Case-based education: A strategy for contextualising journalism curriculum in East Africa

Abstract

This article explores a set of educational strategies used in a new Master of Arts in Digital Journalism aimed at strengthening the multimedia production skills of East African journalists. Drawing on constructivist theories of learning, the article argues that preparing journalism graduates for unknown futures requires curricula to be contextualised environmentally and cognitively. This has implications for both the process of curriculum planning and the strategies deployed in designing programmatic content and the learning experience. Citing the experiences of implementing a new Master of Arts in Digital Journalism in Kenya, the article describes an issues-framing process used to inform curriculum design to ensure the programme is environmentally relevant. It goes on to describe three innovative ways case-based education can be used to contextualise learning to ensure cognitive relevance. Integrating cases across and through the curriculum develops ‘cognitive flexibility’ in the form of advanced thinking and problem-solving skills. Such skills are essential for journalists to adapt to rapidly changing professional and social contexts. The outcome of this systematic approach to curriculum development is a flexible, spiral curriculum that promotes cognitive flexibility while addressing the discrete educational issues facing East African journalists. The approaches outlined might offer a replicable framework to maintain the environmental and cognitive relevance of journalism education in times of unrelenting change.

Keywords

Adult learning case-based education cognitive flexibility constructivism East Africa journalism education

Introduction

Educating journalists today is not easy. The challenges are well documented by scholars pondering the future of journalism and journalism education (see Franklin, 2014; Lynch, 2016). For journalism education in developing regions, however, the challenges are even greater. They face social, political and economic insecurity and uncertainty. To effectively respond to such challenges, journalism educators might benefit from a more systematic approach to curriculum design and development. This article explores how to ensure journalism education is environmentally and cognitively relevant. This means a journalism curricula must be contextualised on two levels. First, learning needs to be contextualised to the environment in which journalism will be performed. Second, the learning must be cognitively relevant in that it fosters a set of skills that will help prepare graduates to work in complex, uncertain and highly unpredictable settings.

This article examines a new Master of Arts (MA) in Digital Journalism, introduced in Kenya by the Aga Khan University (AKU), intended to enhance the expertise of East African journalists. Targeting mid-career journalists, the MA forms part of an ambitious project aimed at strengthening media independence and sustainability across the region.

East Africa is a region of great diversity, rapid change and uneven development. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi make up what has become known as the East African Community (EAC). Each country within the EAC faces high levels of poverty, varying levels of political uncertainty and intrusions on media freedom. Issues of access to quality education compound the region’s inequalities. And as East Africa experiences the first phases of digital disruption, the development imbalances grow.

Preparing journalists to work in such conditions presents a raft of challenges for local universities, which are often ill-resourced and overburdened with students. In addition to the social, political and economic conditions in which journalism operates, developing regions present a raft of professional and educational challenges which must be taken into account when designing and/or renovating curricula. This following presents the case for a more systematic approach to curriculum planning. The aim is to ensure that the journalism curricula are contextualised to the environment in which they operate while fostering the type of cognitive skills needed to survive and thrive in times of unremitting change.

Contextualisation

The East African context

Uneven development and contrasting colonial experiences have resulted in marked inequalities across the EAC in terms social, economic and technological development. In addition to issues relating to physical infrastructure, education continues to be a key factor in regional development (see Cooksey, 2016: 2).

East Africa has experienced strong economic growth in recent years (Society for International Development, 2016). However, Kenya’s capitalist economy dominates the region with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita almost double its closest neighbour, Tanzania. In 2017, Kenya’s GDP per capita was US$1455.4 followed by Tanzania US$879.2, Rwanda US$702.8, Uganda US$615.3 and Burundi US$285.7 (World Bank, 2017).

Other inequalities continue to threaten the region’s progress, including poor leadership, corruption, electoral malpractice, inadequate infrastructure, a lack of trust in public institutions, growing poverty, low wages, high levels of discrimination, weak regulation and insecurity (Cooksey, 2016; Society for International Development, 2016). ‘There is a strong possibility that future generations of East Africans will live worse lives than the current generation of East Africans’, the Society for International Development (2016: 22–23) predicts as population growth outstrips job creation (Society for International Development, 2016: 21).

Kenya’s 2017 elections are just one recent example of the political difficulties facing the region, which historically has been marred by genocide, coups, military dictatorships and one-party centralised political systems (see Cooksey, 2016; Society for International Development, 2016).

Despite being signatories to the Education for All Initiative, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda still fail to meet their targets. The 2014 Are Our Children Learning report reveals ‘one out of five East African school children are completing primary school without having acquired basic literacy and numeracy skills’ (p. 2). Issues of poverty and poor literacy rates lead to huge inequalities in terms of access to university education.

Internet access in the region is increasing rapidly and mobile phone penetration is growing exponentially (Deloitte, 2017), signalling technological progress. However, inequitable distribution of Internet services – across the region and between urban and rural settings – poses additional challenges in terms of access. High rates of illiteracy and extreme poverty compound these inequities.

East African media landscape

East Africa’s media play a crucial role in helping to address these challenges. In fact, in Kenya, the media are the most trusted institution with about 87 per cent of Kenyans expressing confidence in ‘the informative, educative and watchdog role of journalist’ (Ngetich, 2016). But the East Africa’s media environment is complex. As Table 1 reveals, the East African Community enjoys some level of media pluralism – particularly in Kenya (see Communications Authority Kenya, 2017; Kenya Monitor, 2015; Radio Africa, 2011–2016;Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority, 2016). The scene is very fluid, however, with new enterprises commencing and others folding on a regular basis.

Table 1.

East Africa media outlets.

	Television	Radio	Print	Magazines
Kenya	64	139	25	70
Tanzania	35	112	11	10
Uganda	56	167	11	11
Rwanda	23	31	15	5
Burundi	6	16	5	N/A
Total	184	486	67	96

The digital disruption experienced elsewhere in the world is now starting to affect – positively and negatively – media structures and the work practices of regional journalists. For instance, exiled journalists from Burundi are using WhatsApp to distribute their stories, and bloggers are an increasingly important part of the media diet of Kenyans. There are about 15,000 registered blogs operating in the country and 3000 active on Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr platforms. Mainstream media houses and new enterprises are struggling to reinvent business models and to sustain quality content production (Kenya Monitor, 2015).

Like elsewhere around the globe, technological advances have resulted in changing audience needs. Legacy media across the region have been forced to rethink their business models and look for new ways of integrating technology to generate profits. Mobile phones offer new opportunities for distribution and engagement. However, most media houses have had to restructure and reorganise in order to survive this first phase of digital disruption.

The region’s media also suffer serious incursions on their freedom (Freedom in the World 2017, 2016, 2015). Freedom House ranks Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda as ‘not free’, while Kenyan and Tanzania are categorised as ‘partly free’. Kenya’s media are criticised for succumbing to pressure from advertisers and influential politicians, while a new political regime in Tanzania has banned public assemblies, halted public broadcasts of parliamentary sessions and introduced restrictive cybercrimes laws that have been used to imprison journalists and government critics. In Rwanda, Freedom House has reported that journalists face ‘arbitrary arrests, politicised prosecutions and enforced disappearances’ (Freedom House Rwanda, 2017), while in Uganda journalists ‘reported self-censorship’, bribes for positive coverage and pervasive state surveillance (Freedom House Uganda, 2016).

The AKU

Traditionally known for its work in health sciences and education development, the AKU launched the Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC) in 2015 to provide academic programmes and professional development training to strengthen media independence and sustainability across the East African region. A vibrant and independent media is seen as essential to regional development. This vision underscored the learning outcomes of the MA in Digital Journalism.¹ Accordingly, the MA in Digital Journalism set out to strengthen the skills of working journalists in the area of multimedia production, innovation and entrepreneurship and specialist reporting.

The AKU is a private global university of and for the developing world. It forms part of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which is a not-for-profit development institution supporting projects to lead change in emerging economies around the globe. The AKU derives much of its funding from the for-profit division of the AKDN.

Designing the MA in Digital Journalism programme to meet the university’s development agenda presented a number of unique curriculum development challenges. In addition to the well-documented issues relating to journalism education globally, the AKU programme had to address different media systems with varying levels of media freedom. Local issues needed to be identified, discussed and situated within the broader contexts of pan-African and global debates. This is despite a lack of local research into journalism across the region. Moreover, the programme had to add value and expand the expertise of mid-career journalists by fostering specialised reporting skills and mastery of multimedia production. This all had to be done with a small core faculty of just four.

Therefore, a flexible, efficient curriculum structure was required, which produced its own research outputs and promoted critical analysis, innovation and entrepreneurship while preparing graduates for unknown and unforeseeable futures. It also demanded innovative teaching practices to serve adult learners – in the form of mid-career journalists – with diverse work and life experience.

Conceptual framework

Constructivist theories of learning informed the design and development of the AKU-GSMC MA in Digital Journalism and its learning experience. Constructivists see knowledge building as a process based on a learner’s prior experiences, the social context in which learning takes place and the student’s interaction with others. This perspective underscores the importance of a rich learning environment that builds on the learner’s existing knowledge and respects the ‘unique interests, styles, motivations and capabilities of individual learners so that learning environments can be tailored to them’ (Reese, 1992 in Lefoe, 1998).

When dealing with adult learners, however, building knowledge also involves a process of ‘unlearning’ where students need to evaluate the utility of the ‘procedural knowledge’ they have developed in their personal and professional lives (see Sternberg and Caruso, 1985: 135). In addition to building knowledge and skills, therefore, constructivist theories of knowledge suggest curricula targeting mid-career professionals should challenge pre-existing understandings of how to go about work.

From a constructivist perspective, therefore, ‘future-proofing’ journalists requires instilling advanced thinking and problem-solving skills to deal with uncertain and changing conditions in complex and ill-structured domains, such as East Africa and the journalistic profession. Educationalists describe these qualities as cognitive flexibility (see Lowrey and Kim, 2009; Spiro et al., 1991).

Cognitive flexibility is

the ability to spontaneously restructure one’s knowledge, in many ways, in adaptive response to radically changing situational demands … This is a function of both the way knowledge is represented (e.g., along multiple rather single conceptual dimensions) and the processes that operate on those mental representations (e.g., processes of schema assembly rather than intact schema retrieval). (Spiro et al., 1992)

‘Revisiting the same material, at different times, in rearranged contexts, for different purposes, and from different perspectives’ allows students to test the suitability of their pre-existing knowledge and problem-solving techniques to new contexts and problems, according to Spiro et al. (1991).

This suggests a spiral curriculum is needed where material is revisited over time from different perspectives. Case-based education (CBE) – guided inquiry based on real situations – is a helpful pedagogical strategy that can be used in a number of ways to return to concepts over time and test their veracity.

CBE is well-known for situating learning and bringing it to life in a particular professional and socio-political context (see Kim et al., 2006; Shulman, 1992; Webb et al., 2005). Well-constructed cases afford opportunities for ‘professionals to gather together for retelling, reflection and analysis’ (Shulman, 1992: 10). It also encourages the novice to ‘think like a member of the profession’ (Shulman, 1992: 7).

An additional advantage of CBE is that it prompts multiple responses and perspectives. Integrating theoretical concepts into analysing real-life problems allows students to explore action and interrogate why certain choices are made.

Such diversity of viewpoints can stimulate interest in the problems of the profession and motivate learners to explore tensions between current practice, ideals and possible reforms (Shulman, 1992: 8–9).

By exposing learners to a range of competitive strategies designed to replace ingrained and possibly ineffective ways of thinking learned through past experience, CBE can promote new ways of identifying and dealing with problems (Kenner and Weinerman, 2011: 93–94). By embedding cases horizontally across and vertically through the curriculum, students can explore the changing professional world from different perspectives. While each case is situated in a particular place and time, students can be invited to explore a case from diverse standpoints and consider alternative actions and different resolutions to problems. By returning to these strategies at different stages of the curriculum, the concepts are reinforced over time. Such approaches help learners to ‘cope with the judgmental complexities of ill-structured domains of knowledge and performance’ (Shulman, 1992: 24–25 citing Spiro et al., 1988). CBE, therefore, can help students adjust their thinking skills and problem-solving techniques to address radically changing social, political, economic, technological and professional contexts.

This suggests that creative and innovative approaches to solving problems can emerge from discussions emanating from cases that are revisited over time (Kim et al., 2006; Levin, 1995; Shulman, 1992). Such cases can help model processes of thinking and problem solving that can assist graduates (and their instructors) to navigate the unknown futures of journalistic and media work in complex local and global settings. CBE affords opportunities to extend thinking beyond the everyday to engage in how things might be done better or differently in a distinctive or changing context, like East Africa and the journalism profession. Thus, CBE can help to reform and improve current practice.

And by advancing a range of theoretical perspectives over time, CBE can encourage students to recognise alternative explanations and ways of doing journalism (Shulman, 1992: 3). Integrated CBE promotes advanced thinking and problems-solving skills, which encourage students to look at problems differently and be more selective about the strategies used to deal with these problems (see Krems, 1995; Spiro et al., 1991). This approach can help cultivate critical, moral and practical reasoning skills, which facilitate decision-making in dynamic environments (see Kim et al., 2006), like journalism in East Africa.

By working through alternative interpretations and approaches to issues, CBE helps students develop a ‘toolkit’ of problem-solving techniques and reasoning processes to deal with multifaceted and complex situations as and when they arise. It can promote cognitive flexibility.

CBE provides the added advantage of allowing students to explore problem-solving processes in a supported environment. Learners can investigate alternative actions, interpretations and approaches to dealing with issues and resolving problems in the classroom. In addition to promoting reflection, therefore, cases that promote ‘cognitive flexibility’ help students to develop the language for rendering account for their actions – an increasingly important skill needed for journalists working in complex and changing professional and social environments.

In addition to promoting the advanced thinking and problem-solving skills needed to deal with uncertain futures, well-developed cases can nurture the professional qualities essential for promoting innovation and entrepreneurship (see Ferrier, 2013). Studies reveal that CBE promotes professional dispositions such as flexibility, autonomy, initiative taking, self-efficacy and the ability to manage teams (see Bagdasarov et al., 2012; Christensen and Carlile, 2009; Kim et al., 2006). Shulman (1992: 9) argues CBE also encourages conviction because cases stimulate interest in the problems of the profession. They transport students to ‘situations and dilemma they would unlikely experience directly’ and foster better understanding of their own processes of sense-making (Bagdasarov et al., 2012). According to Ferrier, these are the professional dispositions needed to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.

Moreover, well-designed and delivered cases that address issues of personal and professional interest to students help nurture an intimate and equitable learning community whereby the students themselves take an active role in setting the rules of interaction and participation and form lasting learning partnerships between themselves and with faculty (see discussion below).

Finally, cases offer a narrative – a story that evolves over time in a particular place and which is sufficiently complex to inspire discussion and debate (Shulman, 1992: 14, 21). Well-crafted multimedia cases become exemplars of journalistic best practice themselves.

Constructivist theories of learning highlight the importance of a flexible learning experience that fosters advanced thinking and problem-solving skills. Thus, CBE emerged as a signature pedagogy for AKU-GSMC because it affords opportunities to explore real-life problems from different perspectives, thereby promoting cognitive flexibility. Integrating cases across and through the curriculum helped to ensure the learners would acquire advanced thinking skills and problem-solving skills to work in complex, changing, and at times unstable, environments.

Putting the principles into practice at AKU

The foregoing highlights potential advantages of using CBE to foster the type of learning experience needed to educate mid-career journalists to work in uncertain and changing times. While CBE can ensure the cognitive relevance of the programme, a systematic way of assessing the educational needs of the cohort was needed. AKU set about a comprehensive issues-framing process to identify the magnitude and character of the gaps in journalists’ knowledge.

The issues-framing process

Commencing in 2007, before the school was established, AKU’s issues framing involved four overlapping processes (Belcher et al., 2002: 19, Breit et al., 2015), including the following:

Formulating a project team (2007–2010) involving establishing a Thinking Group, that comprised experts from around the world who helped to identify the gaps between media education and the expertise required by media and communications industries globally and locally.² The Thinking Group met several times during the period 2007–2010, resulting in a draft curriculum.

Undertaking a needs analysis including reviewing journalism education literature, locally and globally, plus market research surveys (2009–2014). Two market studies were commissioned during the planning phase. Mwesige conducted the first in November 2009 and Synovate undertook another in November 2010. These studies identified the needs of East African media and recommended several areas where journalism education needed to be strengthened. The review of literature is ongoing and, most significantly, revealed gaps in research relating to journalism in East Africa.

Meetings were held with a broad cross-section of stakeholders across the region’s media and communications sectors to verify understandings of the local journalists needs and to identify gaps in current journalism programmes (2014–2015). These meetings were used to refine the programme learning outcomes, review the programmatic structure and course content as well as to refine the pedagogical approach to be adopted by the school.

A consensus meeting was hosted in December 2015 to ‘check the validity of the initial framework that has been constructed, looking for perspectives, concerns and tensions that resonate’ with media workers and journalism educators (see Belcher et al., 2002: 19). High-ranking academics, industry representatives, media regulators and industry groups were invited to provide feedback and make suggestions to improve the proposed programme.

Much of the initial market investigation was undertaken before the school was launched. The Thinking Group’s model curriculum provided a framework for discussion and feedback from key stakeholders. Extensive consultation resulted in significant changes being made to the model curriculum in terms of the programme structure, course content and learning experience. The following section offers more details on the issues revealed as part of the issues-framing process.

Two regional studies (Mwesige, 2009; Synovate, 2010) commissioned by the university during the planning phase exposed numerous areas where university-level journalism education in East Africa was falling short of industry expectations. The Synovate Study (2010: 14) found local graduates were lacking fundamental ‘journalism skills’ in the areas of writing, editing, interviewing, investigation and research, as well as the ability to work across digital formats.

Specialised reporting skills, involving in-depth, analytical and consistent coverage of a certain issue, were identified as another deficiency in university preparation of journalists. Training in this area was found to be very uneven, with instruction being offered as electives as part of university programmes or through in-house training from media houses. A majority of journalists interviewed (Synovate, 2010: 14) indicated specialised skills were garnered through on-the-job experience, personal interest and consistent exposure to specific reporting rounds. Where formal training was offered, it was made available through civil society organisations and focused on the thematic areas of democracy and governance, conflict, health, human rights, environment and climate change (Synovate, 2010: 14). Accordingly specialist-reporting skills were developed in response to the perceived needs of aid agencies, rather than the demands of regional media organisations and journalists.

Visual journalism, including photojournalism, video production, documentary production and film, was another gap while multimedia productions skills were also lacking. Like elsewhere in the world, East African journalism programmes failed to foster innovation and entrepreneurship (see Ferrier, 2013).

At the time the Synovate study (2010) was undertaken, few East African universities had the requisite technology and teaching resources to provide a strong foundational education in fundamental journalism skills which were deemed to encompass digital/multimedia production. Accordingly, AKU-GSMC has invested in developing a radio and television station plus providing a range of mobile video journalism kits for students. A number of other universities are now investing in digital technologies to align with industry needs.

A review of literature revealed a more problematic issue for curriculum developers – the lack of local research into East African media. Research into regional issues is increasing; however, the majority of research and scholarly texts on journalism and/or journalism studies emanate from the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe or South Africa. From a social constructivist perspective, we needed to find ways of providing greater context for students to ensure the MA was relevant to local journalists working in dynamically changing environments.

The Synovate study (2010) also identified issues relating to the quality of lecturers, course relevance (particularly to the digital or new media context) and the balance between theory and practice. In particular, the study found lecturers lacked practical journalism experience (Synovate, 2010: 10); multimedia production did not form part of the traditional journalism curriculum which tended to focus on writing, reporting, interviewing and basic editing. and ‘most media houses have developed in-house training programmes [sic] to complement the “theoretical” training in basic journalism offered in most media training institutions with the relevant practical skills’.

The balance between theory and practice was identified as a key problem in East African journalism education institutions. The Synovate Study (2010: 10–12) highlighted there were different interpretations of what constituted basic journalism skills across East African institutions. Moreover, an imbalance between theory and practice ‘has critically affected journalists’ ability to fit into media houses on employment’ (Synovate, 2010: 9). Thus, the MA in Digital Journalism needed to strengthen employability skills and foster a way of thinking that could enable our graduates to adapt to changing conditions in work and everyday life.

Lectures are the preferred mode of content delivery in East African universities (Okioga et al., 2012: 602), resulting in a passive learning experience where students are required to memorise lecture notes and ‘regurgitate’ this information in exams to evidence attainment of learning outcomes. This approach sees knowledge as a product and places the responsibility of learning directly on the teacher. Such approaches overlook the discrete needs of adult learners, who are the target market for GSMC’s MA. Adults are autonomous and self-directed learners (see Knowles, 1970, 1994), requiring a learning experience that leverages their prior knowledge and experience. Moreover, conceptual knowledge needs to be developed in a practical context, which can be related to the complexities of real life in East Africa. Thus, for the reasons articulated earlier, AKU-GSMC turned to constructivist theories of learning and CBE emerged as a signature pedagogy.

In summary, the issues-framing process offered evidence to inform the MA in Digital Journalism curriculum content. Specifically, the programme needed to build skills and knowledge in multimedia production while fostering mastery of a specialist reporting. At the same time, it had to improve graduates’ employability in a changing sector and strengthen their ‘professional disposition’ to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. A dearth of local/indigenous research and adaptable resources provided another layer of complexity. The MA needed to address these broad-ranging educational challenges while equipping graduates to work in the complex environment of East Africa and a rapidly changing profession. Flexible Cognitive Theory highlighted the need for a flexible learning environment where students can test the veracity and relevance of new and prior knowledge to the changing social, political, economic and professional contexts in which East African journalists work. For reasons articulated earlier, CBE emerged as a signature pedagogy.

The programme: Its structure and approach to learning

AKU’s MA in Digital Journalism is a four-semester programme of study, involving two foundational courses in digital journalism plus a set of core courses, a professional project and a research thesis (see Table 2). The programme has been designed to provide a platform neutral environment where students work across all media throughout a semester of study. Many of the students joining the programme will have experience in just one media – print, broadcast or online. To ensure all students had basic expertise across all platforms, it was decided to start each semester with a 1-week intensive boot camp that orients students to the programme, the pedagogy and the technology. It also offers refresher training in basic journalism skills, research, academic writing and social media use.

Table 2.

MA in Digital Journalism curriculum outline.

Semester 1^a	Semester 2^a	Semester 3^a	Semester 4^a
Content that Sells^b	From Reporter to Entrepreneur	Putting Research into Action	Thesis: The Research Project
Investigation and Analysis^b	Media Leadership in Action	The Specialist Reporting Project
Media Law and Ethics^b	Media Development and Social Impact
Past, Present and Future^b	Developing Your Editorial Specialty

MA: Master of Arts.

A week-long intensive orientation boot camp is conducted at the start of each semester.

Fortnightly technical boot camps are conducted on a fortnightly basis to ensure all students have the technical skills to produce content across all platforms.

The learning experience offers mid-career journalists an opportunity to extend their critical and creative abilities while getting hands-on experience in multimedia production. At the same time, they develop specialist-reporting expertise through a semester-long project. The programme requires all students to complete a specialist-reporting project and a research thesis to be eligible for graduation.

The specialist project provides an efficient and cost-effective way of dealing with building specialist expertise. An additional benefit is a more personalised learning, whereby students work with a specialist journalist mentor and a discipline advisor to produce a multimedia project and critical reflection that evaluates the quality and impact of the project by reference to academic literature and professional best/good practice. Progression to the specialist project is dependent on students acquiring a passing grade in ‘Developing your Editorial Specialty’ where they pitch and plan this project. This scaffolded structure has many advantages such as reducing the number of courses offered, minimising the number of full-time faculty – we can rely on adjunct faculty and experts from other disciplines – plus the students can work on a project of personal and profession interest and regional relevance.

Informed by Cognitive Flexibility Theory, the MA in Digital Journalism curriculum was designed to progressively and cumulatively model the desired processes of thinking, action and problem-solving while allowing students to evidence their ability to utilise, adapt and create new ways of solving problems in a constantly changing work environment. This was achieved by integrating CBE horizontally across and vertically through the curriculum in order to produce a rich learning experience (see Table 3). CBE was used in three key ways:

A living case based on the State of East Africa Media.

Student-centred cases based on the students own experiences of media work the experience of fellow media workers.

Real-life cases from the field of journalism in the region.

Table 3.

Issues-framing outcome and curriculum response.

Issue	Curriculum response
Addressing regional specific knowledge and skills deficits	Living case study – The State of the News Media in East Africa
Fostering mastery of specialist expertise	Project-based specialist project
Furthering employability attributes for a dynamically changing sector	Case-based education built from students’ own experience, the experience of fellow media workersIndividual and group reflectionsProject-based assessments
Developing local/indigenous resources	Living case study on State of New Media in East Africa
Designing a learning experience for adult learners	Case-based education – individual, group and cohort
Promoting capacity for lifelong learning	Learning partnerships emerging from case-based education

The following section explains how CBE was used.

CBE innovation 1: The living case study

Faced with a dearth of indigenous materials, GSMC is undertaking an ambitious foray into CBE where the students themselves help to construct a living case, focusing on the State of East Africa’s News Media. The living case is developed through coursework activities, student reflections and dedicated individual and team-based assessment tasks and activities. The activities are undertaken throughout the first three semesters of the programme, progressively addressing the issues facing the East African media. Data generated through these activities contribute to an annual research project, headed by GSMC faculty and finalised with the help of student volunteers. Based loosely around the Pew Research Centre’s State of the News Media, the project is designed to capture a yearly snapshot of different aspects of the East African media environment which can be recorded, analysed, interpreted and revised in later semesters and by other cohorts.

This approach ensures student learning is situated in the local setting, enabling them to appreciate the facts, issues and trends shaping their working environment. Table 4 sets out the various activities and assessments, which contribute to the State of the East Africa’s New Media Project. (The relationships between activities are highlighted in colour. Each related activity is given a discrete colour – those that have a standalone contribution to the State of the East African News Media appear in white). Several activities are linked across courses. Others are revisited in later semesters where students can review the data and analysis undertaken in earlier semesters from different theoretical perspectives and through alternative lenses. This approach supports active and deep learning to promote cognitive flexibility whereby students draw on their existing knowledge to explore new issues and to challenge existing assumptions. When combined with the student-centred case, over time, they can evidence how their knowledge, skills and attitudes have changed.

Table 4.

Map of MA in Digital Journalism living case study.

Sem 1	Content that Sells	Investigation and Analysis	Media Law and Ethics	Past, Present and Future
	Summative: Interview with high profile media character.	Diagnostic: Reflection on research techniques used in students own journalistic practice	Coursework task: Media ownership data	Summative: History of East Africa Media (Team)
			Coursework task: Key ethical issues facing East African media
	Summative assessment: News theme analysis (content analysis)		Coursework Task: Legal issues facing EA journalists
	Edit and package interview with high profile character	Summative: Audience media consumption habits survey	Summative: Critical reflection based on progressive learning	Summative: Analysis of news consumption habits.
Mini conference	Showcase Multimedia portfolio based on pitch	Panel discussionReflection of research processes utilised for storytelling	Poster presentationsNew Frontiers: Ethical & Legal Challenges	New Frontiers in EA Journalism: Results of news consumption habits study
Sem 2	Putting Research into Action	Media Leadership in Action	Developing Your Editorial Specialty	Advanced Digital Journalism
	Reflect on research tools	Mapping media management and leadership traits East Africa (team)	Content analysis to support editorial specialty building on semester 1 news theme analysis	Market analysis of East Africa media markets building from news consumption habits study (Team project)
	Review and redevelop survey developed in first semester – test instrument	Reflection on individual’s own leadership style		Innovation project for AKU-GSMC outlets
	Coursework: Review coursework to design academic research project to identify key legal and ethical issues facing East African media (Team assignment)	Developing a personal development plan		Business plan
	Literature review to identify gaps in research			Project evaluation
	Content analysis to support specialist project
Semester 3	Specialist Project		Media Development and Social Impact
			Summative: Media and democracy assignment in East Africa
Semester 4	Research Thesis

MA: Master of Arts; EA: Ease African; AKU-GSMC: The Aga Khan University-Graduate School of Media and Communications.

As Table 4 illustrates, the curriculum is connected across and through the semesters of study. In the first semester, tasks set at the start of semester help reveal and develop students’ storytelling and investigation skills, their understandings of legal and ethical challenges and their historical knowledge of East African media in order to analyse the present and its future.

Students undertake a wide variety of tasks designed to contribute to the learning outcomes of each of these four courses. Horizontal alignment is important because legal and ethical issues form an essential part of storytelling and journalistic investigation and effective storytelling requires an understanding of how our history can shape current practice and what might happen in the future. Accordingly, the curriculum has been designed to identify key touch-points where cohorts come together to undertake activities, which contribute to learning across multiple courses. For example, students learning interviewing techniques will interview a high profile and influential media character. This interview forms part of the summative assessment in Content that Sells. This material then forms part of a broader, team-based assessment task in Past, Present and Future where students are charged with compiling a history on some aspect of East African media – the theme and format for which will change each year. Over time, GSMC will be able to develop a database of histories, which can be publicly verified and built upon to become a meaningful resource.

The first semester culminates in a mini-conference, where students showcase their multimedia stories, reveal research results through poster presentations and deliver presentations on audience media use habits. As well as celebrating the outcomes of students, the mini-conference helps amass data for the State of the News Media Study while evidencing attainment of learning outcomes.

Connections between Content that Sells and Investigation and Analysis are numerous; accordingly, there are several ways in which the activities prescribed for these courses connect throughout the first semester. After learning about content and thematic analysis in Investigation and Analysis, students develop a story pitch in Content that Sells where they draw on the thematic analysis to justify their story selection. The thematic analysis, undertaken in first semester, is then revisited in semester 2, when students are required to support their decision to undertake an editorial specialisation and design their multimedia storytelling project. This analysis is again revisited in semester 3, where students must complete and critically reflect on their specialist project. This vertical alignment helps to evidence progressive learning; ensuring students refer back to prior concepts to test their validity and question prior assumptions. This integrated curriculum helps to inculcate advanced problem-solving skills and adaptability needed to work in a dynamically changing industry and socio-political context like East Africa.

In Media Law and Ethics, for example, students design a set of questions to elicit responses about the key ethical issues facing East African journalists; their approach to ethical reasoning and journalists’ understandings of ethical decision-making processes. Designing effective questions is a core part of Investigation and Analysis. Students can draw on instruction undertaken in Investigation and Analysis to develop questions. This activity is replicated when commencing the law modules. The questions developed across these two activities will be recorded and revisited in semester three, when students undertake Putting Research in Action – the research methods course aimed at preparing students to design and conduct a research thesis. As part of this course, students are asked to design and conduct a survey to identify the key legal and ethical issues facing journalists across East Africa. Working in teams, students will investigate different geographical and media entities, thus helping to amass regional data, which is collected annually.

This discussion reveals how student activities progressively gather and analyse data relating to the State of the East Africa’s News Media, which helps to contextualise local issues. But the living case does much more than ensure regional relevance. The vertical integration of the living case throughout progressive semesters ensures students evaluate these data from different perspectives as they are introduced to different theories and conceptual lenses. Involving students in the data gathering process means they can focus on issues of key concern and relevance to themselves while achieving the overarching programmatic learning outcomes. Starting with what the students know and are interested in, the programme gradually builds knowledge and ‘cognitive flexibility’ by exposing students to different ways of understanding and thinking about issues from different perspectives. This process occurs across the semester of study and throughout the programme of study, ensuring students are exposed to the competition and repetition needed to develop cognitive flexibility, mastery of multimedia production and specialist-reporting expertise.

CBE innovation 2: Student-centred cases

The focus on student reflection helps learners to develop their own personal case study, which expands and develops throughout the process of learning. Each course across the first semester requires students to reflect on what knowledge and mind-set they bring to the course and how that position might change over time as they are exposed to different perspectives. A standardised electronic reflective journal has been developed, which forms part of the students’ electronic portfolios. Reflective essays or critical analyses form an integral part of the production-based courses and courses like media law and ethics. In addition to tracking learning, the reflective journal forms part of the State of East Africa’s News Media analysis (subject to student consent) to help identify issues and challenge journalists place in the workplace. It also helps reveal gaps in knowledge and provide insights into how journalists returning to study transition to learning. Over time, AKU can gather comparative data around cohort development and glean insights into what is working and not working, which can complement data derived from traditional student evaluation and review processes.

Given the cohort will come from different geographical, cultural and professional backgrounds, the students will have diverse experiences that can add to the learning experience and knowledge base. This means, however, that the cohort will also have diverse learning goals. The student-centred case enables AKU-GSMC to inculcate a level of thematic flexibility while ensuring students attain the overarching programmatic learning outcomes. It also promotes learner autonomy by allowing students to develop their own learning goals by focusing on issues and specialisations they want to address because all activities can be moulded around topics identified by the students. Accordingly, the student-centred case performs many roles. In addition to ensuring students are more reflective in their work and personal life; it makes the curriculum more relevant to students. Student-centred cases help to promote rich engagement in course activities, allowing the learning to be more easily translated into the workplace. It helps students to articulate what they have done, why this was done and evaluate whether they would do things differently in the future inculcating a way of thinking that will support the sorts of professional characteristics and employability attributes required for a dynamically changing profession and complex socio-political environment.

CBE innovation 3: Local, indigenous cases

AKU-GSMC has also invested heavily of developing regional cases to highlight a number of well-known region-specific issues facing East African media. To this end, seven region-specific case studies were developed in collaboration with the Case Consortium @ Columbia (University). The cases were drawn from East and South Africa, canvassing issues such as coverage of the 2007 election violence in Kenya, how journalists best serve the public interest during democratic transition, the competing interests that can undermine journalistic ethics, exposing corruption, journalists’ responsibilities and vulnerable sources, bribery and brown envelope journalism, and covering controversial social and religious issues.

These cases form an important part of the semester one syllabus. Integrating set case studies into the curriculum helps model thinking and reasoning processes that students will be asked to apply in assessment. Students explore these cases where they will apply theories and evaluate alternative outcomes.

In addition to being used for instruction throughout the course, locally situated cases will be used for assessment. The exam format exposes students to the experience of identifying problems, evaluating issues and resolving complex problems under pressure. The exam environment goes some way to emulating the pressure students will face when identifying problems and making decisions in the field.

By integrating different forms of CBE across and through the curriculum, the MA in Digital Journalism offers a highly personalised curriculum where students can rapidly build knowledge and skills, master specialist-reporting expertise while developing critical thinking skills and enhancing students’ deductive and inductive reasoning and overall decision-making performance (Bagdasarov et al., 2012). This learning experience helps to foster the thinking skills and problem-solving dexterities needed to survive in a dynamically changing professional and social world while addressing the region-specific issues identified in our issues-framing process.

A replicable model for sustainable journalism education

Utilising a systematic approach to developing journalism curricula to ensure environmental and cognitive alignment has many advantages.

The 10-year-long issues-framing process helps to ensure environmental alignment of the MA in Digital Journalism. Given the dynamic nature of journalism, however, the issues-framing process cannot end with the launch of a new curriculum. To be of maximum value, issues framing should be a continuing process that monitors the changing educational needs of journalistic communities. Thus, it should become an ongoing process embedded within the curriculum review process and school governance. This way it can inform continuous programmatic reform. This approach is particularly relevant to journalism education in developing regions because it helps to monitor the state of media to ensure education aligns with industry needs. Moreover, educators have rich data to evidence impact of their programmes and forge strong partnerships with industry.

In addition to situating learning in the context in which journalism is being performed, journalism education needs to foster advanced thinking and problem-solving skills. This involves a process of unlearning, learning new things and re-learning how to deal with complexity. By integrating cases across and through the curriculum, CBE helps to foster cognitive flexibility – an essential skills for all journalists. This approach encourages students to look at problems differently, prompting them to be more selective about the strategies used to deal with these problems (see Krems, 1995; Spiro et al., 1991). The advanced thinking skills developed through these repetitive experiences are directly translatable to work, endowing students with the cognitive flexibility to deal with complexity of working in a region of uneven development and in a rapidly changing profession. By repetitively exposing learners to different ways of doing and thinking about journalism and the environment in which they work, CBE models a way of thinking that can be adapted and developed by students in their working life.

Using a living case – where students help to develop the case to be studied in the next semester – has many advantages. This extension of traditional CBE actively involves students in building a set of indigenous resources that contribute to expanding understandings of the media and journalistic practice. While exposing students to the issues and problems of the field in ways that are real to them, this approach also sets the scene for a non-hierarchical learning community. Instead of viewing teachers as the source of all knowledge, students are encouraged to view faculty as collaborators. These learning partnerships can spark interest in local and global issues and fosters curiosity in deeper research (journalistic and academic).

Conclusion

In conclusion, this article offers a systematic process and an approach to journalism curriculum design that can ensure environmental and cognitive relevance of the programme. This approach is particularly important to journalism education programmes in developing countries, where the socio-economic and political context in which journalism is being performed adds another layer of complexity to the dynamic world of journalism education. But this approach could be adapted to various settings to help ensure journalism education remains sustainable in the longer term.

The systematic approach involves an ongoing issues-framing process that identifies the specific educational needs of a journalistic community. This approach can ensure the environmental relevance of journalism education. But to be sustainable, journalism education must be cognitively relevant. It should foster advanced thinking and problem-solving skills suitable for working in complex and dynamically changing environments. This article reveals how the intentional integration of CBE across and through the curriculum builds advanced knowledge and cognitive flexibility to better prepare graduates for unknown futures while addressing the region-specific issues facing East African media workers.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The AKU financed the issues framing process for this article.

Notes

Author biography

Rhonda Breit is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Aga Khan University’s newly established Graduate School of Media and Communications, based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has been lecturing and researching in the field of media law and ethics since 1997. During her 20 years in university education, she has held various leadership roles including Head, School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and Director of the Journalism Programme at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. An experienced teacher and curriculum designer, she has been responsible for developing the AKU-GSMC’s new Master of Arts in Digital Journalism, which was launched in January 2018.

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