Providing students with real experience while maintaining a safe place to make mistakes

Evans, Myra

Abstract

A news day is a hybrid of simulation and experiential learning where students become practising journalists in a learning environment in order to learn the trade. The days are undertaken on 58 journalism courses in the UK accredited by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC). Initial research by the author has found that news days - “doing it for real” - had huge benefits for students. They were able to experience the pressures of being a working journalist whilst being allowed to make mistakes in a safe environment. This research examines this juxtaposition of “doing it for real” in the public domain versus the pedagogical safety net of being in a classroom environment by comparing news day practice at two BJTC accredited journalism courses at Nottingham Trent University and the University of the West of England. It concludes that placing news day material in the public domain increases motivation and accountability among students whilst posing a number of pedagogical challenges for staff, changing their role from lecturer to facilitator. Furthermore, if the material goes into the public domain, their role changes to that of a news editor.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 6, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Mar 20, 2017
• Publication Date: Mar 14, 2017
• Deposit Date: Mar 15, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 15, 2017
• Journal: Journalism Education
• Print ISSN: 2050-3903
• Publisher: Association for Journalism Education
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 76-83
• Keywords: journalism education, pedagogy, training
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/896904
• Publisher URL: http://journalism-education.org/2017/03/providing-students-with-real-experience-while-maintaining-a-safe-place-to-make-mistakes/
• Contract Date: Mar 15, 2017