Are journalism students still far too unaware of the importance of multimedia?

This is my first post on my brand new blog and I’m afraid it’s not only a bit of a rant, but also comes with a back story.

Last year during my second year off study a fellow University of Sunderland student Josh Halliday asked me if I would write a guest post on his blog about journalism education. Without wanting to repeat myself- you can read the full post here- I basically was a bit disillusioned that there wasn’t any modules on my journalism course that was teaching these apparently ‘vital’ skills.

Then I discovered that there was going to be a brand new module to the university- Multimedia journalism. The module gave students the chance to learn camera work, audio and web writing, help to find your voice when blogging and has the overall aim to help students find the best media format for communicating traditional journalism stories beyond print.

The module also included the chance for whatever you produced to be featured on an up and coming website called Keep Your Eyes Open. If what you produced wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be used. A decent incentive to learn and a great way to show your skills to any potential employees.

There was one catch- It was a second year module but since the teacher of the module Alex Lockwood understood that third year students would jump at the chance to take part, he opened it up to them too and sent out an email about this opportunity to third year students.

Despite the fact we are entering the last semester of our last year of university, at least five- myself included- volunteered to take part.

But today came the news that the module was cancelled due to the lack of students who signed up to the module. If everybody turned up, there would have been more volunteer third year students than second years who registered as part of their course.

Not only is this a disappointment to me as I am unable to take part in a module I was excited to be a part, but also the work of the people behind setting up the module has been in vain.

And for what reason? It appears there are still too many students who do not understand the importance at least having basic knowledge of multimedia skills and still believe they will walk straight into a job at a newspaper.

Luckily it seems there have been plans put in place for the select few wanted to be part of the module to still work for the website and be taught the skills they felt they needed to learn. I hope to follow-up this post eventually with how this is coming along.

This apparently isn’t a one-off occasion as I’ve heard similar modules have been dropped from various universities for exactly the same reason- Lack of interest from students.

Ultimately his shows a depressing trend that students are still almost dangerously unaware of the importance of these skills to their futures and more needs to be done to drill this home to them.

Advertisement