I am a big believer of making sure students are able to get real world experiences with their work, so they can share these lessons with future colleagues and employers. There are certain classes that are perfect to have real world clients for – and usually – are very honored and excited to work with students.
What are the benefits of working with clients as a part of your class? Here are some things to keep in mind:
- It emphasizes on the key concepts being covered in the class.
- Working with professionals shows you what it really is like in the real world
- Some best practices and lessons are not covered in textbooks, but in exchanges and team work.
- It allows students who have not had the chance to do internships to get real world experiences for class.
In my social media classes, we have worked primarily with a client on a class project that lasts for the entire semester, and the final is actually a formal presentation to the class client. This gives students experience of what it is going to be like in the workplace and also gives them insights on what the client likes, and what they will actually use for their campaign.
We have had good luck with the class clients for my social media class, and this has grown to incorporating client work for my Advanced Social Media Strategy class (#FrebergSM), and my PR class I teach in the fall semester (#FrebergPR). This fall, we are going to have our biggest client yet – The Breeder’s Cup.
This event does not come to Louisville every year, and the fact we are going to be able to work with them directly and have experiences both on the PR side as well as social media, is going to be amazing for the students. What better way to have them learn about the best practices of PR and social media than to implement these ideas in real time.
So, you may be asking:
Karen, how do I get a class client for my class?
This is something I had to work on as well when I first came to Louisville. I was new and the class I was proposing was brnad new too – so I had my work cut out for myself.
Here are some things to note here for how to get a class client for your class:
Networking is key. You want to make sure to take the time to network with businesses, professionals, and agencies around town. Meet up for coffee and introduce yourself, and share what classes you are working on and teaching for the school. Many times, these are the same professionals who come to the university looking for interns. This could end up being a win-win situation.
Reach out to your network. You may be in a situation where you are in a place that does not work with classes (there are some businesses that don’t do this – which is surprising!), so you may want to reach out to your network to see if there are any businesses or professionals who would like to work with a class virtually. Plus, professors (especially those who are in the #SMprofs group) are awesome and super helpful! We are all on the same team and want to help each other out.
Share your syllabus and what you will be covering. I do this all the time – I want to make sure the businesses and professionals I am meeting with know what I will be covering in class, and to see if this would be a class they would want to partner with for a project. I have done this every semester for class clients, and they have been thrilled and excited. In many cases, this also allows them to be part of the class. You are also sharing your expectations with them on what you will be having the students work on, so that is also good.
Promote the partnership. You want to see what the class client not only wants from the class project itself, but what they want as far as promotion goes. Share your partnership on social media, and let others know about the work you will be doing for the class. This heightens the awareness of what you are doing for your class client, but also raises the profile of their work as well with their audiences.
If you have any questions about how to get class clients for your classes, please let me know and I would be more than happy to chat and bounce around ideas. We need more partnerships like this to help bridge the gap between practice and education.
Have a great day!
Best Wishes,
