Teaching PR

Casey O'Donnell guest lecture: It's not all fun in games

Grady College's Dr. Casey O'Donnell visited my social media class on Friday to talk about gaming and Web 2.0 (or whatever you want to call it). The first thing he wants you to know is that no, he doesn't spend his whole day playing games. Instead, he does game development and conducts research on the industry.

He focused the bulk of his discussion on the big 3 console manufacturers -- Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo -- and their efforts to keep game development closed. In order to create a game for one of their consoles, a developer has to get approval from the manufacturer and get a publisher, such as Activision or Capcom, and when the game is finished must wait for a scheduled release slot. Basically, the manufacturers dislike user generated content/social media because they want complete control over the process -- the industry is built around permissions, licenses, lawsuits, and patents. The videogame industry pioneered digital rights management.

Casey argues that the industry is losing out, that this insistence on control has ultimately cost them money because they can't develop their tools to full capacity. There is neither a standard set of tools and practices nor any institutional memory because the system is so closed. People should demand the right to develop games for their consoles, he says, because there are some great independent games out there. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hasn't been tested at the Supreme Court level.

He also showed us what a game looks like from different perspectives -- programmers, designers, and artists -- which is undoubtedly less important than the copyright issues he discussed, but was very cool.

More collaborative learning: reading and presenting social media books

As I have mentioned, my Maymester class is cut out for collaborative learning. Here's my second collaborative project of the semester: I required the students to participate in a group project using books about social media.

I selected three books, and students were allowed to pick which one they wanted to read. The books are

• Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (ad/PR)
• Gatewatching, by Axel Bruns (journalism)
• Convergence Culture, by Henry Jenkins (entertainment media) 

A large number of students (8 of 13) selected Groundswell, so I divided them into two teams.

I scheduled the reading over four days, two before the weekend and two after, and wrote discussion questions for each book each day (yes, this means I had to read 3 books as they were reading one). I dedicated one 50-minute time slot per day to discussions within the breakout groups. 

Finally, the students are required to do a team presentation of their books to the rest of the class. I asked them to be creative, and if possible to use social media in their presentations. I consulted with each team once to make sure their ideas were appropriate, and I gave them an additional hour today to finalize their presentations, which begin tomorrow. Some teams are making videos and podcasts, one designed a game, and one is doing a mock campaign -- I can't wait to see the results.   

I would be happy to share the discussion questions if anyone wants to see them. Just leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

The Week's Best, 25 May 2009

• Some PR Advice for the Holy See, Fr. John Zulsdorf
• Desperately Seeking Symmetry, Richard Bailey  
• Anti-Starbucks Filmmakers Hijack Twitter Marketing Campaign, David Meerman Scott 
• Impact of Potential New FTC Endorsement Guidelines on Companies, Susan Getgood 
• The Art of the Publicity Stunt, Trevor Young 
• A Tough Year for the Class of 2009, Harold Burson (via @SPerrett) 

It's not a lecture, it's a guest lecture

Yesterday David Wescott of the "It's Not a Lecture" blog guest lectured via telephone to my social media class on his assigned topic, "social media is fun." He described his company, APCO Worldwide, and his job, including his interaction with mom bloggers -- building a relationship with a community and addressing long-term issues rather than conducting one-time campaigns. He described his efforts to create messages that resonate with communities, building grassroots support through conversation on big issues like healthcare reform or the environment.

Why is this fun? David listed several reasons: you get to know a community, harness their creativity and add your own, get noticed, use your influence to change how things are done, experience new things, and maybe even get famous. He pointed to several mom bloggers as examples. When I told him that Mir, of Woulda Coulda Shoulda fame, is also going to visit our class, he said that he once sent her some chocolate and added that to his list of reasons social media can be fun.

David also explained his efforts on "The World According to Mom" project as more evidence that social media can be fun. And let's not overlook his video evidence of a real Dawg. Now that's fun.

Collaborative literature review project

Teaching Maymester courses is quite a challenge. My class meets daily for almost 3 hours. Each day represents a week in a typical semester -- 15 days instead of 15 weeks. Although we're in class for the same amount of time, there's obviously a lot less outside time for students to read and work on projects; and, I can't lecture for 3 hours a day every day (leaving aside the fact that no one would want to listen to anyone lecture for 3 hours a day). Course planning in these circumstances requires a little creativity.

Because I'm teaching a class on social media, in the spirit of collaboration I decided to use a lot of collaborative learning techniques and projects. The first of these is a social media literature review project inspired by a project Michael Wesch described on his blog. I made an appointment with our amazing mass comm reference librarian, Kristin Nielsen, and the class met in a library lab for an hour so she could demonstrate search techniques for the project. I also created a free wiki especially for the project on PBworks; while at the lab students went to the "Bibliography" page and registered 5 articles they wanted to read (no repeats allowed).

Over the weekend each student had to read and abstract the articles, posting 150-word abstracts on the wiki's "Abstracts" page. They were allowed to use as a starting point the author's abstract when one was provided, but had to use their own words and make an effort to tie the article to our purposes or things we'd already discussed in class. I also asked them to organize (collaboratively) the abstracts as they went, adding headings and grouping like items together. Because it's a wiki, I can go back to previous iterations to see who did what. I haven't graded them yet but will look at both their individual abstracts and their efforts on the organization of the material.

In class on Monday, the students sat at a seminar table with the wiki projected on a big screen to complete the organization of the 65 articles and then identify major themes that cut across the categories (health, politics, children, etc.) they had created to organize their material. After their discussion I came back into the room and we discussed their themes (such as online identity and bridging the generation gap), and then we listed areas for further research -- the "cool mom" phenomenon (exemplified by moms who friend their kids and their friends on Facebook) stirred a lot of interest. Finally, we considered ways their research could be presented: a video on "cool moms," a scholarly research article, and so forth.

I had several objectives with the project: expose students to academic research on social media, help them learn to locate appropriate research, identify major areas of scholarly interest -- that is, what scholars see as compelling or problematic about social media, require them to use a wiki, and practice collaborative knowledge building. I think we achieved all of these objectives, but if I had it to do again I would take a more hands-on approach in the organization and theme-building stage (in other words, I wouldn't leave the room). I had hoped that they could combine their knowledge to create something new without me telling them "the answer," but most of them have not had a research class yet, making them inexperienced and unprepared to synthesize and extrapolate from the details of what they read to create a bigger picture.

Bearing that in mind, I'd call the project a success, and I'd recommend it to other teachers. Thanks to Dr. Wesch for posting it.

Addition: Read an update on this assignment from 2011.

The Week's Best, 18 May 2009

• U.S. Fights Taliban on Another Front: Public Relations, Jason Motlagh (via Mark Rose)
• What Companies Should Know About Digital Natives, Jeremiah Owyang  
• In Defense of Noise, Elizabeth Albrycht  
• Study: The Bank and Credit Union Twittersphere, William Mills Agency
• Lucky 13: Top Job Networking Sites, Ron Culp 
• College Students: What Are You Waiting For? Join Twitter ASAP, Heather D'Amico (via @BarbaraNixon)
• What Google Knows About You, Robert L. Mitchell (via @crobcary)
• With PR on the RIse, Here's a Refresher Course in the Basics, Jonah Bloom (via @CubanaLAF) 

Meet my social media special topics class

At the last minute my department offered me the opportunity to teach a Maymester course on social media. We meet three hours a day for 15 days -- the equivalent of an entire semester in 3.5 weeks.

I opened up the class to anyone who's taken at least one of the introductory survey classes in the Grady College, and despite the late addition of the course 13 students registered. They have a good mixture of interests and majors, mostly advertising but also magazines and various agricultural/ag comm majors. Unlike my PR students from last semester, they're not complaining that I'm requiring them to participate in social media. Which is a good thing.

So, meet my students:

• @lillyjones    blog: Seen on the Street
• @rcmay    blog: Rebecca May
• @Bom351    blog: William Moore
• @AlysonM3    blog: Service in Athens
• @Lauren_M_Riley    blog: New Rock CD Reviews
• @KateLWooten    blog: Patio Gardens
• @Andreahubard    blog: Discover Athens, Georgia
• @CathryneK    blog: Just A Girl
• @peterwbauman    blog: This Is Awkward, But I Like It
• @thompulliam   blog: Adgadget
• @mrcatchings    blog: The Hustle
• @DallasAnne319   blog: Meatetarian
• @crobcary   blog: The Cary Project

The Week's Best, 11 May 2009

• Kevin Kelly: Predicting the Next 5,000 Days of the Web, via Michael Seaton
• School of Hard Knocks, Richard Bailey  
• Fear and Loathing in the Stock Market and Social Media, Shannon Paul 
• PR Clios Shortlist Favors Big Agencies, PRNewswer
• Journalism-PR Myths and Stereotypes Busted, Jim Macnamara
• 16 Edelbytes from Richard, Toni Muzi Falconi 
• What Not to Do If You're a PR Student, Brian Camen 
• How to Block Facebook Photos of Yourself, Paul Boutin (via @ntindall)

PR students: what not to tweet

I follow a lot of PR students on Twitter. This semester, I had 60 of my own, plus other Grady students, plus lots of other students at universities around the U.S. and around the world.

Unfortunately, I also sometimes stop following students on Twitter. Here are some things that students tweet about that just might result in a quick click on the unfollow button:

• Complaining about your classes or professors. Even when it's not me. Even when I have no idea who it is. Think of it this way: who wants to hire a whiner? Are you going to whine about your boss or employer online?
• Alcohol and party related tweets. An occasional mention is one thing. A twitterstream flowing with it is another. Who wants to hire a drunk?
• Tweets that are too promotional in nature. We all do it sometimes, but if you're working on behalf of a client or employer, consider starting a separate account for the client rather than doing all the promo from your personal account.
• News about your job or internship interviews that name the potential employer. Don't tweet about this until you actually land the job. If you don't get it, you're not going to look good.
• Stuff that should be in a direct message. This is one I've been working on myself-- it's easy to just hit reply, but when a conversation starts to be one-to-one, move it to DMs. And use the DM for anything that's not of general interest. (In fact, this post started as a DM conversation with @kaye.)

Earlier this semester, @BarbaraNixon tweeted a wise suggestion to her students: go to the Web and look at your last page of tweets. Is that really how you want to represent yourself to the world?

If not, it's time to rethink your twitter strategy.

Grady's undergrad program by the numbers

The Grady College advising office recently released some numbers that create a picture of our undergraduate program. About 1,500 students are currently enrolled, with 350 graduating spring and summer; 85% are Georgia residents, but the remainder represent 34 other states plus Washington, D.C. and 19 other countries. Most interesting to me is that our diversity numbers, at least in terms of race, continue to rise. This spring's undergrads are 15% racial/ethnic minority, and new admits are 17% minority. As we go up a point or two every year, it's starting to make a noticeable difference (for instance, both the new president and the new vice president of PRSSA are minorities.)

Looking strictly at the PR major (about 300 students), a couple of things stand out. They are 92% female and 8% male. Wow. And, new PR admits this spring had an average GPA (from their first two years as undergrads) of 3.75 -- yes, out of 4.0. Also wow.

The Week's Best, 4 May 2009

• Millenial Work/Life Balance, Joe Grasso
• Will Media Backlash Doom Twitter?, Kathy E. Gill
• Spoonerism Did You Say?, Dan Santow
• 10 Tips for Being the Best You Can Be, Anne Naylor (via @Sfoxworthy83)
• Robert Gibbs Needs Some of Obama's Genuineness, Bruce Benidt
• Swine Flu Spreads too Fast for Marketing, Heather Yaxley

• Top 5 Things I Learned Being Director for PRowl Public Relations, Jessica Lawlor

Fun with Twitter

This week at my college's end-of-the-year faculty/staff reception, my department chair made fun of my Twitter habit (and @Kaye's) by suggesting that all those tweets would bring bird flu, rather than swine flu, to the college. With more than 7,000 tweets in less than 2 years, it's hard to deny that I may be spending a little too much time with the bird.

Here are a couple of videos that have made me mind my tweets a little more closely during the past couple of weeks.

First, one I showed at the kickoff event for the Grady Student Society, "The Twouble with Twitter":

And next, one that shows what you'd look like if you tweeted out loud, "Real Life Twitter":

After you watch these, I promise you'll think twice about what you tweet. And don't forget you can follow me on Twitter, @KarenRussell. I'll try not to be too innane.