1. Women in IT
Opportunities and Challenges to
Communication and the Humanities
Cindy Royal, Ph.D.
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Texas State University
cindyroyal.com
Find this presentation at slideshare.net/cindyroyal
2. Hipster Learning
Preparing for jobs that don’t exist yet
Opportunities in digital media
How to stay current/lifelong learning
3. Teaching Tech in Mass Comm
• Relevance to communication
• Role of data in storytelling
• Role of analytics in media
4. Opportunity to reach females
• Women make up 2/3 of
students enrolled in mass
communication programs
5. Not the case in computer science
• Less than 12% of computer science degrees
are awarded to women
7. • Students have gone on to roles as
• Web Developer
• Interactive Designer
• Interactive Manager
• Digital Marketing
• Social Media Editor
• Digital Strategist
• And more…
12. Make Things
• Strong online portfolio
• Start a blog
• Learn to shoot and edit
video and audio
• Take things
to the next level
• Promote work on social
media
13. Network!
• Both online and offline
• Develop a professional social presence; positive,
interesting, passionate
• Connect with professionals
• Attend meetups
14. Stay up-to-date
• Read blogs and tech publications
• Try out new platforms
• Do tutorials
• Pay attention
Driven by technological advances, the media environment continues to experience rapid change Students have to learn current concepts, but also must be prepared to grasp new ideas and apply them in their workplaces Today's students are preparing for jobs that don't exist yet, and graduates are expected to be immediately productive in defining and shaping these new roles. Social media editors Community managers Programmer/developer roles in communication companies
Understand pedagogical and cultural differences in teaching tech in mass comm and computer science. Establish mass comm as the discipline that provides the technology education of the future. Develop a platform that shares tech skills with professionals and helps to train faculty. Female role models and mentorship.
Courses cover the realm of conceptual/theoretical to basic skills to advanced tech Each course balances emphasis on communication, design and development in projects Engagement with social media; blogs, Twitter, Facebook… Attention to current events in tech Focus on judgment, problem-solving and troubleshooting Developing a digital media center to centralize thinking in this area across our sequences Faculty development Professional community ties
Moving into mobile, adding responsive design to classes Pushing the envelope with tech skills – programming, scraping, web frameworks
Goal is to develop a passion in students so that when they are interviewing in 6 months, a year, 2 years, they know what’s happening currently, not what we discussed in class.