In the last decade, journalism has seen the upheaval in the world, and journalism industry is also facing the challenges of globalization, technology, and economy, etc. To tackle these problems, the education of journalism at University are expected to be linked with current societies frequently. However, students who learn journalism are always lack of practical skills due to the over-focus on theory study. This may cause a series of problems for their future career. Our application aims at bridging the gap between journalism students and news organizations. Students will act as the journalist, reporter, and editor in this application. Students will gather information from their real life, then transfer, edit and finally present the news to our application. News organizations will play the role of the evaluator; they will give students feedback about their articles. Also, they are allowed to use the news sources from students' articles. For students, they can utilize theory in the practical cases, improve their vocational skills as well as academic knowledge. For news organizations, they can take advantage of news sources to enlarge their news database, also can search and retain talented journalists for their future development.
In this paper, we will firstly define the concept of our idea and how it works in the first and second part. In the third part, we will introduce our team and the responsibility of every team member. Next, we will illustrate how we communicate with each other and draw our project plan.
In general, theory study is always disappointing for students who find abstract reasoning unnatural to them (de Burgh, 2003). When students combine academic knowledge and practical applications in the study process, this can help overcome barriers to the academic. "Principles must always be seen cashed in these instances, but instances must themselves be seen as cases to which principles are relevant." (Hamlyn, quoted in Woods and Barrow, 1988:59) Which means the evaluation of principles implies in how they are to be applied. Students in the university, the higher education, are expected to use practical skills to express academic knowledge and creative ideas. When students act a journalist, editor, reporter, or presenter in this application, they play the real role in real life, not simulate.
In the modern society, journalism is expected to focus on local or "hyperlocal" journalism. Compare with nationwide and worldwide journalism; hyperlocal journalism more focuses on the news happens on an extremely small, local scale, Which also can be called community-centered journalism. These years, many mainstream news organizations are discovering the need to work harder at connecting with audiences; the assumed relationship with the public (Franklin & Mensing, 2011). University faculties and university communities are suitable for journalism students to be a hyperlocal journalist, also provide them a chance to understand their relationships within their university community and surrounding environments. In the community, students are expected to collaborate with interested members of this community, which would strengthen their understanding of how communities work and of what people need and want from journalism (Franklin & Mensing, 2011). With the assistant of myNews, students are allowed to create their discussion group and add friends; it could help them to develop more effective practices for linking, sharing, sourcing, and working in social media.
myNews is an application, which designed for fixed the gap between journalism students and news corporations. It could not only provide the journalism students with a chance to approach the news companies, and it also allows students to develop their professional skills through practicing in this application. Furthermore, the students could gain feedback from professional people working in the news companies. On the other hand, the application gives news companies an opportunity to explore potential journalists at various universities, and the companies also could enrich their news source via the application.
Apart from that, users also can regard the application as a news aggregator or a social platform in which students can read news, add friends, edit the profile, leave a comment and even learn skills after read others’ news. What’s more, the application has a timeline record the published news for students, which could be a personal portfolio for job hunting.
There are two versions of this application. One is for the students; another one is for the news organizations. Firstly, users need to register the application by authentic information. This means they need to input their real name, student ID, school name, company name and so on.
As for the student's version, students could edit their profile and add friends. Obviously, the students can write and post articles, videos they edited, pictures they shot to this application. They could browse others’ news that successfully published by news companies and leave a comment for each other. Furthermore, that news will be sent to a news pool - a database so that the companies could search or browse the news from the news pool. However, there will be a censorship and monitor regime to prohibit the violent and pornographic content. Besides, it also can check article similarity to avoid plagiarism when students submit the news draft. What’s worth to mentioning is that the students can participate in the activity held by the news companies to challenge themselves and win some reward.
As for news corporation’s perspective, they could browse the news in the news pool, and decide which news could be re-edited and published. If they hope to use students’ news or publish them, the company need to inform that student via our application and mark his name on the published news. Besides, if the news is really valuable, the company should supply the student with a financial reward. The selected news will appear on the timeline in the history category. Also, companies need to give students feedback, if they are interested or feel impressive with the news. Furthermore, companies are able to post activities by this application. They could give a definite theme to students and get the information they want. As a result, they can find the potential reporter or journalist for their organization.
The project concept aims to design an application that bridges the gap between journalism students and news corporations. As for students, the application provides a chance for them communicating with news companies, and training various specialized skills. On the other side, news companies can enrich their news sources and reserve journalism talents by using this application.
There are two main target user groups of this application - Journalism students and News corporation.
After our research, we didn’t find any existing application that is similar with ours. There is a combination between online education and social media. Because we take advantage of both their interaction methods, on the one hand, our application looks like an online education platform in which students upload their work to the cloud and get online feedback. On the other hand, the application applied the concept of social media which allow users to send, share, forward and comment various news without boundary. Besides, we believe that it’s a novel way to build a direct connection between journalism students and the industry.
Our basic goal is to build a functional application and ensure every feature and workflow function well. To achieve this goal, we will put more efforts on the design stage to avoid design bugs, which if exist will cost more time to fix after all the programming work is done. Also, we will leave at least a week for testing before releasing the project.
Interface will give the user the first impression of the application, which is quite important to the decision that if they are willing to use it at the first place. Moreover, a neat interface will help to create a good mood and user experience while the user are struggling solving the puzzles.
We expect every team member contributes their best performance as for this type of application, we have to ensure each function running smoothly. In addition, we are expected to make sure at least ten people could access and use our application at the same time within a proper response time.
The UI design idea will be generated by the designer and other team members should also raise their ideas to improve the project. The final decision of UI design should be approved by product manager.
Product manager proposes performance requirements in product level. The web developers offer specific technical path, and illustrate the reason. After determining all required materials and information, we will work on a small demo based on that solution, so the product manager can make a final decision on product development.
If anyone has problems, they should raise questions in the group meeting or any group communication channels such as Facebook, Group Chat machine and Email. The product manager has the responsibility to make final decision based on results of team discussions.
Tasks will be allocated fairly through group discussion and will be allocated based on the strengths of each member. Group members are expected to contribute their best efforts on the project and deliver tasks on time. If a team member is unable to finish tasks, he/she should contact the group and ask other group members to help. For a situation that a team member is consistently unable to complete their tasks, the task will be redistributed amongst other team members and a formal notice will be made to tutors/course co-ordinator.
In the event that a group member leaves the group, their workload will be redistributed between remaining group members. The redistribution should attempt to be fair, but also take the skills and commitments of remaining members into consideration.
In the event of significant conflicts between group members, any disputes will be resolved by a majority vote between all group members. If no majority consensus can be reached, then the team can send an email to the course coordinator to solve this issue.
Group meetings will be held after our lecture at Monday 12:00AM – 2:00OPM in Building 78. Besides, there will be a team discussion during Friday’s workshop in Building 50. All members are expected to attend and join within group discussion. Meetings are subject only to illness or other unavoidable personal commitments.
Commitments include:
If someone is not able to attend the meeting, other group members should notify him the meeting summary as soon as possible via email or Facebook. A phone call is only used for emergencies. An additional meeting can be held when it’s necessary, arranged once a week and to ensure everyone can attend that meeting. The group will maintain regular contact outside of these meetings via email, Facebook and phone. Although the lecturer recommends us forming a Slack group as our social platform, we think Slack is not very convenient to use. Because the app doesn’t allow users to log on multiple groups at the same time, users might not receive timely notification. Additionally, everyone has a Facebook account, so we believe it’s easier to use Facebook for communication.
As for file sharing, we would like to use Google Drive, because it allows the whole group edit the same file simultaneously, and it can automatically store files on the cloud. All files will be named based on assignment requirement. If there is no particular naming convention, the file would be named after related milestones or corresponding tasks, such as “Proposal. pdf” or “Paper prototype design and implementation.pdf”.
During this stage, we will do relevant background research to find out essential skills for journalists and analyses disadvantages and advantages of relevant applications.
Specific purposes and effects of our application
Academic database
5th September
After the amount of research, we will start to design and develop our first prototype by papers in order to quickly test its usability.
A set of paper prototypes
Papers, scissors, pens
9th September
For the sake of testing the application’s usability, we will find 3-5 journalism students as our testers and ask for feedback after the test.
Testing results, students feedback, usability problems
Questionnaire, paper prototype,
16th September
We will create a low-fidelity prototype by a mockup software in order to test dynamic functions and interactive approaches
A low-fidelity prototype
Questionnaire, Balsamiq Mockups,
23th September
Just like the last test, we would need to find some journalism students randomly on campus and invite them to test our application and provide some feedback
Testing results, students feedback, usability problems
Questionnaire, low-fidelity prototype,
30th September
At this phase, we will add more details and features into our prototype based on the previous feedback and make a high-fidelity prototype.
A high-fidelity prototype
Pixate (a prototype-making software)
7th October
At this time we will ask journalism students for testing both usability and functionality and provide their feedback.
Testing results, students feedback, usability and functionality problems
Questionnaire, high-fidelity prototype,
14th October
During this process, we will fix all kinds of bugs
An established high-fidelity prototype
Online technique tutorial, high-fidelity prototype, Pixate
20th October
Prototype submit
N/A
N/A
28th October
We get some feedback from the workshop session. Basically, the audiences are interested in our idea. We find that we already answered some questions in the section ‘How it works’. Those questions are “ will publishers post jobs first or will journalism students provide offers. How will timing conflicts or two competing students be handled?”, “Why would they use these articles rather than writing their own news?”, “ But my concern is, it sounds very beneficial for the students but what about the companies? ” ,“ You mentioned rewarding students who submit their articles. How does this work?” and so on.
We may not present very detail information in the workshop due to time issue. However, we already form a solution to our Dilemma research. But the further improvement is necessary. Next, We will give our response to the feedback from Dekker. We would like to discuss the idea with Skey, and we already email her. We hope we could have a discussion with her soon.
Overall, myNews is an application designed for journalism students in the university and aims at improving their practical skills and paying more attention to community-centered, hyperlocal journalism through the interactivity with news organizations and peers, which also achieve functions of the social platform. In the next step, we will do more researches on the communication methods between students and organizations. Also need to do some surveys about journalism students in UQ through questionnaires. Besides, research on hyperlocal and community-centered journalism are also necessary to support our idea. Our team will work cooperatively and efficiently to conquer difficulties we may face in the process of study and research.
de Burgh, H. (2003). Skills are not enough: The case for journalism as an academic discipline. Journalism, 4(1), 95-112
Franklin, B. & Mensing, D. (2011). Journalism education, training and employment. New York: Routledge.
Rogers, T. (2016). What is Hyperlocal Journalism? Retrived from September 5, 2016, http://journalism.about.com/od/citizenjournalism/a/hyperlocal.htm