The Social Media Educator

Hello and welcome to the Social Media Educator blog! Over the next few months, this blog will serve as a “travelogue” for my journey through the development and examination of courses in social media for journalism majors at the University of Memphis. For the past four months, I have been researching a select group of syllabi used across the country to educate journalism and PR students on social media. While all of them provide insight to the structure of the course, resources used and possible topics of conversation, I am in search of additional information that will make this course the greatest social media course to hit the journalism and PR landscape!

The quest for additional information leads me to the next step in the process…Interviews! I am looking for journalists & PR practitioners currently using social media within their field to participate in in-depth interviews for my research. I will also be interviewing the professors that are currently teaching courses in social media at the university level. My hope is that the information that these interviews provide will assist in adding even more relevant content to the course syllabus, resources and topic selection.

Finally, I will be assisting Dr. Carrie Brown-Smith during the Spring 2011 semester as she teaches social media to undergraduates and graduate students at the University of Memphis. While I was originally only interested in developing the course on a graduate level, this experience will provide the opportunity to evaluate the difference between the two groups and determine the most effective methods of teaching and learning for each of them. Additionally, I’ll be able to talk to students to find out what they liked and disliked, wanted but didn’t get and got but didn’t find relevant. All of this information will help Dr. Brown-Smith and myself get some valuable opinions from the individuals taking the course.

I am super-excited about the next couple of months, and I can’t wait to share all that I learn with you! Get in, sit down and hold on! This is going to be an amazing ride through social media, public relations and journalism that you do NOT want to miss!!