Sports PR And Journalism BA (Hons)

Teaching methods are carefully selected and employed to provide students with: appropriate means to engage successfully with the syllabus of each module, to draw out the fullest possible range of appropriate methods by which students can learn across the award.
Lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops, visits to PR operations, use of Blackboard, the web and library resources, work placements, meeting project briefs, directed and self-directed research combine to provide every student with opportunities to learn and demonstrate their learning in different ways.
The emphasis throughout is on student engagement, a continuous dialogue with texts, techniques, tutors, guest lecturers and PR professionals. For example, Q&A will be a feature of every lecture, seminar and workshop, discussion encouraged, enquiry championed, revision, reflection and refinement embedded as regular practice leading to best-practice habits.

Independent learning is important on all modules, as it enables students to develop their subject and key skills and to prepare for written and oral communication. Independent learning is promoted through the feedback given to students, which takes several forms including small group and one-to-one discussions on both formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment is crucial in guiding students towards the appropriate standards, on a number of modules, including News and Sports Journalism in Practice and Professional Sports writing, regular in-class assignments are set by tutors with strict deadlines. These aid assessment of the progress of students during workshop sessions in their practical modules. Students are given regular written feedback on the work they produce. Portfolios of work (including photojournalism and newspaper page layouts), which are largely independently produced, allow tutors to assess student progress towards appropriate professional standards. Writing regular news and feature stories during their core Journalism

in Practice and Professional Sports Writing sessions and workshops test the student's progress towards the appropriate professional standards necessary to make the most of their work placement

Most modules have been adapted to encompass the demands put on modern journalists to produce online material, both written and broadcast. But the burgeoning demands of the internet have been reflected by the introduction of many web-based journalism elements in both Journalism in Practice, Journalism in Practice 2 and Professional Sports writing. An award-specific option Advanced Web-based Journalism is also offered, where students concentrate specifically on how to write for the web and website production. Students are encouraged to submit their work to the departmental website StaffsLive which is published under tutor supervision and available to view by an outside audience.

The student's placement within the Work Placement module offers them the chance to use the skills they have developed in a professional sports public relations and journalism environment. The Level 4 modules in Essential Law and Ethics and Journalism in Practice have embedded within them the professional training a student requires as preparation for a placement in a sports PR environment.
Modules looking at the journalism in context to society (The British Press and Thinking Journalism) give them the knowledge of current debates in journalistic practice and the historical and intellectual background of sports journalism.
The practice of public relations and its place in the media world is studied in depth at all three levels successively in PR Practices, PR Operations and Pro PR.

All Sports PR and Journalism students receive formal and informal guidance from a personal tutor and other department tutors as part of the wide Career Development module which includes the production of a curriculum vitae and a digital profile via the development of a personal website.