Bring A Professor Night at CollegeJourn.com: What did they learn?

If you spend any time on Twitter on Sunday or Monday nights these days, you might have noticed a live chat about journalism showing up here and there, driven by a hashtag like #collegejourn or #journchat. I've even seen #editorchat and #journ2journ show up from time to time.

In the case of #collegejourn, San Jose State student and Wired Journalists member Suzanne Yada has moved the chat off twitter and over to CollegeJourn.com, where she and other j-school students and faculty run a weekly Sunday night chat on the issues facing student media today.

Last Sunday, it was Bring a Professor Night. You can read the saved CoverItLive-powered chat at that link, but I'm going to fish out a few highlights here.

(For background on Bring A Professor Night, watch my interview with Suzanne at IdeaLab.)

Highlights from Sunday night's chat:

The first question from Suzanne: "What do you think is the top concern in journalism education?"

Rich Cameron (Educator): "Top concern at the community college level in California is whether programs will survive budget cuts. And whether those who do can continue to explore new media forms or will have to only stick with basics."

Alfred Hermida (Educator): "Students need to leave j-school with journalism plus - all the traditional skills plus story-telling across platforms, emerging forms of media, entrepreneurial skills and more."

Davault Chappell (Student): "As a student, I feel like I'm being taught too much technique to the detriment of meaning. I can write 'gun kills man in city,' but I want to know how to make that mean something and enable the people who read my work to understand what they can do, other than mutter 'what's the world coming to' and forget the whole business a minute later."

A question from @hidama: "What multimedia skills do journalism students need to be taught? Are they receiving this education?"

Bonnie Bucqueroux (Educator): "At Michigan State, I taught an all-day Friday class for five weeks where students learned multimedia and interactivity and produced a major package. Great for students. A killer for faculty since they wanted it done three times a semester but it only counted as one class for us."

Ken Carpenter (Educator): "My college has tremendous video production and graphic design programs, but their students don't work on student publications and Web sites, and my students don't take their courses. I can't do the job the other departments are already doing."

A question from Kelsey Proud: "What are things that have gone RIGHT in journalism education?"

Emily Ingram (Student): "Universities like mine are breaking down the bureaucratic walls and consolidating majors, so students can more easily gain a wide variety of print AND broadcast AND Web skills."

Lisa Lynch (Educator): "I think some students are actually excited about all the chaos in the industry - it gives them a real sense of being involved in the future. So keeping that excitement alive is important."

A question from Kelsey Proud: "What are some good examples of how different branches of traditional media are crossing paths?"

Sharon Brooks (Educator): "Our SuperDesk cross-media approach shows up on hcworldnews.com. World is a bit of a stretch....but we do use Skype. We begin with first year students in co-curricular experiences."

Daniel Randolph: "Wartburg College a small school in Iowa has started the circuit. It has converged all of their media into a campus portal. http://info.wartburg.edu/thecircuit/"

A question from CICM: "What are some practical ways you can execute these ideas into journalism education?"

Jackie Hai (Student): "Get students out of the mindset that assignments they do for journalism class is "just homework." They should think that they're producing for a real audience in the real world."

Jane Stevens (Educator): "We're creating a local health site for Columbia, Mo. The students spend the first month mapping their communites, the second month beat-blogging (thank you jay), the third month they can do a "traditional" multimedia story that can be spun off to TV, print or radio. Watch it develop at http://www.rjicollaboratory.org"

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But really, you should go read the whole thing, and keep an eye on CollegeJourn if you're at all interested in journalism education.