AJE September 2020 Conference: Watch the sessions and see our speakers’ slides here

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our second online conference of the year and to our speakers for their engaging papers.

The theme was Covid 19: Learning & Teaching Journalism – New Approaches.

Video stream from September Conference

Session 1

Focus on Community: Empowering peer-to-peer interaction in online learning
Rachel Younger
Edinburgh Napier University

The distance MA International Journalism for Media Professionals has so far brought together journalists based in 60+ countries. The curriculum is specifically designed to facilitate knowledge sharing as well as export. Peer-to-peer exchange amongst online learners, and a deliberate emphasis on the learning community, are key to promoting a culturally diverse approach to the curriculum, as well as enhancing student engagement and retention.

Rachel Younger, the programme leader of this online MA at Edinburgh Napier University will present a range of approaches that can empower peer-to-peer interaction in the online classroom.

Teaching journalism in the time of COVID: impacts on pedagogy and practice
Jennifer Leask, Langara College, Vancouver
Susan Harada, Carleton University, Ottowa

When much of the world shut down because of COVID-19 in March 2020, post-secondary journalism schools in Canada were forced to finish their semester exclusively online. This meant journalism educators had to find new ways to deliver instruction from a distance with as little as one week to prepare. Through an online survey, this exploratory research examines how instructor expectations of student work changed because of the COVID-19 shut down, as well as the how those modifications impacted perceptions of the quality of student work. This survey also examines instructor views of which of the emergency changes were beneficial for students, and which were detrimental to student learning. This study gives insight into both adaptations that could be implemented for longer-term distance journalism education and assessment criteria that must be upheld. The research highlights areas of future research including qualitative research, follow up surveys and longitudinal studies as COVID-19 continues to disrupt journalism education.

Covid, China and the unintended consequences of lockdown teaching
Alan Geere, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Giving teenagers an appreciation of plurality of the media when all they have ever known is state-controlled output is a conjuring trick that has exercised many journalism lecturers in my position in China. So, it is a delight to revel in the unintended consequences of lockdown teaching – access to ‘international journalism’, the very subject under consideration.
Directing operations from my office/studio/bunker here in the UK I can share material blocked by the Chinese authorities. But this freedom does not come without its challenges and responsibilities.
Alan Geere has practised and taught journalism around the world and is currently lecturer in International Journalism at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, southern China, on a programme run by UCLan from Preston.

News in lockdown

Gail Mellors & Raj Shukla
Nottingham Trent University

Gail Mellors is a senior lecturer and course leader of the BA Broadcast Journalism degree at Nottingham Trent University. She’s also a member board of the Broadcast Journalism Training Council, although members shouldn’t hold that against her.
Previously she enjoyed a 15-year-career at ITV Yorkshire during which she took on numerous roles including reporter, presenter and producer and completed several secondments for network broadcasters including GMTV (now Good Morning Britain) and ITN. She started her career at the Derby Evening Telegraph where she gained her NCTJ National Certificate and then freelanced for a number of national titles before moving to broadcasting. She now freelancers, occasssionally, for ITV Regions.
Raj Shukla is a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University working on both the BA and MA Broadcast Journalism programmes. She has taught in Beijing on a MA degree which is in partnership with our partner institution, the Communication University of China.
Previously Raj taught on the BA degree in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Bedfordshire.
Raj spent 15 years as a reporter, presenter and producer for ITV regions both at Calendar and Westcountry. She started in commercial radio after finishing a postgraduate qualification in Falmouth.
News in lockdown is her first foray into research.

Session 2

Necessity is the mother of invention: reimagining a visual communication course in quarantine
Dr Barbara Emanuel, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil

Dr. Barbara Emanuel is a communication designer and Professor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She teaches visual communication to future journalists at Universidade Federal Fluminense, and her research fields include visual rhetoric and information design. At this AJE Online conference, she discusses the process of adapting a course about visual planning from the classroom to distant learning, considering special needs of low-income students — How to overcome having poor internet access, no laptops, crowded family spaces and heavy work schedules?

Inspiring creativity with photojournalism students during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Claire Wolfe, University of Worcester

Images are central to storytelling. Robert Frank states: “There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.” The worst of moments can be turned to a journalist’s advantage by being adaptable, creative and experimental with both ideas and technical equipment.
Claire Wolfe is Principal Journalism Lecturer and a HEA Senior Fellow at the University of Worcester. She has a strong news journalism background with previous roles including News Editor and Night Editor on the Daily News. Published research includes the impact of trolls on journalism and democracy.

Introducing the ‘Sheffield school’: Innovative approaches to blended curricula in undergraduate journalism education
Jake Mason (University of Sheffield)
Gemma Horton (University of Liverpool)

This paper identifies what it defines as the ‘Sheffield school’ of journalism education and introduces its innovative approach to blended curricula in undergraduate journalism education. The paper makes two key contributions to our understanding of the discipline. First, it unpacks the tensions within journalism studies curricula by contextualising the discipline’s development within the political economy of the UK higher education sector and the British media industry. Second, it introduces the ‘Sheffield school’ and its use of blended learning to resolve the historic tensions between practice-based and theory-based undergraduate curriculum content. The paper concludes by making some tentative recommendations for the future development of the ‘Sheffield school’.

Pipa Informativa – Journalistic extension project amid a pandemic
Melina de la Barrera Ayres & Juliana Freire Bezerra
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina- Brazil

This paper will a teaching experience in the extension project Jornalismo e Ação Comunitária, created in the Journalism Course at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina- Brazil, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The project’s purpose is to bring students closer to popular realities in Florianópolis city and to co-create communication projects with the communities. However, a challenge arose: how to start the project respecting the social distance? The group created a remote project: the flyer Pipa Informativa. The purpose of this production is to fill information gaps in the pandemic scenario. It has reached the homes of 5,000 families.

Melina de la Barrera Ayres has a Post-Doctorate in Journalism (2017), has a PHD in Interdisciplinary Human science (2015) and a Master in Journalism from UFSC (2009), has a Bachelor degree in Social Communication – Journalism from the Catholic University of Uruguay (2006). She is a professor at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, in the Journalism Department. She is dedicated to teaching in the disciplines of Report, edition and Community Journalism, of the Undergraduate Course. She is a member of the research group Journalism and Knowledge (Cnpq).
Juliana Freire Bezerra is a Journalist and PHD student in Journalism at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina- Brazil. Researcher of the research groups: Journalism and Knowledge and Observatory of Journalistic Ethics, both from the same Institution. She studies the connection between Brazilian community journalism and the rights of citizenship of the popular classes in contemporary times.