Image Credit: "Owl #1" by Carosaurus

PERSONAL LEARNING PROJECT  (350 POINTS OF YOUR FINAL GRADE)

This project is designed to provide you with an opportunity to tailor an assignment to your own learning needs and course-related interests. For this assignment, you will identify an area of social media/PR you want to learn more about, outline a plan of study, and decide on appropriate learning deliverables to demonstrate your mastery of the material. You will then submit this plan to me for approval. Once your study plan has been approved, you will create a personal learning network to guide you in your learning. You may utilize any content you wish including books, web pages, video tutorials, library resources, open educational material, etc. to help you complete your deliverables by the deadline specified in your learning plan. In other words, you will be able to learn the material in the manner, and with the resources of your own choice.

My goal for this assignment is to prepare you for today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing workplace by allowing you to develop experience in directing your own learning. Today, knowledge has a very short shelf life, which means that one of the most important skills you can learn while in college is to become an independent learner. It is my hope that you take this project as an opportunity to help you enhance those skills. It should therefore go without saying that you shouldn’t pick a topic/area you already master for this assignment. Although it would be a way to an easy project and grade, you would simply be cheating yourself and your education.

Though you are welcome (even encouraged) to post any portion of your Personal Learning Project on your own blog, to earn credit for each Part, please use BlackBoard to submit your work.

PART 1 – THE LEARNING PLAN  (50 POINTS OF FINAL GRADE)

DUE: February 12, in BlackBoard

For this part of the assignment, you will identify an area of social media/PR you want to learn more about, outline a plan of study, and decide on appropriate learning deliverables to demonstrate your mastery of the material. Please use this template when designing your learning plan. You’ll be evaluated based on the thoroughness of your plan. To help you get started, I’ve listed a few examples of possible project ideas below.

• Researching social media applications for nonprofits and designing a social media training session (the deliverable) for a local nonprofit interested in learning how to engage its stakeholders via social media. This would more than likely be a group project.
• Researching how journalism has changed with the advent of social media, and offering suggestions / a workshop to the campus newspaper for how to benefit from social media.
• Researching QR (quick response) applications for small businesses, offering your services to a local business and designing a concept for QR campaign tailored to their needs.

PART 2 – THE PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK  (100 POINTS  OF FINAL GRADE)

DUE: March 18, in BlackBoard

Your personal learning network (PLN) needs to include a twitter, blog and social bookmarking component. We will discuss how to create a PLN in much more detail in class. You also need to identify blogs, web sites, and social bookmarks that are relevant to your project and subscribe to them. You may even want to subscribe to a Google Alert on your topic (optional). At the end of the semester, you will need to hand in a UPDATED description of your personal learning network along with your deliverables. You’ll be evaluated based on the depth and breadth of the personal learning network you built. In order to hand this in, create a list of people you follow on:

• Twitter: list the people in your Twitter PLN with their Twitter UserId. Only list people that pertain to your project (i.e. don’t list your buddies here)
• Blogs: list the bloggers you followed for this project. Identify them by a) name, b) blog URL, and c) blog name.
• Social bookmarking sites: list the people you follow on Delicious, Diigo or any other social bookmarking site. Again, only list people you followed for this particular project. List them with their social bookmarking URL.
• Any other social media sites/platforms

PART 3 – THE PLN PRESENTATION  (50 POINTS  OF FINAL GRADE)

DUE: March 20, in class

You will give a 5-minute presentation in which you will present the learning network you’ve created thus far. You should start off with a brief description of the project you’ve picked for your personal learning project before presenting your network. Please create a separate slide for your Twitter, social bookmarking, and blogging network and include the following information. You’ll be evaluated based on the progress made on your PLN.

• Twitter network slide
• How many experts on your project’s topic area are you following?
• List at least five of those experts by their Twitter handle
• During your presentation, give an example of useful info (related to your project’s topic area) each of them has tweeted about.
• Social Bookmarking network slide
• How many experts on your project’s topic area are you following on Delicious, Diigo or another social bookmarking service?
• List at least five of those experts by their Social Bookmarking UserID.
• During your presentation, give an example of useful info (related to your project’s topic area) each of them has bookmarked.
• Blogging network slide
• How many bloggers who are experts on your project’s topic area are you subscribing to with your feedreader?
• List at least five of those bloggers (name the title of their blog)
• During your presentation, give an example of useful info (related to your project’s topic area) each of them has blogged about.  

As you listen to your classmates’ PLN presentations, take special note of members of their PLNs who might be useful for you to learn more about. Additionally, offer suggestions to your peers regarding members of your own PLN who might benefit them in their projects.

PART 4 –PROJECT DELIVERABLES  (100 POINTS  OF FINAL GRADE)

DUE: April 15, in BlackBoard

Your project deliverables are identified in your personal learning plan and approved in consultation with me. Remember to include an UPDATED version of your PLN that you submitted in Part 2; identify which people you have added to your network. If all of your deliverables are in digital form, simply submit (in BlackBoard) the URL(s) to those deliverables. Be sure to indicate what each URL refers to. You’ll be evaluated based on the quality of your final product.

PART 5 –PROJECT PRESENTATIONS  (50 POINTS OF FINAL GRADE)

DUE: April 17 & 19, in class

At the end of the semester you will present your personal learning project deliverables to the class. For this assignment, you will need to create a professional 10-minute presentation in which you will introduce the project you worked on, explain the process involved in creating your deliverable, discuss how your PLN helped you accomplish that process, and showcase your final project. You’ll be evaluated based on the extend to which you address those four areas and on the level of professionalism displayed in your presentation.

(NOTE: Many thanks to Dr. Corinne Weisgerber for permitting me to use, with very slight adaptation, the Personal Learning Project from her Spring 2011 Social Media for PR class at another SEU: St. Edwards University.)

Southeastern Times

Image Credit: "Maple Leaf Structure" by Steve Jurvetson

If you’re looking to get a jumpstart on my classes this fall, here are the books and other required resources that we will be using. I’ve linked to many of them at Amazon.com, but of course you can purchase them from anywhere you like. I recommend you try the Facebook Marketplace first, so you can get a good deal AND help a fellow student.

Public Relations Applications (COMM 2322)

• Syllabus (will be posted by mid-August)
• Carroll, B. (2010). Writing for digital media. New York: Routledge.
• Establish an account at Poynter’s News University (if you already have an account from a previous semester, you do not need a new one)

Questions? As always,

(PS: Syllabi for my classes will be posted in mid-August.)

News University

For this semester’s public relations and journalism courses that I’m teaching for Southeastern University, I am again augmenting my own content and our textbooks with several courses offered by Poynter’s NewsU.

First, create a free account at NewsU. (NOTE: When you enroll in NewsU, the form will ask you for a course code. We do not have a code for your course, so just leave it blank.) Then come back to this blog post.

Next, it’s smart to enroll in all the courses you will need for the semester.  It will make your life easier later on. To enroll, first click on the name of the course(s) below, then click on  Enroll Now under Course Overview.

COMM 2322: Public Relations Applications

• Understanding Media: Process and Principles – for Week 2
• Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Publishers – for Week 4
• Dealing with Difficult Conversations – For Week 12

COMM 4333: Writing for Public Relations & Advertising

• Cleaning Your Copy – for Week 3
• The Lead Lab – for Week 5
• The Language of the Image – for Week 8
• Reporting Across Platforms – for Week 11
• Writing for the Ear – for Week 12

COMM 3333: Journalism

• News Sense: The Building Blocks of News – for Week 1
• The Lead Lab – for Week 2
• Beyond the Inverted Pyramid: Creating Alternative Story Forms – for Week 3
• Cleaning Your Copy – for Week 4
• Introduction to Ethical Decision Making – for Week 5
• Anatomy of a Newspaper: Understanding the Business – for Week 6
• Writing for the Ear – for Week 7

When you have finished with each course, you will need to do two things to earn credit for finishing the course:

1. Complete the NewsU Course Completion Form.
2. Send me your Course Report to my Southeastern University e-mail address. The short screencast below shows you now.  Have the report come to my university e-mail address. (NOTE: This screencast was recorded earlier this year, so some of the dates are old, though the process remains the same.)

I’ve created this short screencast to walk you through the process.

For some courses, you’ll blog about what you learned as a Topic of the Week. For the ones that are not required as TOWs, you can choose to have them be PR Connections, if you wish.

[NOTE: In order to get credit for completing the a NewsU Course, you need to complete the course, fill out the form & send me the course report -- by Saturday midnight during the week it's assigned.]

Questions?

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Image Credit: "I'm Broke" by Barbara B. Nixon

Textbook prices seem to keep soaring, up to four times the rate of inflation.

A college professor, I do my best to choose the best textbooks for each of my classes. But sometimes the cost of the book will make me choose a second (or even third) best, if the book is outrageously priced.

And as a parent of two in college, I gasp — and sometimes even groan — at the cost of my sons’ books, especially for those books I know they will not want or need to keep.

I’ve recently learned about Amazon.com‘s guaranteed Book Buyback program, and I am sharing that information with all my students. For the Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics textbook (for my PR Applications class), a student can purchase a used copy of the book for less than $40, and sell it back to Amazon and receive a $38.09 Amazon giftcard. That makes the net price of the book $1.40. You can’t even get a cup of coffee most places for $1.40.

The savings aren’t quite as dramatic for some of my other classes, but it’s still a smart option to investigate.

Hope this helps,

(NOTE: All Amazon.com links in this post are affiliate links for the International Listening Association.)

Public Relations Applications (COMM 2322)

• Syllabus
• Wilcox, D. (2009). Public relations writing and media techniques (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
• A recent The Associated Press Stylebook, preferably 2010 edition  – or its online equivalent or iPhone app
• Subscribe to Ragan Communications’ PR Daily
• Establish an account at Poynter’s News University (if you already have an account from a previous semester, you do not need a new one)

Introduction to Journalism (COMM 3333)

• Syllabus
• Rich, C. (2009). Writing & reporting news (6th Ed.). Boston: Wadsworth.
• A recent copy of The Associated Press Stylebook, preferably 2010 edition  – or its online equivalent or iPhone app
• Subscribe to Ragan Communications’ PR Daily
• Establish an account at Poynter’s News University (if you already have an account from a previous semester, you do not need a new one)

Social Media for Public Relations (COMM 4633)

• Syllabus
• Hay, D. (2009). A survival guide to social media and web 2.0 optimization: Strategies, tactics, and tools for succeeding in the social web. Dalton Publishing: Austin, TX.
• Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, MA: Forrester Research, Inc.
• Subscribe to Ragan Communications’ PR Daily

Honors Speaking & Writing (COMM 244L)

• Syllabus (available by Jan. 7)
• Sprague, J., & Stuart, D. (2011). The speaker’s compact handbook (3rd ed.). Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Questions? As always,

(PS: Syllabi for my classes will be posted in early January.)

Image Credit: "Logo Top 5 de las 5" by Alberto Carlos Diéguez

The traffic at my blog Public Relations Matters ebbs and flows, much like with most blogs. When my classes are in session, I know for sure that certain posts will gain hundreds of hits, because I post all my assignments on my blog. For the purpose of today’s Top 5 post, I am not counting class assignment posts. Below you will find my five posts that had the most traffic in 2010.

1. The ONE job interview question: I asked Phil Gomes from Edelman what the ONE job interview question was that he tended to ask in almost every interview for a public relations position. He gave me his choice, in video form, and proceeded to interview several colleagues at Edelman for their choices as well. I show this short video in my classes each semester when I discuss job interviewing.
2. Five Ways to Keep Current in Public Relations News & Trends: Occasionally, my students ask me how I know so much about what is going on in the world of public relations. It’s simple: I actively try to stay up on news and trends. This blog post explains how I do it, and how PR students should do it, too.
3. How NOT to Hashtag in Twitter: In early December, the person running the CNN’s Breaking News Twitter account chose to use some tasteless hashtags in a tweet about the murder of a child. I contacted a CNN producer about it. Then I blogged.
4. AP Style Bootcamp :: Flagging Your 2010 AP Stylebook: Whether you are a journalist, PR pro or student, sometimes it’s hard to find what you are looking for in the AP Stylebook. In this post, I shared my strategy for using Post-It Notes to flag the book for easy use.
5. 10 Tips for Polishing Up Your Blogs, Fall 2010 Edition: Students in all my PR classes blog as part of the course requirements. I’ve read hundreds of student blogs over the past few years. Students typically make the same mistakes from semester to semester. I thought writing a post with the 10 most common mistakes would help my Fall 2010 students. Sigh. If only all of my students had taken the tips I shared to heart.

Are there other posts that you read at my blog in 2010 that resonated with you, but aren’t listed in the “most popular”?

Photo Credit: Untitled, by PotatoJunkie

After reviewing all the first news releases in PRCA 3330 & COMM 4333, I am generally pleased with what I saw, considering it is the first news release that many of you have written. The best stories were ones that passed the “So What?” test; they were newsworthy to those outside your client’s organization. They were well organized and clearly written. You must have remembered what you learned in your Intro to Journalism class!

Here are some common errors I saw:

1. Using “we” or “our” when it’s not part of a quotation (a news release needs to sound like a story one would read in an impartial newspaper, not in a company newsletter). News releases need to be written in third person, not first.
2. Improper use of commas (either too many or not enough)
3. Puffery (making statements in the news release that don’t seem newsworthy. Some of these would be okay as part of a quotation, however.)
4. Calling women “girls” or “ladies” (even though it’s common in sororities to do this, AP Style calls for the use of the word “women” when you are writing about female adults)
5. Abbreviating the word Georgia as GA (rather than Ga.) or Florida as FL (rather than Fla.).
6. Improper formatting on dates, times, numerals, etc.
7. Format (forgetting to put an embargo date or For Immediate Release, end sign, page slugs, letterhead with mailing address, etc.). Check BlackBoard or GeorgiaVIEW for the template I provided to you; this will help with basic formatting.
8. Including a headline that is not compelling. Your headline should be active and entice the reader to dive right into your story, not bore him or her to sleep.

Be sure to avoid these errors when writing your Personality Profiles that are due next week. And you might want a quick refresher of how to flag your AP Stylebook for easy reference, if you haven’t flagged it yet. It’s a real time-saver; I promise. I’ve been using AP Style for all of my adult life, and I still need to look some things up.