In a move that many students at the University have long awaited, the School of Journalism and Communication is ready to officially adapt to contemporary media trends.
Well, almost ready.
This term, 50 transfer students will test out a new core sequence that the journalism school hopes will revamp its curricula and better prepare students to enter a rapidly evolving media marketplace. If the endeavor is deemed successful, it could be fully implemented for incoming classes starting in the 2009-10 academic year.
Although administrators at the journalism school say individual faculty members have tweaked their course material over the years as the Internet has changed the nature of news delivery, this pilot program will mark the first significant effort by the school as a whole. It is the product of several years of research, discussion and planning, and the result is a more integrated course sequence that incorporates technology to an unprecedented extent.
Julianne Newton, associate dean for undergraduate affairs at the journalism school, said that although the program’s conceptors examined similar operations at other universities, the outcome is unique to the University of Oregon’s school. Newton, who is also a professor at the journalism school, has participated in the planning process for about three years as chairwoman of the ad-hoc Curriculum Review Committee that proposed the new model.
“It’s our best effort at moving toward changes in media work while not losing the tradition of what’s really good in this program,” Newton said. “I’m sure we’ll learn a lot about what will work and what won’t.”
The changes will most directly affect three of the journalism school’s four core classes that pre-majors must pass in order to apply for full major status: J202, Information Gathering, aka Info Hell; J203, Writing for the Media; and J204, Visual Communication. J201, Mass Media and Society, will also be affected, though to a lesser extent – it will examine the role of technology in the media more closely than it did in past years, and the course title will change to something along the lines of “media industry and practice,” Newton said.
Technically, the other three courses will no longer exist. Instead, the concepts and material of all three will be integrated into a two-term sequence in which students will enroll after completing J201.
The sequence comprises a winter term course, called Gateway I, and a spring term course, aptly called Gateway II. Instead of pre-majors taking the courses, as is the case with the current system, students will already be full majors when they enroll in the Gateway courses. That means they will have declared one of four specializations: advertising, public relations, communication studies, or journalism. The latter specialization is new – it consolidates three soon-to-be-non-existent focuses: news/editorial, magazine, and electronic media. Newton said offering a journalism specialization eliminates a “redundancy” and will allow students to learn about and dabble in more than their specific focus.
Precisely what each Gateway course will entail is still unclear; at this point the plan is a rather abstract one. In other words, the faculty has a few specific objectives, but day-to-day operations have not been solidified.
The faculty has already decided to reduce the pre-major core to 10 credits and move students into the major sooner. It also wants to develop “integrative strategies,” such as interdisciplinary models similar to the Gateway sequence.
Another main idea of the new curriculum is that students will build a personal portfolio of their work, which will ideally become stronger and more complex as they progress through the program. Mark Blaine, a journalism instructor whose courses include Information Gathering, said he envisions the product of J202 becoming a tool more useful to students than the infamous 100-page paper the course currently demands. Blaine mentioned online blogs, group projects and solo presentations as possible components of the J202 work in the Gateway sequence. Also, source material will be more varied than in the past, and Blaine will stress the importance of considering what technology can teach students about writing, instead of solely its usefulness in producing the final product.
“It’s probably going to have more teeth, but it’s going to be more connected to the other courses,” Blaine said, adding that the value of critical thinking and writing skills will not diminish, they’ll just be geared more toward technology, which will be at the center of these skills. “We’re trying to design this curriculum so that technology isn’t leading us, so that we’re sort of helping to shape and guide where we go with the technology.” Blaine is also a member of the curriculum committee.
But for the University students and graduates who are already enrolled in the journalism school or who graduated in recent years, the changes are coming too late. Will Seymour graduated from the journalism school in spring with a specialization in electronic media, and he was assistant news director and assistant sports director for the KWVA, the campus radio station. Seymour expressed his satisfaction with his “great” education – “we don’t have all the toys of Arizona State and the likes, but the faculty in Eugene is top-notch” – but noted that this new curriculum shows definite promise for future students’ success.
“Integration is definitely where (the industry) is heading, and if we can produce graduates with lot of different skills then they’re more apt to be employable,” Seymour said. He was especially keen on the portfolios, a resource he would appreciate today as he looks for a job in radio. But Seymour gave the journalism school credit for taking this on.
“The nature of a university is it’s always going to lag behind the state of the art of the industry, at least so much,” he said. “Things are changing in the world so fast, there’s no way any university can keep up moment to moment.”
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