Zombies, Superheroes and Protests, Oh My! Reviewing Three Years of Crisis Simulation Events
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For the past three years, the Mass Communication Department at Texas Wesleyan University, in collaboration with theatre students, criminal justice and sociology students and faculty have created crises on campus so that budding journalists, editors and public relations practitioners could practice their skills in a safe learning environment with local professionals and the whole world watching via social media and the web. Has this continuing exercise been effective in teaching real-world skills? And how can this help you in the classroom? This presentation will look at results from student reviews of the exercise based on individual and group podcasts after the event as well as follow-up interviews undertaken to see how students have been affected by this exercise months and years afterward.
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Zombies, Superheroes and Protests, Oh My! Reviewing Three Years of Crisis Simulation Events
- 1. Zombies, Superheroes and Protests, Oh My! Reviewing Three Years of Crisis Simulations Events by Kay L. Colley CETL Learning Summit 2018 Drs. Eddy Lynton and Cary Adkinson (left) have assisted with the simulations since the beginning.
- 2. Purpose depends on the course or courses – Journalism students in MCO 2345 Integrated Media Reporting and MCO 3320 Digital Design and Editing: • To practice real-time journalism; gathering, producing and editing content • To work with public relations practitioners • To work with a team to direct and edit content creation • To keep a community updated on a live event as it unfolds • To ascertain the difference between fact and rumor – Public relations students in MCO 4346 PR Campaigns: • To work with a team to implement a crisis plan in real-time • To work with media to disseminate appropriate and timely information • To practice working with a team to gather information during a crisis • To ascertain the difference between fact and rumor Background: Overview and purpose
- 3. Exercise Expectations News coverage: a website that contains news stories and multimedia elements created by MCO 3320 Digital Design and Editing and MCO 2345 Integrated Media Reporting class members that is updated as the crisis is occurring Crisis communication: a website from the perspective of the institution created by MCO 4346 Public Relations Campaigns and Programs class members and updated as the crisis is occurring
- 4. News Coverage https://fauxrambler.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/rambler-staff-injured-by-zombies/ Student journalists attended press conferences throughout the events and covered the events live. Above Zombie Task Force Leader and CRJ major Michael Brown explains how the zombies were contained in 2016. In 2017, Spider-Man spoke at the final press conference after students chased him around campus during the event. Also pictured are MCO students Karan Muns and Heather Birge who were part of the crisis team.
- 5. Crisis Communications https://crisiscommunicationmco4346.wordpress.com/ • Public relations students hosted press conferences throughout the events and kept the campus community updated through social media as well. • Above left is the social media feed from the 2016 event; above right the website from that same event, and far right is one of the press conferences, which also included MCO professionals.
- 6. 2016 Debrief from pros Photo left: Marjorie Herrera-Lewis, former reporter, Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Photo above: At the lunch debrief with, far right to left, Bill Lawrence of Lawrence and Associates, Marysol Gonzalez, Univision; Rebecca Aguilar, freelance reporter; and Alice Rios, formerly of KRLD radio. Additional comments from Drenda Witt, formerly of JPS Health, rounded out the pro debriefing.
- 7. Debrief from students • Podcasts from MCO 2345 and MCO 4346 • Individual podcasts were limited to 2 minutes Interview style podcasts were limited to 3 minutes or less • Counted as a daily grade (all or nothing) • Used to assist in planning for Fall 2016
- 8. Grading—2 Grades • All or nothing grade—you did it or you didn’t • Podcast of their analysis of the event • Upside: Fun; entertaining for participants and the pros who assisted • Downside: Lots of preparation to create; something always happens; making sure everyone is adequately prepared prior to event can be challenging (something always happens)
- 9. Tips—see Top 10 list @kaycolley • Start early; very time-consuming to plan • Get everyone on board, including the administration • Touch base with everyone frequently • Plan classes leading up to the event to get students prepared • Create little “practice” sessions prior to event • Have fun!
- 10. Previous presentations at: Twitter @kaycolley or at slideshare.net/klcolley
Editor's Notes
- It all began in Spring 2016 and included Mass Communication students from several classes—reporting, editing and design, and public relations campaigns along with students from the Theatre Arts Department and Criminal Justice majors. It wouldn’t have been possible that year without the support of Eddy Lynton, Cary Adkinson and the MCO faculty. Three years later, the little crisis that could has traveled across the country, with other events taking place across the nation at other universities. I’ve presented the topic at national organizations for journalism and journalism educators, and this year I’m scheduled to present the topic at the international conference for public relations in two different sessions. We won a national grant this year to fund part of the upcoming crisis simulation, and I’ll be prepping a couple of other grant applications as well. I’m in the middle of doing overall analysis of the events as learning tools and hope to have the results and a paper ready to go out in December. Today, I’ll talk briefly about some of my findings from that analysis and what we’ve learned. And I’ve been working with local high schools and middle schools to help them design and implement similar events for their students. So this one little idea just continues to grow. This presentation will give you some ideas of how we did this and how it has been received by students. My goal for this presentation is to show you how you can introduce fun and gamification into your classroom while sparking student interest and improving learning outcomes and giving you some overall findings from my research on student feedback.
- While the crises have changed, the overview and purpose for the event has not changed in the three years that we have done these exercises. The overriding objective is still to practice skills in a fun setting and create a game-like atmosphere as well as accomplish these objectives. Since that first event in 2016, we have learned a lot, so now, MCO Department faculty associated with the classes who participate in this event, spend much more time preparing students in class and allowing them to practice the skills they will need to call upon in desktop or in-class live settings. This has truly impacted the way students on the public relations side perform during the event when managing the crisis.
- In the beginning, these were the two things I wanted to come out of the exercise. The first three years, we used the free version of WordPress, which is website and blogging platform that allows users to create free websites. Our students were already using this platform for their required electronic portfolios, so they were familiar with the platform, most on a free basis. To really get the experience of how to create and maintain a website with all the bells and whistles, I wanted students to be able to use a paid site, which allows for more website functionality. This year, that will happen. These websites and domain names will be funded by a grant from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Online News Division so that students will get a better experience of how to manage a real website.
- When I thought about creating this event, I did it because even students who work for student media often lack the experience of covering a crisis as it is happening or serving as editors and directing coverage of the crisis. This exercise put them in the throes of the confusion and chaos of a crisis to see what they would do. It’s better to be able to learn and do in a safe environment like this rather than on the job or during an internship. Several years ago, I did an Externship at the Miami Herald. Editors in the newsroom talked about a student intern who had been at the Herald working when the “bath salts zombie” attacked someone right outside the old Herald offices. The editors didn’t know what was going on, but they saw lots of vehicles stopped on the bridge, so they sent the intern down to see what was going on and report on it. She didn’t come back to the office for a week, and she wouldn’t respond to anyone’s phone calls. What’s the point, even in day-to-day coverage or work in internships, MCO students may be called upon to deal with a crisis. This little exercise may not prepare someone for seeing such a gruesome site as what this intern viewed in Miami, but it does give students an idea of how they will respond in a crisis, providing them with valuable information on what areas of journalism and public relations they might choose to pursue.
- Crisis communications is often its own course in graduate public relations programs, so students rarely are exposed to anything other than general information and case studies. This exercise gives them the practical experience that no textbook can provide, and that they may be called upon to tackle when they are an intern or when they begin their careers. In my research interviews this summer, a former student and participant in two of these events has had just such an experience in her career. She talked about how she was amazed at how she felt comfortable in the crisis that ensued because she had experience this event. Another former student who also participated in two of these events talked about how performing her role in the final event this year really gave her confidence that she’d be able to tackle anything in the field. These are the kinds of outcomes I wanted our students to get from this event.
- A group of four journalism professionals and two public relations professionals provided real-time and after-the-fact feedback to students in 2016. Since that time, we’ve had journalism and public relations professionals participate as observers, sounding boards, coaches and critiquers when the entire event is over. Students across the board talked about the importance of the debrief session in their initial podcasts in 2016, 2017 and this year. In my research interviews this summer, students continued to stress the importance of these debriefing sessions and the contact that they had with professionals in preparing them for the event and assisting them during the event. The importance of the having professionals on-site that day continues to be a theme in the research, and one that we built into the process at the beginning.
- In 2016, during the exercise several public relations students left. One returned, but all of the public relations students gave scathing reviews of this exercise in their podcasts after the fact. The journalism students found the exercise more enjoyable, and seemed to understand some of the inherent goals of practicing crisis coverage in real time. The next year, one student left during the exercise but returned, and follow up podcasts saw improvement on student perceptions of the event from the public relations students, but several journalism students took issue with one of the professionals who had worked with us for the first two events. This year, based on feedback from 2016 and 2017 from these debriefs, we changed some of the ways professionals work with students, changed our slate of professionals and offered more practice opportunities. Comparing the data from these podcasts across years is part of my research project and shows that this exercise has had some unintended outcomes: The most obvious being that it has built much-needed teamwork skills. Building those skills was a learning outcome at the beginning, but the actual process of having students reflect on their experience has done more to increase their understanding of teamwork. Another unintended outcome was the “badge of honor” mentality built after students went through this crisis. In follow-up interviews this summer, any students talked about how this exercise built their self confidence and made them feel like they could go out and practice mass communication as a professional. While I thought that might be an outcome, it wasn’t until I actually did the research that I found it was.
- Because 2016 was the first time to do this event, I thought a participation grade was the only fair way to grade students. Since that time, I’ve continued to use the participation grade model. Based on the feedback from the podcasts, students learn so much from this event, including the professional feedback at the end, I believe a participation grade is appropriate. The professionals who visit offer invaluable feedback and have worked with the students to improve their skills. In my follow-up research, I asked students to not only describe their participation, but talk about how they felt during the event and how they feel now when they think about it. I also asked them to talk about their assessment of their own skills prior to the event and as they look back on the event and how they performed, was their assessment true. I asked what the students learned about public relations, journalism and editing and what they learned about themselves. Based on what students said in the follow-up interviews I continue to believe that these participation grades are appropriate.
- If you haven’t seen the email that comes from the Provost’s Office about this event and how long it takes, MCO students participating in the event receive an excused absence from their classes the day of this event. The event itself begins at 9 a.m. with ground rules and breakfast. Our crisis usually begins about 9:30 and really gets going by 10 a.m. We try to wind down the “crisis” by 11 so that students have about 30 minutes to put together their response to the crisis wrap up and stories on the website. We have a catered lunch, then the professionals critique the students’ work from about 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. The two follow-up podcasts are due within a week of the event and are individual and group podcasts where students answer a set of predetermined questions. So from the beginning, I was looking at how to assess this exercise over time. To help you with preparing your own simulation game, here’s a few tips. A top 10 list of tips is provided as a handout.
- We will have another simulation in Spring 2019. If you’re interested in creating a simulation or seeing how your students could benefit from working with us during our crisis event, let me know. We’re always looking for partners, and I’m happy to help you incorporate gamification into your classrooms.