning component; the second promoted a service-learning environment while studying diverse communities; the third was designed to build student leadership skills and promote community service, and the fourth trained students to assist local community and non-profit groups in the production of media.

Six universities used “innovation” in their course titles or descriptions (seven courses). Four of these courses targeted entrepreneurship, new business models, and/or startups; a fifth course concentrated on the new media landscape and/or digital media, and the sixth was devoted to good practices in online journalism. The seventh encouraged innovation in graphics presentation.

Four schools used the term experiential in their curriculum. One school referred to the class as “planned, supervised, and evaluated for credit by faculty.” In another, the course description included a specific requirement for the experiential setting: one external editing project for a predetermined client. Two schools used “partner” as a descriptor as part of a course. One class emphasized “work with area partners on projects related to reaching diverse, mass audiences,” whereas another focused on partnering with other universities to produce documentary-style multimedia stories.

Exemplar: News21

Although no course descriptions contained the term hospital model, The News21 program, created in 2006 with the help of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is known for its innovative approach to integrating students and professionals. According to the program website (http://cronkite.asu.edu/experience/news21), participating students study an in-depth topic (e.g., health, religion, energy, etc.) in a spring video seminar and then complete an on-site summer reporting fellowship that may involve travel across the United States or to other countries, all under the tutelage of news veterans such as Leonard Downie, Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post.

The program, housed at and largely funded by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, has served more than 500 journalism students from accredited journalism programs, according to the News21 website (http://cronkite.asu.edu/experience/news21). The students’ work, which has included an investigation into voter fraud and the safety of imported food, has appeared in major publications across the country (Marcus, 2014). Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, says, in addition to the journalism training the students receive, there are other benefits—the students are able to put manpower behind long-term investigative projects that some newsrooms can no longer afford and the collaboration with professional journalists allows educators to develop stronger relationships with industry leaders (Marcus, 2014)

Why aren’t more schools jumping on the hospital bandwagon? In a personal interview, Downie said it is because they don’t want to be considered a trade school and because of pressure to hire PhDs instead of professors of practice (M. Spillman, personal communication, November 25, 2014). Although anecdotal evidence supporting the News21 program is plentiful, further study is needed to determine whether the approach produces measurable improvement in skills and in job opportunities for student participants. It is also unclear how individual universities might integrate this experience into their existing curriculum. Downie, however, said proof of success is in the knowledge that “they (professionals) hire our people” (M. Spillman, personal communication, November 25, 2014).

Similarly, other exemplars of quasi-professional pedagogy exist in addition to the News21 opportunity at Arizona State. Noteworthy examples include the following: The Innocence Project at Northwestern University, Capitol News Service at the University of Maryland, Capitol Bureau Reporting at the University of Oklahoma, and Carolina Community Media Project at the University of North Carolina.¹

Conclusion

This study is a big-picture look at curriculum. One of the greatest challenges that journalism educators face is crafting a curriculum that prepares their students for the present as well as for what will undoubtedly be an uncertain future. Creating courses that are innovative, forward-looking, and experiential is difficult, and an examination of course descriptions at select universities suggests that few are meeting this challenge. Journalism as a profession has been slow to change, as has journalism education, as evidenced by the identifiers used in course catalogs to describe the learning process. The only way to see whether these courses are actually more innovative than their descriptions is by studying each course and its syllabus.

Well-established words such as capstone and practicum are still frequently used to describe educational experiences in journalism. Absent, for the most part, are terms such as entrepreneurial, collaborative, experiential, and innovative—all of which indicate, at least via course catalogs, that schools are not heeding the call for change from top journalism observers. Occasionally, faculty members argue that their school’s current catalog does not reflect the actual course content that is being delivered or that innovation is occurring in experimental classes, seminars, or independent studies not specifically described in the catalog. However, a prospective student can only analyze a university curriculum through the course descriptions, rendering them an incredibly important piece of the curriculum puzzle. A university catalog is a very public, important tool to inform prospective students and others about program offerings and philosophy. This lack of precision prevents universities from successfully promoting and branding their products, and also makes it difficult for scholars to track important curricular trends.

Another possible explanation for the lack of concrete evidence of curriculum innovation is that faculty have dismissed new concepts (e.g., hospital, immersive, etc.) simply as words du jour that will become passé as quickly as they became fashionable. This might be a dangerous decision, according to many experts in journalism education. If, in fact, the current terms/concepts do not meet the desired learning outcomes, perhaps educators should create terms of their own that more accurately depict what is being taught.

To be sure, there are innovative endeavors creating exceptional experiences for students such as News21, as outlined previously. And while anecdotal evidence suggests that universities should explore these approaches, additional research is needed to study their effectiveness and to determine whether these models should be widely implemented. Specifically, scholars should study the placement rates and first-job locations of graduates from these programs. These statistics could be supplemented by in-person interviews with managers to determine whether they have observed measurable differences in the level of preparation of their new hires.

The take-away from this exploratory study is twofold. First, journalism and media programs need to make an effort to lead the industry and try new things. For this to occur, top journalism educators say university bureaucracy needs to decrease (Finberg & Krueger, 2013). In particular, universities could reduce the number of committees and administrators that need to approve changes in course descriptions and learning outcomes. In addition, more universities should permit yearly curriculum updates instead of relying on multi-year cycles tied to the printed course catalog. These changes would allow faculty/departments to be more nimble and innovative. Increased funding is advantageous, of course, but innovation should not be limited to big-budget programs and a one-size–fits-all approach. Second, journalism and media programs must promote the steps they are taking to be innovative both inside and outside the classroom.

As Howard Finberg of the Poynter Institute has pointed out, if journalism schools fail to respond to industry changes, they are “at risk of being bypassed or overshadowed” (Marcus, 2014, para. 5). It may be time, as J-Lab founder Jan Schaffer (2014) asserts, that if the academy wants its journalism schools to flourish, it needs to establish a different narrative about why journalism education matters (Schaffer, 2014). She suggests that a journalism degree should be sold as what she calls “the ultimate Gateway Degree” (para. 10) that allows students to get a job anywhere from information startups, to politics, commercial enterprises and traditional newsrooms. Instruction, she concludes, should not focus simply on inverted pyramid stories and video and digital production, but embrace mission-driven, entrepreneurial-style journalism that will make a difference. “If I were to lead a journalism school today,” she said, “I’d want its mission to be: We make the media we need for the world we want” (para. 1). Evidence presented here indicates that most J-Schools in this sample are not there yet—or that most are not publicizing it.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Mary Spillman is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism at Ball State University, where she teaches multimedia storytelling and serves as the coordinator of the News Track. Spillman’s scholarly publications and research interests center on new media applications, cross-media partnerships, collaborative teaching and learning, and curriculum assessment. She also has worked as a professional journalist for The Associated Press and several radio and television stations.

Adam J. Kuban is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at Ball State University, where he focuses on transdisciplinary, project-based learning and community-engaged scholarship. Adam has taught for 11 years as the instructor of record for myriad media-oriented courses such as News Reporting, Writing & Editing; Multimedia Storytelling; Mass Communication Theory; and Leadership + Media. His alma maters include Iowa State University and the University of Utah.

Suzy J. Smith is an associate professor of Telecommunications at Ball State University, where she has taught for eight years. She teaches courses in broadcast and multimedia journalism. Before teaching Smith spent 24 years as a producer and senior producer at , CNN Sports, CNNSI and the Weather Channel.

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