Salt Lake Community College students can dive into the world of mass media in a different way starting this fall.
COMM 2600, aka Production for Student Media, combines elements of journalism, radio and television production into a single course. The new class will also give students the ability to customize their own curriculum.
“This course really emulates what’s happening in the real world with converged media,” says Julie Gay, associate professor of communication. “That’s going to be the fun part about it, because it matches what’s happening in real-world journalism.”
COMM 2600 will be a direct replacement for the intermediate or advanced courses in the three disciplines: COMM 2310, aka Intermediate Video Production; COMM 2560, aka Advanced Radio Performance; and COMM 1620, aka Journalism II – Editing.
“Traditionally, we’ve had journalism, radio and TV all separate, [but] we just don’t see enough enrollment to be able to run these classes,” says Alison Arndt-Wild, program manager for the Student Media Center. “We wanted students to be exposed to different media platforms, because [that is] more useful in today’s job market.”
Production for Student Media has no prerequisites this fall and is open to all students.
“This semester we didn’t want to prevent students from taking this class, we removed all the prerequisites to get everyone in, and get them graduated,” Arndt-Wild says. “Going forward it [COMM 2600] will have prerequisites [starting] next year.”
COMM 2600 will allow students to complete modules from the beginning journalism, radio and television courses. The integration will enable students to create their own experience for the course.
“Journalism is multi-platform; in this class, we are going to emphasize that,” Arndt-Wild says. “We want students to have the skills that will help them in this job market.”
COMM 2600 is expected to bring the feel of a real newsroom to South City Campus. The goal of the new course is to single out what a student is good at and build on it.
“When these students go out and get jobs at traditional newspapers, they’re still going to have to know how to distribute content with some images, video and audio,” Arndt-Wild says. “The internet is the main delivery system, and today you have to know a little bit about everything, and COMM 2600 is a little bit of everything.”
Students will create and record their own content using the different studios and production equipment in the Center for Arts and Media. The course will bring students together to work on a variety of projects that will be posted on SLCC student media channels.
“We’re really hoping to see a lot of collaboration,” Arndt-Wild says.
Production for Student Media starts Aug. 24 and will be taught by assistant professor Matt Merkel. Any student interested in taking COMM 2600 can register for the course through their MyPage account.
