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The continuing technological development of the advertising and public relations (PR) industry and increasing transfer of marketing expenditures from traditional channels to emerging digital media have placed a heavy burden on advertising and PR education. While it is not clear how educators are responding to the digital challenge, this study provides a complete picture of advertising and PR digital media education in the United States. Through a content analysis of curricula from 99 universities with advertising and PR programs, we found that nearly one-quarter (23.5%; n = 1,128) of advertising and PR major courses taught digital media and that digital media education placed greater emphasis on skills courses. Furthermore, the advertising and PR discipline was still based on mass communication, journalism, and marketing rather than computer-related fields. It is hoped that this article will shed some light on the digitalization of future advertising and PR education.

The purpose of this article is to describe and encourage an approach to a public relations course that can be applied to any discipline. Grounded in the experiential learning theory, students prepare for 16 weeks to present an issue-based campaign to a targeted, live audience at an oncampus venue. Using the course textbook and required readings as a guide, students are taught to "do" as the readings instruct, rather than be bound to merely memorizing the material. During the semester, the goal of the student evolves from earning a good grade, to attracting and enlightening an audience though public relations. While the project was assigned to public relations students, renditions of the described approach can be creatively applied to other disciplines interested in students acquiring real world experience outside of internships, within the safety net of their own campus.

Despite ample research indicating creativity is valuable in creating a competitive advantage and enabling individual success in the global knowledge economy, there are still industry concerns about how adequately individual student's creative abilities are developed for the workplace (McCorkle, Payan, Reardon & Kling, 2007). In considering how well teaching practices can strengthen creative performances in classrooms, this paper details an action research project that investigates creative and critical thinking among an undergraduate cohort of marketing and public relations students in the School of Business, The University of Notre Dame Australia. In particular this study: 1) considers how business students understand creativity; 2) examines whether the performance of creativity can be enhanced through individual critical reflection on the nature and value of creativity; and 3) analyses how student's self-assessment data can extend teaching practice and improve curriculum design so business students can better meet industry expectations of creative skills.

Critical thinking skills are crucial in the public relations profession, but teaching these skills to the Millennial Generation is vastly different from previous generations. How can a professor get past No Child Left Behind's dependence on test review guides and "everybody wins" in getting students to think for themselves? Using the Socratic method along with thinking tools/exercises, students can learn how to devise their own solutions using quality critical and creative thinking.

This policy study critically compares two different efforts to implement an accountability system in the New York City public schools. In 1971, the New York City Board of Education contracted with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which created a lengthy accountability plan for the district. Fitful maneuvers to execute the ETS plan fizzled out by 1978. Roughly three decades later, New York City educational leaders publicly championed school accountability as a chief goal. By 2003, formal accountability system planning had commenced; in 2007, an accountability system went fully operational, with New York City public schools receiving a published letter grade that ranged from A-F. This study demonstrates how the maturation of a national education policy paradigm (standards-based school accountability) coalesced with several contextual factors (money, power, principals, and public relations) to enable successful system implementation in the 2000s. Importantly, this work also demonstrates how African-American community representatives and leaders in New York City contributed to the nascent movement for accountability in the 1970s, yet the voices of underrepresented and underserved populations were largely absent in the 2000s implementation effort. Finally, events in both eras illustrate how educational accountability can play an important symbolic role by transmitting political messages.

In the second year of a student-run public relations agency, the instructors discovered a need for improved client and student feedback. Using student end-of-course reflections and survey questions posed by Hon and Grunig (1999) in the Institute for Public Relations booklet, "Guidelines for Measuring Relationships in Public Relations," clients and enrolled student responses were analyzed to determine their satisfaction with the agency/ practicum experience. Mid-year significant follow up measures were enacted to address emerging client service problems. Using the lens of action research, the survey results and subsequent managerial actions were extremely positive and encouraging for the future of the student agency.

This study compared how the cohort of extended diploma students enrolled at a comprehensive South African university in 2012 perceived the programmes for which they were enrolled at the beginning of their first year and towards the end of the year. Data were gathered using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews involving students enrolled for extended national diplomas in Human Resource Management, Management, Entrepreneurship, Logistics, Management Services, Transportation Management and Public Relations. The study established that while the students had negative perceptions of several aspects of the extended national diploma programmes, they had become positive about most of these towards the end of the year. The paper recommends strengthening of teaching and learning support to the extended programmes at the comprehensive university in order to positively influence students' perceptions of the programmes for achievement of the ultimate goal of improving students' retention and success rates.

One common way of conceptualising recent changes in university governance is by stating that the universities are being pushed towards a market-like setting where the uniqueness of each university's strategy and capacity for introducing organizational change is seen as necessary to improve the functioning of the university. We argue that the strategic functioning of the university is conditioned by the extent to which key decision makers, in the strategic decision-making process, share interpretations of the university's strategic advantages and hence have a coherent view of the strategic choices to be made. Our discussion is based on an analysis of a unique survey among principal decision makers at 26 universities in 8 countries in Europe.

Contemporary propaganda is ubiquitous in our culture today as public relations and marketing efforts have become core dimensions of the contemporary communication system, affecting all forms of personal, social and public expression. To examine the origins of teaching and learning about propaganda, we examine some instructional materials produced in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), which popularized an early form of media literacy that promoted critical analysis in responding to propaganda in mass communication, including in radio, film and newspapers. They developed study guides and distributed them widely, popularizing concepts from classical rhetoric and expressing them in an easy-to-remember way. In this paper, we compare the popular list of seven propaganda techniques (with terms like "glittering generalities" and "bandwagon") to a less well-known list, the ABC's of Propaganda Analysis. While the seven propaganda techniques, rooted in ancient rhetoric, have endured as the dominant approach to explore persuasion and propaganda in secondary English education, the ABC's of Propaganda Analysis, with its focus on the practice of personal reflection and life history analysis, anticipates some of the core concepts and instructional practices of media literacy in the 21st century. Following from this insight, we see evidence of the value of "social reflection practices" for exploring propaganda in the context of formal and informal learning. Crowdsourcing may help create increased informational clarity for consumers because ambiguous, incomplete, blurry and biased information actually inspires us to have conversations, share ideas, and listen to each other as a means to find truth.

This paper reports on research into developing research skills in human resources management of apprentices through experiential learning. The target groups were undergraduate business students registered in the Introduction to Personnel and Industrial Relations course. The research identified the appreciation level of importance and satisfaction from apprentices since the acquisition and development of research skills for human resources management discipline. Data analysis indicates, firstly the importance of acquisition and development research skills in human resources management are congruent with the needs required for the contemporary organization and career objectives of the apprentices and future human resources professionals. The results obtained have positive implications on apprentices from research skills statements such as organizational goal's achievement, job analysis, human resources audit, strategic planning, statistical analysis, and evidence-based in human resources management to diminish the skills gap through the curriculum development in human resources management.

The construction of a successful online collaboration between distinct cultural groups requires an informed cultural awareness. This is the exploration of such an online collaboration between American and Turkish Students. The focus of the shared student interaction was the concept of corporate social responsibility. As the concept is enacted differently in different cultures, this represented an ideal opportunity for topical student reflection and for cultural exploration. The approach utilized focused on relationship-building as a preface to content discussion based participant preferences suggested by relevant cultural research (e.g., Hofstede). Corporate social responsibility campaigns in the United States and Turkey focused on domestic violence were considered with an eye toward the distinctions between each. Results suggest positive student outcomes emerged from this approach. Implications for intercultural online learning and diversification of public relations curricula are considered.

The study described in this article highlights the complexity of service-learning efforts and community engagement pursuits. It is based on 6.5 months of qualitative fieldwork in International Baccalaureate international schools in Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The article unpacks the understandings and skills involved in service-learning efforts through a framework developed by the research. The framework includes six knowledge domains: service-learning pedagogy, global issues, school contexts, local contexts, leadership/organizations, and communication. The author argues that related competencies in these domains support efforts, whereas related knowledge gaps impede efforts. Such a framework allows teams to be self-reflective and intentional, justifies related resources, and explains the strain that educators involved in these pursuits can feel. The author argues that facilitators need to have deep knowledge in far more than service-learning pedagogy.

Today's academic staff and students are faced with increasing challenges including respective delivery and development of essential subject-specific content, research and diverse transferable skills for future employment. To meet these needs, we piloted an academic and Media Relations delivery partnership focussing on developing science communication skills to our undergraduate medical science students. This case study reports that the introduction of a science media workshop, combined with a short 250-word, low-stakes, summative press release coursework, proved to be an efficient and effective approach. The assessment required reading and understanding 'unknown' primary research findings and submission via the University Media Relations template for 'real-world' needs. Co-developed grading criteria allowed for rapid marking and feedback, and the academic-Media Relations marks correlated closely. Student feedback indicated that this authentic exercise was valued, being 'different' and 'enjoyable' for introducing key skills for research critique whilst also highlighting science media as a vocational route.

Despite considerable research in the higher education literature exploring the substantial values of eLearning and collaborative learning as distinct practices, few empirical studies have yet addressed the need for an integrated approach toward implementing eLearning and collaborative learning practices in a professional education development context. This paper documents a successful three-year project case entitled, Corpcommsynergy, which integrates eLearning and collaborative approaches in an e-platform implemented in undergraduate and postgraduate corporate communication courses at a Hong Kong university. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative content analysis methods to investigate how learners perceive this integrated approach and identified significant factors influencing their learning experience. Results suggested high feasibility and effectiveness of designing and implementing Corpcommsynergy and identified two significant factors: (1) design and facilitation of online courses; and (2) perception and participation of students affecting the effectiveness of collaborative eLearning.

The marketisation of schools has emerged as a defining feature of the education landscape. While the role of principals and lead teachers in carrying out marketing work was investigated in the late 1990s, there has been scant evidence of how the people and practices of marketing in schools have evolved into the twenty-first century. Expanding on existing literature on educational marketing practices in schools, and through in-depth interviews with a unique sample of school marketers, this study explores the emergence of the school marketing professional. The interviews reveal the diverse backgrounds and experiences of these individuals, the transfer of their business skills into schools and the tensions in professional boundaries with educators who traditionally performed school marketing activities. Ultimately, the study furthers insights into the co-existence of educational and managerial agendas in the schools market.

Faculty who are interested in activism and social justice often struggle with how to integrate principles of community activism into courses that have been traditionally designed to prepare students for careers in the corporate world. Most public relations textbooks now dedicate a section or chapter to corporate social responsibility due to its impact on corporate image and reputation. Some textbooks will include a chapter on advocacy and nonprofits, but a look at most public relations textbooks show a scarcity of innovative approaches on how to integrate principles of activism and social justice into the teaching of common public relations practices. In the absence of textbooks that have taken this approach, this exercise shows how recent scholarship in communication activism can be used in the classroom as a tool to teach these principles and guide reflection on common public relations practices such as event planning and fundraising. Courses: Public Relations, Strategic Communication. Objectives: This activity was designed to get students to think critically about planning and executing fundraising events for nonprofit organizations. By reading a case study and reflecting on its application to their own fundraising ideas, students are able to understand the implications of even the smallest decisions in the event planning process.

Purpose: The lack of change structures can be seen as an important reason why sustainability continues to suffer a niche existence in most higher education organisations. This is a problem because universities can leverage their teaching, research and operations to advance solutions to climate change, hunger and other Sustainable Development Goals. The purpose of this study is to highlight the vital importance of self-efficacy approaches, in particular the Green Office (GO) Model that aims to strengthen collaboration among all members of higher education communities and provides inspiration for what a sustainability office on campus might look like. Design/methodology/approach: The research presented follows a two-step methodology. First, the peculiarities and commonalities of already existing GOs were analysed to better understand drivers and barriers for their institutionalisation. Building on this, a peer-to-peer digital training programme was developed and tested, aiming to provide students, staff and academics with knowledge and skills to establish more sustainability offices and improve the work of existing ones. Findings: Research revealed three main obstacles for the dissemination of the GO model: lack of adaptation of international experiences to other university contexts, missing educational offers and a limited scope of public relations. The findings adduce proof that GO provides a replicable model that can be both adapted to different university contexts and scaled internationally. Research limitations/implications: This research has been limited by the availability and ability to procure information from the sampled universities' actors beyond the close GO community. Originality/value: This case study presents an original research and development undertaking that was realised in a unique collaboration between a non-profit, student-initiated social business and an academic institution.

Social media have affected daily activities, communication practices, and business practices throughout society. Social media are more frequently embraced in higher education as well. One indication of this growth is the fact that more than half of all teaching faculty use social media at least monthly for professional reasons, with professors in professions and applied sciences being at the forefront of the use. Interviews with more than 20 industry professionals representing nonprofits, corporations, and subject matter experts provide insights into key considerations for social media education. Future social media education should provide not only academic training but also industry expertise.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of ethics and service learning client work in public relations education. Interviews were conducted with students at three universities who had completed public relations client work. Findings suggest that ethics in client work involves honesty, respect, following personal convictions, bracketing personal values, and balancing ethical values. Students perceived that client work prepared them to be accountable, perform quality work, rely on mentoring, and learn that being ethical takes practice. Ultimately, client work appears to help students explore ethical beliefs and competencies in a realistic environment with assistance.

Restructuring the public relations practicum courses at a medium-sized Midwestern public university resulted in the development of a student-run public relations agency. Teams were created with students of varying levels of knowledge and expertise, and campus-based organizations were engaged as clients. The initial results for the clients were somewhat uneven, and some client-agency relationships were difficult, which mirrored similar experiences at other college, student-run agencies. Active research methodology showed the overall result as positive. Both the student and the course leadership reflections support the experience as a robust learning experience that prepares students for internship opportunities.

Observations of artistic activities' transformative influence in social sphere by social scientists have played an essential role in the rise of "participative art" works worldwide. Within the scope of the public relations practices performed by municipal administrations particularly in order to promote the cultural development of society, noteworthy examples of works to enable citizen's active participation in artistic activities occur in Turkey as well. Within these practices, the project carried out by Antalya Municipality in 2009, namely "Women Meet Literature" has been designed with a view to help women who are living in disadvantageous districts build solution-driven behavior patterns instead of perceiving the difficulties in their social life particularly in their family life, as "irresolvable". In the wake of the workshops carried out with the participation of Turkey's famous authoresses and poetesses, it has been observed that the act of writing has a stimulating effect on women's courage to diagnose problems. This study evaluates, through the case of "Women Meets Literature" project as a public relations practice, the project realization process and outputs of the case regarding the use of "participative art" in mass education, within the context of "participative art", "mass education" and "public relations practices"; and it discusses the contributions of distant education to sustainability of project based public relations practices. (Contains 3 tables.)

With the dawn of the Information Age, schools, along with other organizations, must take note of the varied ways individuals and groups in society are communicating. Today, with the many forms of communication, most information is made public in real time. In a qualitative national study in the United States, respondents identified positive and negative aspects stemming from comments in virtual communities that impact school district public relations. School superintendents indicated a clear need for schools to become cognizant of and involved in virtual communities. While acknowledging the need and some supportive ideas, the respondents identified the barriers to involvement as time and personnel. The authors have proposed a systematic process, as a result of study data that will allow school leaders to take a proactive approach to public relations in virtual communities.

Work integrated learning (WIL) units can be discipline specific and constructed for majors or degrees with a strong vocational orientation. This paper describes an undergraduate unit with its genesis in a public relations internship. The original unit enjoyed strong support from industry partners and was instrumental in many graduates securing employment. The school owning the public relations major also offers other majors and degrees and sought to capture the eagerness of students to engage in workplace participation, but against an institutional imperative to consolidate teaching activities The challenge was to create sufficient universality without diluting the success enjoyed by the PR internship program or detracting from the need for effective WIL outcomes. The result was a set of processes, assessments and management practices that could be efficiently and readily adopted by any participating discipline. The unit could run every semester and separate disciplines could opt in or out. Efficiencies were to be optimized while still delivering the outcomes desired by students, industry partners, and the academics involved.

The objectives of this research were to: 1) develop the online courseware on Thai Food Good Health to support the Thai Kitchen to the world project; and 2) evaluate the courseware by the learners toward the courseware integrated using in aboard. The research sample were sampling for chefs, Thai restaurant owners, and the students who were studying at the TAFE culinary school in Sydney. The research instruments were a questionnaire to find out the needs and readiness to attend the online learning, and a questionnaire for the learners. Courseware was designed and developed on website www.thaifoodtolearn.com by applying the 5 steps model. Firstly, the synthesis of the research results done by the researcher team. Secondly, organizing focus group of the experts in food and nutrition and public relation field discussion on the essential contents and courseware format which would be used to develop the lessons. Thirdly, the survey of needs and readiness of the respondents. Fourthly designing the media in the courseware. Fifth, testing the courseware at TAFE Northern Sydney College in Sydney, Australia. The participants registered and studied from online courseware on thaifoodtolearn.com website as well as the set of multimedia "Thai food good health" distributed to the participants with the learner's active participation in demonstration and practices. The research result found that the respondents were readiness to study online courseware. They needed to learn as 1-2 weeks short course in the morning and evening. The topics they needed to learn were Thai food ways, Thai food cooking techniques, Thai healthy food such as Thai herb, fruit and vegetable, the characteristics of Thai food, safety Thai food, and basics knowledge of Thai food respectively. After learning online courseware, the learners' opinion mostly showed that the lessons were totally good level. In case of the contents and presentation of video, image, graphics, hyper media links in each pages, the usefulness and benefit of the lessons mostly showed in very good level.

Undergraduate marketing and public relations capstone courses utilize client projects to allow students to apply their knowledge and encourage collaboration. Yet, at the graduate level, especially with courses offered in an online modality, experiential service learning in the form of client project assignments presents unique challenges. However, with an increased emphasis on practical application across the business curricula and growth in distance learning, client projects can provide opportunities for adult learners to hone their skills and encourage teamwork using new collaborative technology. This paper discusses experiential service learning and gives an example of a client project model.

Teaching skills, knowledge and abilities appropriate for career-ready graduates and assessing learning are complex issues. Developing a valid and reliable approach is often by trial and error. Instead, the authors employed Deming's PDCA Cycle of continuous improvement as a systematic procedure to incrementally move closer to their goal. This paper outlines a multiyear project where academics and public relations professionals collaborated to answer 4 questions: What are the basic SKAs for a career-ready graduate?; How to orient the pedagogy?; How to evaluate and assess student learning?; and, How to insure validity of the measurements?. The authors used a variety of qualitative and quantitative procedures to (a) gather knowledge and information from public relations professionals; (b) facilitate consensus on career-specific pedagogy; and (c) develop a repeatable and reliable rubric to measure students' news release writing skills.

Drawing on a theoretical framework based on "use-inspired" applied research and service learning practice (Honnet-Porter & Poulsen, 1989), this paper argues the relationship between a service-learning approach and Public Relations coursework is a natural and highly desirable fit. Through examination of the goals of both service-learning and public relations curricula, the instructional implications of service learning in Public Relations coursework are explored, with emphasis placed on published standards for good practice. Examples from the authors' own course experiences in promoting service learning are also offered along with specific suggestions for motivating and preparing both students and faculty for a service-learning-enhanced Public Relations curriculum.

Students studying Marketing, Fashion, Public Relations, Advertising and similar subjects need to develop a "critical eye" in relation to images, media and digital technologies. This project aims to empower teachers to develop multimedia learning resources that would support students engaging in this essential activity. Developing such resources is usually demanding in terms of time and effort, and staff can be reluctant to take part due to their (perceived) lack of skills in using unfamiliar software. A key aspect is that the resources developed should act as "open educational resources" (OERs) that could be reused and re-purposed easily by other teachers. An action learning methodology is followed to develop two learning resources, embed them in two different classroom contexts, and evaluate student reaction. The evaluation shows that use of the resources across a large module with over 300 students made a difference by the inclusion of theory in the students' written work and that use in a smaller classroom with international students assisted in overcoming cultural barriers of "speaking out" in a discussion setting. The teachers in both class settings report that they, and their students, found these resources relevant, accessible and useful both inside and outside the classroom. (Contains 2 figures.)

Since corporate websites have become indispensable tools of public relations in parallel with the increase in the number of Internet users, they offer remarkable opportunities for universities as well. University websites are operated in a more professional manner due to increasing number of visits by not only students and the academic staff, but also by various target groups such as families of students, potential students, persons and institutions who would like to take advantage of services offered, and media and public institutions. Official websites have a potential to create a better communication between universities and societies that they are part, as well as bringing academic knowledge to the public agenda more often. In this research, most-visited official websites of universities in Turkey are compared with most-visited official websites of universities in the world in order to better utilize this potential. A content analysis has been done in order to determine differences between most-visited official websites of universities in Turkey and in the world in terms of current news and announcements. (Contains 6 tables.)

An organization's well-developed strategic plan and reputation can crumble in minutes if it mishandles key communications, particularly during crises. Today's leaders need to appreciate the value of professional public relations and how it helps organizational effectiveness by building strategic relationships, maintaining a favorable reputation, minimizing damage from crisis, and generating revenue. Graduate business schools, educating future business leaders, need to include strategic communication and public relations as part of the required curriculum. This paper makes a case for educating business leaders on the importance of public relations as a critical management function.

As universities in English-speaking countries recruit and enroll international students, a variety of forms of support are typically offered on and off campus to help students make a successful transition. The most common challenges for nonnative English-speaking international students are linguistic and cultural. In spite of meeting English proficiency score requirements for admission, students report struggling with the demands of academic English. This article describes a model for an on-site English language program to help students improve their levels of English proficiency prior to their arrival. Program effectiveness was assessed through pre- and post-test measures of students' English language skills, interviews with stakeholders, and observations. Students' gains in proficiency were moderate due to the limited amount of time they had available for course attendance and study, but gains in affective factors were strong. Challenges in the implementation of the program and how they were resolved are described.

Anticipating a substantially larger voter turnout in the upcoming election, district officials needed to probe--more precisely than in past tax elections--exactly what demographic groups would most likely go to the polls and support the tax proposal. Message testing and voter targeting became critical components in building a foundation for success. Message-testing and voter-targeting strategies have been paramount in consumer research and marketing for decades. Traditional direct-mail marketing strategies--transformed in recent years by exponential advancements in technology--now slice and dice with the precision of an executive chef, measuring their ingredients with such exotic tools as "neural networking" and "regression analysis." These new technologies allow marketers to predict with greater accuracy than ever who will buy their products and services and what messages will resonate with consumers. In this article, the authors describe analytical tools that were part of the foundation for moving forward with data-driven planning and effective campaign strategies. (Contains 4 figures.)

The "Museum of Childhood" is a project connected to the Post-Graduate Program in Education at Unesc (Brazil) and since 2005 has been developing interfaces with research, teaching and extension. In this paper, the authors would like to show how the museological conception of the Museum of Childhood makes imagination from one of the central axis of its formative relation with the public. Such conception breaks with the traditional view of museums as buildings where old things are collected and preserved. In fact, the Museum of Childhood, in the light of its objective conditions, wants to be a museum without walls, a museum that, using the device of spatial demarcation, spreads itself in the university campus and other public places, with the objective of communicating with the people. This conception comes closer to the transgressive nature of modern arts, which desacralizes the work of art as masterpiece and proposed, for example, the fugacity of installations and aesthetic interventions. This conception takes the Benjaminian notion of the past as the dimension where other futures remain latent, that is, the museum is seen not as a guardian of the past, but as an establishment that wants to use its collections to communicate with the public. The overrunning of the static physical space, for example, forces the public to recreate its horizon of expectations concerning what a museum show be. In order to accomplish its original objectives, the Museum of Childhood works intensively on the formation of the public by proposing monitored visits in which creative activities are developed and by improving its homepage. (Contains 3 footnotes.)