Curriculum Development in the Digital Age of Journalism

Abstract

Journalism practitioners and educators alike are grappling with a changing media landscape, desperately trying to keep up. Journalism educators must provide a new journalism curriculum, one that teaches new technology, but also stresses responsible reporting, based on independence, accuracy, and verification.
This study was conducted to determine student satisfaction with a new Convergent Journalism major. The first year of the roll out of our new Major here at Metropolitan State University of Denver was 2013-14 academic year. This study is an assessment of the efficacy and relevance of our curriculum development efforts. SurveyMonkey.com was the methodology used to measure stakeholder satisfaction. A well-tested satisfaction survey template was deployed, customized to the task. The sample included all of the students pursuing the Convergent Journalism major. A web link collector was used. More waves of testing will be done this fall before the study is complete. The results so far showed 88% were either extremely satisfied or moderately satisfied. We conclude that our new curriculum for Convergent Journalism is meeting student expectations. Anecdotal feedback from several employers suggests that they too are please with the journalism, multi-platform, digital dissemination and content creating skills of our graduates.