EDLD 5305 Assignment 3 – Learning from Leaders, Malick, S.

The Abilene Christian University Main Learning Technology Initiative is impressive in its scope and detail and most resembles what I think we should offer as a campus, but more importantly as a whole – the Department of Communication. The program offers its students a total immersion in a technology-based experience.

I have some previous knowledge with that program as former ABU Journalism Chairperson Dr. Charles Marler was a close friend and confidante to my mentor and journalism professor Howard Perkins. As an undergraduate at Lamar in the mid-90s, Charlie (yes, he really liked to be called that) and Howard at various times chaired or co-chair the executive directorship of the now defunct Southwestern Journalism Congress press club for a number of years before it was absorbed into the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. The University Press and ABU’s The Optimist newspaper regularly competed against one another in numerous state and national student journalism contests – the UP holds a significant lead in awards and the UP frequently competes in professional media competitions as well as collegiate competitions.

Through that initial relationship I had regular communication over many years with Dr. Marler as he often sent recruiting materials to me and annually solicited applications from my high school students to consider attending ABU. Several did and went on to successful careers and media. One of the features Dr. Marler would discuss with students in the late 2000s was the innovative approach the campus was taking to incorporating new technology in all aspects of campus engagement.

The key element to the MLTI is the convergence of all institutional resources being focused in to the purpose of all campus stakeholders. The ABU strategy was to disrupt the normal process of department and college fiefdoms to serve a larger purpose. A truly remarkable achievement on any campus considering the political and personal minefields that can inhabit many campuses. Campus stakeholders saw this not as an overbearing order or administrative directive, but as an opportunity and that opportunity was turned in to a series of relationships and partnerships that has seemingly benefitted everyone involved, especially students.

Dr. Marler would frequently attend the Interscholastic League Press Conference hosted by The University of Texas at Austin and sponsored by the ILPC, Texas Association of Journalism Educators and the University Interscholastic League. My students and I attended this annual conference for 13 consecutive years and I was a presenter for 11 consecutive years. He would set up and information table and by the mid-2000s each year he displayed a growing technological show of what the journalism department and the university as a whole were doing in regard to incorporating technology. Colleagues from UT commented at the pace of what ABU was doing far exceeded what UT was able to do with ten times the resources.

As a model, it serves as a beacon of where our own program should go. However, it was curious to not that ABU has not published any additional mobile learning reports since 2011. I was unable to verify their absence.

Organizational Background

The award-winning Lamar University Press student newspaper has published continuously since the school’s founding, except during World War II years 1942-1944 due to paper rationing for the war effort. Since 1977, the publication has earned 1,344 individual student and staff awards, including 14 Associated Press Managing Editor awards.

It published under the previous names of the S’Park Plug, The Redbird, before settling in 1970 on the name of the University Press (know locally as the UP – pronounced “you-pee” – keep the puns to yourself). The UP publishes 6,000 print editions every Thursday during long semesters and publishes multiple times a week online through its website www.lamaruniversitypress.com throughout the year. The UP does not routinely publish during exam weeks and holiday breaks. Summer publishing occurs online weekly one to two times. Social media posting usually corresponds with online publishing, but is more varied as student staff and reporters publish personals point of view posts about various on-goings of staff working on assignments, events, etc.

The UP is co-advised by the Director of Student Publications and the Assistant Director of Student Publications. Both advisers are also adjunct faculty members teaching in the Department of Communication and supervise both practicum, internship and paid student staffers. The Assistant Director position was combined with the Director of Advertising position in September 2015.

An innovation plan has been formally planned and introduced by the Director and Co-Director as a way to provide improvement in career skills needed for our students to succeed in the 21^st century media landscape as working journalists, photographers, advertising executives and digital media professionals.

Since 1972 when author and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson submitted his stories covering the 1972 Presidential Election (Thompson, 1973) the rapid creep of digital technology has been changing the way journalists have traditionally performed their job and put newsrooms on notice that there are constant changes in what they must learn in order to do their work.

Journalism educators have struggled at the same time to keep up with providing their students with the most up to date information. It has been and will continue to be a continual arms race to stay on top of the field.

However, technology is only a set of tools. The challenge is how to incorporate using these tools to the maximum efficiency and benefit to the student. The UP has struggled like most newsrooms to keep up with that challenge. Sometimes it’s an issue of funding resources, reader interests, personnel, etc. The can go on for a seemingly endless list of reasons.

The focus of this innovation plan is to challenge the methods we currently use and to experiment to bring innovation to those methods with a series of initiatives incorporating many different aspects of teaching, peer and professional collaboration, changing mindsets and some physical resources.

Most of the technology required for this plan is readily available, the goal is to institute productive use of it as a means of growth for the organization and enhance the role the UP plays on the Lamar campus and within the Department of Communication.

The items included have been approved by Andy Coughlan, the director of student publications and with support and advice of Dr. Natalie Tindall, chairperson department of communications. The plan will be documented and supervised by the Assistant Director of Student Publications. Students will implement the strategies, goals and objectives of the plan. The timeline for implementation is now and there is no end date as the plan will be in perpetual motion. The conclusion of some items will happen within a short-term, but most of the innovation plan will be a continually on-going process. There are items included here that will continue to evolve as technology evolves, but more importantly, if successful, as the program evolves.

Our students come to us in a mix of capacities and degree plans, academic requirements and staff – some work there as contributors for class credit, some for employment (a paycheck), others a mix of academic credit and pay for financial aid. Students are a mix of all majors, although a majority are Communications majors (journalism, advertising and public relations track students) our second largest number of students comes from the College of Engineering, followed by Business.

The University Press is an independent entity although we are listed under the College of Fine Arts & Communication (CoFAC). Our funding is derived from the university student fee, as chartered by the regents of the TSUS board, and the director and I are employees of the university with adjunct instructor roles within the college and are labeled by the CoFAC as the only journalism faculty although other faculty members do teach journalism courses. We essentially have no operation restrictions within the UP outside of adhering to our budget, university and system policy. No formal approval from the university is required except for issues of entering into service contracts with vendors or alterations to courses offered in the approved departmental schedule. The UP cannot enter into financial contracts independent of university counsel or state compliance laws.

Introduction of Operational Disruption

The plan introduces as an agent of change for the UP. The UP strategy is to currently focus only on going from one edition to another primarily. The disruption occurs when the UP self-reflects on how it can emphasize change to better serve students working there and how we engage our readers – not how they engage the UP so much. The technology is mostly in place and secondary to the instruction method labeled as item 1 in the innovation outline below. Disruption occurs because the UP is going to change how it engages itself with students, the campus, and the community at-large. Disruption is going to be the new method of engagement and technology is going to be one of the tools we use to do that. Engagement will be enhanced and improved through developing strategy that better uses management of time and resources using social media, collaborating with peers on campus and with community-professional peers off-campus and reader experiences with UP content. For example, the inclusion of lifestyle editorial coverage or the development of a media phone app for the paper.

Innovation Plan Goals and Objectives

1. There is no such thing as a just newspaper reporter or just a TV reporter anymore a media technology has converged (Negroponte, 1995), there all only journalists and students must develop skills in all areas of media production – writing, reporting and editing, advertising, business and marketing, and digital production for print layout, video production/editing and internet-related media. The plan, which has been used for years at the UP gets a more planned, tailored variation of the maestro approach where veteran students peer coach and teach with advising by staff to achieve given goals/objectives for assignment deadlines, story development or skill development. The maestro approach was developed by Medill School of Journalism associate professor Buck Ryan in the early 1990s. I learned about the concept from numerous journalism workshops I attended and presented at as a high school journalism teacher. Students participating for academic credit must complete and submit a portfolio to receive credit by the end of each semester. Credit is determined only by the director and assistant direction of the UP. The UP has been using this without ever knowing there was a name to their staff training and operation process. Reader engagement is a key component. What do the readers want? How do they want content delivered? We know some certain things – readers want more live engagement, they are interested in lifestyle issues, food and entertainment. How can the UP best deliver those wants?Assertively recruit and retain students through on and off campus outreach with UP alumni, community stakeholders and students in Southeast Texas, including Houston. We have developed UPLift, an alumni visiting event involving speaking event and small group discussion and teaching relaying current industry trends and skills. This involves traveling and visiting regional high schools, hosting a high school journalism workshop and competition.

2. Formalize advertising and editorial internships with advising to ensure all students receive appropriate academic credit regardless of degree plan. Plan involves one long semester or two short summer semester of completion with portfolio. Select students will receive paid position on staff. The UP restructured budget payroll to allow 2-4 advertising students up to 19 hours paid each week. $9728 per semester has been allocated from budget advertising reserves from Fall 2016 to be used. New maestro concept has already helped the advertising section increase revenue 200 percent over Fall 2015. That is a sustainable amount and our goal is to improve another 200 percent increase by end of Fall 2017 term. The fund allocation for the journalism students will allow 4-6 students additionally to be paid under the same 19 hour rule above. A professional staff position’s duties have been split between the Assistant Director and Director and began Spring 2017. The university president and provost for finance approved and signed off on it June 2016 and the funds have been in reserve at the director’s discretion as part of the University Press fiscal budget to begin Spring 2017.
3.  The formation of a student advertising agency under the umbrella of the UP is being implemented as of Fall 2016 at the discretion of the Advertising Director and completion of the semester tryout and portfolio. Students must complete degree track advising to ensure proper accreditation before enrolling and must have UP Director’s approval.
4.  The creation of a circulation intern. Currently all students working or contributing to the UP participate in a rotating schedule set by the AD to distribute the paper every Thursday morning. The UP advisers have submitted a university application for awork-study paid student position to fulfill on and off campus circulation demands – this student would be a part of the student staff but not have editorial duties and report to the Advertising Director. This position could also earn academic credit or internship hours. The UP currently circulates to 60 locations on and off campus and the objective is to have 100 locations by Fall 2017. The logistics require at least four hours of off campus time to complete which cannot be currently met by any editorial staff position.
5. The complete digitization of the UP photo archive. We currently have a print and negative archive that reaches back to the founding to the University in 1923. We estimate the archive to contain around 500,000 images. We have established a partnership with the archival staff of the Gray Library to digitize and publish a select collection ranging in size from about 70,000 to 80,000 images that will be available to the public through the library digital collections portal. We currently have all of newspapers from 1923 to 1994 in a special library collection, and we are in the process of digitizing gap years from 1995 until our first digital postings in the mid-1990s. Papers for the years 1995 through 2005 became available for viewing just this week on February 1, 2017. The digital photo archive will be available sometime the Spring 2018 semester. This process is being made available with a grant written by archivist Penny Clarke from the Gray Library to the Texas Historical Commission. The estimated cost of digitizing the photos will cost approximately $20,000. In addition, the UP is seeking to further build our relationship with the staff of the library and other entities on campus such as our management information systems students and faculty, to build a better cross-referencing system so items can be tagged from archival content to new content being produced.

1. Thompson, Hunter S., “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.” 1973 Straight Arrow Books, ISBN 978-0-87932-053-9
2. Negroponte, Nicholas, “Being Digital” 1995 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc,, ISBN 0-679-43919-6