BEA Ignite shares the best peer-reviewed enterprise ideas for the classroom. In the 2017 edition held April 25th, presenters had 5 minutes to share 20 slides of the top teaching ideas at the annual convention of the Broadcast Education Association.

1. BEA IGNITE
Michael Friedman
University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Teaching Students toWrite and Learn Additional
Transferrable Skills in the Process

2. By: Michael B. Friedman
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

3. PR Industry Problem
● Most graduating seniors are still weak writers upon
entering the workforce
● Most graduating seniors have a hard time adjusting to a
workplace environment
● Most graduating seniors are not accountable for their
actions, are incapable of taking constructive criticism,
and are unwilling to learn from their mistakes

4. The Purpose
● To teach students how to think
● Prepare students with the skills to thrive
● Make students understand that it is alright to fail
● Help students understand what to do when they fail
● Force students to be accountable for their work
● Teach students how to give and take constructive
criticism

5. Course Design
● While utilizing strategies in a traditional PR writing
course, this class is unique because it is specifically
designed to hold students accountable for their work
● The class teaches students how to critique the work of
others in an effort to teach them how to spot sub par
work
● Every student must stand in front of the class and
present their work on an overhead projector for
everyone to see and explain their rationale behind their
writing

6. Specifics
● Students are taught what news is and what producers and
journalists tend to look for in stories
● Students must then understand the goals of their clients and
then create stories that fulfill BOTH their client’s and a news
organization’s needs
● Students learn how to write documents such as press releases,
pitch letters, media advisories, editorials, fact sheets, photo
captions and other documents used in public relations
● Students are graded on individual assignments and a final
media kit

7. Grading
● Students must turn in their assignments by the time
the class starts (by the time the clock strikes the start of
class)
● If late the student is awarded a zero
● This teaches students the importance of deadlines

8. Grading
● If a student turns in an assignment with an obvious
spelling or grammatical error they receive a zero for the
assignment
● This teaches the student to understand that they are in
charge of someone else’s reputation and sending out a
clean copy is the first step in providing adequate
representation
● This lesson also emphasizes the importance of
professionalism

9. The Class
● Students are required to turn in an assignment every
single class
● Students must present their work to the class on an
overhead projector
● Students read their paper aloud to the class and stop
after every headline, sentence or paragraph to allow
students to ask questions and give feedback

10. The Class
● The class offers constructive criticism and possible
solutions for each paper in an effort to help one another
succeed
● The class tends to notice all spelling errors
● Yes, there is some occasional crying

11. The Class
● In addition to holding themselves accountable for the
quality of work, the purpose of the public presentation
is to teach students how to give and receive
constructive criticism

12. The End Result – The “Real World”
● Students dramatically improve their writing
● Significant improvement in their ability to problem solve
● Employers have reported that interns who came from this
class were excellent writers, very professional and willing to
accept criticism
● Employers were willing and many times did hire the student

13. The End Result - Enrollment
● The class is wildly popular, even though students are
aware of the intensive the workload and how biting
criticism
● One of the first non required classes to fill up
● Long waiting lists

14. Go ahead, make my day . . .
Questions?

15. Contact
Michael B. Friedman
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37405
(423) 425-4774