Universities across the United States and around the world are using social media in their classrooms. Whether it is for public relations courses or business or even psychology – professors and academics are becoming one with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to connect with their students and colleges. Even though we are using this form of technology in our classroom – we have to keep on top of it because it is changing so fast! I must have changed my guest lecture presentation last week maybe three or four times because the information about social media was changing that fast! 🙂
But if you want to learn more about how to do social media, you might want to consider getting your degree in it. That is right, Birmingham City University will be offering a Master’s degree in social media. I think that this is a great idea – and I believe that Public Relations should follow suit in its curriculum. We have specialty classes and electives from studying Non-Profit Public Relations to Visual Communications – but we need to have a class specifically geared towards applying Social Media in Public Relations.
This class would offer a background of what social media really is and how to apply it to various communications fields like Public Relations. Plus, it would be a great resource for students since they would be able to use what they have learned in class online and help manage their online presence. Another benefit would be that professors too would be up-to-date on the latest technologies.
The difficult thing would be to make sure that the information presented in class is not out of date, but being flexible with the syllabus and having the students be interactive and help create the content on what should be studied would be a good thing to do. By having students as part of the learning process – everyone gets the benefit – the students get to learn about the social media and applications that they want to know to best prepare them for their future job, and professors are able to learn and be students as well. Having a social media class is not only a great idea – but it is a must for universities today.
These are just a few of my thoughts on the subject. We are living in a very exciting time – and social media is definitely having a strong influence on how we use social media in our personal and professional lives in managing our reputation and working as PR professionals.
Have a wonderful day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
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