Today was the day!
It was truly an exciting day on The Sunshine Coast in Australia.
The new social media program officially launched today at USC, and it was a true honor to be in attendance. This was one of the main reasons why I wanted to come down to Australia for part of my sabbatical was to see what Karen Sutherland has created at USC.
What has been extremely rewarding for me has been to have the opportunity to chat with Karen about her classes, review what she covers as far as topics goes, discuss different ways to assess the student’s overall knowledge and application of the material, and brainstorm new classes to teach in the future within the social media program.
Karen has plans on launching a few more classes later this year, including an Issues in Social Media class. Stay tuned for what she has planned!
The official launch of the program brought together both professionals in the industry around the area, and students in the program. Karen wanted this to be a great opportunity for everyone to talk about the program, what their thoughts were, and what USC can do to make sure the bridge between education and practice is strong.
Over the past few weeks, Karen and I have had a lot of great conversations (and brainstorming sessions! We must have at least a dozen or so ideas for projects and things we are working on – it’s been great!), and I’ve had a lot of friends ask me what have been some of the differences, or similarities, between teaching social media here in Australia compared to the USA.
To be perfectly honest, there are some differences, but there are some things that are the same. Here are of the takeaways I have here:
Most USA programs have one client (perhaps even two) components for their classes, USC has 5+. That’s right – every class that is offered in the USC program here in Australia has the students work with a real client.
Imagine – when they go off to the industry after graduating, they will have at least 5+ client projects to show employers. This is NOT including internship experience. That’s impressive.
We need to make sure our students are getting both sides of the art and science of social media. This was a big focus for me in writing my book with SAGE, and we have to make sure we are providing the opportunities for our students to be successful and marketable in the industry.
Most USA classes have one designated client, USC assigns one client per student. This I think allows the students to get experience doing independent work, which I think is really good in a case for them to build on their own expertise and experience.
While I have done several clients in the past (max was five, but I did assign this a group project), Karen has 109 students in her class – so there are 109 clients. That’s a lot!!! Karen says the program and size of the class (this is the original social media class) has nearly grown 100% in the last few years.
Clients are able to sign up to work with the classes and then are paired up with the student. There are certain expectations that are made on both sides, and the deliverables (ex. assessment projects) are discussed. The students have access to the client’s social media accounts for data analysis, content creation, and in the management class, full access to post, review and share content for nearly six weeks from the content calendar they have created.
I do think group projects are worthwhile to pursue since you may be working on a team for an agency account or brand team within a major corporation. However, independent work is very important to hone in on your skills and gain experience in how you approach different areas within social media.
The perception of professors teaching social media is consistent across both countries. This is still a challenge professors teaching social media are still facing together at a global level.The perception of professors teaching social media is still the same across both the USA and Australia.
In both countries, there are still professionals who look at professors as being “old school” or even “out of touch” with what is happening in the industry. Plus, you have professionals like Gary Vaynerchuk and others who talk about how you do not need to go to university to work in the field.
This is certainly not the case. We are still battling this perception, but what Karen and I amongst the other great #SMprofs who are in our community, are trying to do is show professionals and others in the industry we know what we are doing. We are researching, practicing, and consulting with our own clients on the side. In many ways, professionals who have this assumption have 1) not engaged with professors who are teaching social media to see what they are doing, and 2) are basing these assumptions on exchanges with professors who may not be using social media. It’s important to explore what is happening at universities and see what we can do together.
I do think this situation is getting better. As we saw today at the program launch, there were a lot of professionals who want to work with USC with Karen and her students. This is how it should be!
We still have a ways to go both in the US and in Australia, but we are moving in the right direction.
Summary
This new social media program really has been a passion project for Karen, and you can totally see her dedication, hard work, and focus on creating something special for her students.
Congrats again on the launch of this new program, Karen! I am absolutely thrilled for you and USC is so lucky to have you here leading the way in teaching social media!
It was a true honor to be present and be a guest here for this event – thank you, Karen! This was one of the many highlights I’ve had so far here in Australia.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
