Today’s guest post is authored by Katrina Dene, the Bateman Group’s summer intern and a third-year journalism student at the University of Oregon. Katrina looks at how the use of technology and recent emergence of social media have impacted both the practice and study of PR in equally significant ways.

As I enter my third year of college and take my first steps toward a career in public relations, one thing became abundantly clear to me during my summer internship at the Bateman Group — technology has had equally a profound impact on the study of PR as it has on the practice of PR. The senior PR practitioners at the Bateman Group were quick to point out when they were in college; the majority of academic programs geared towards the study of PR were woefully out of touch with what was being practiced in the field. They were genuinely surprised when I informed them that the classroom experience has evolved dramatically in 20 years. To say it’s taken a quantum leap since the members of Generation X were college students would be a huge understatement. Gone are the days when students showed up to class with just a pen and a notebook, furiously taking hand-written notes as the professor lectured or worked the chalkboard. Today, I still show up to a lecture with my pen and notebook, but also with my laptop, BlackBerry and, of course, my i>Clicker.

i>Clicker Remote

The University of Oregon, along with many other schools, has implemented the i>Clicker system in quite a few of its lectures. For those unfamiliar, an i>Clicker is a remote control-driven auto responder device that allows professors to ask multiple choice questions and instantly present a graph of the results. Amazing what technology can do, right? It’s an instant progress report for the teacher to determine if they’re getting their message across by quizzing the students in real time.

As far as student/teacher relations go; however, this is actually a little troublesome. I am no longer Katrina Dene, third-year student. I am now a serial number with 89% accuracy for in-class pop quizzes. I become an arbitrary number on an arbitrary scale. While this new use of technology has its advantages, particularly within large classes of 100+ students, professors should not lose site of the importance of building true relationships with their student and finding new ways to engage them both on- and off-line. Interestingly, the emergence of social media has helped.

In another one of my classes, the structure of our lectures was impacted directly by social media, perhaps to an extreme. Instead of the traditional lecture, questions and response format, our class added video chat and instant message via Skype along with Twitter micro-blogging to the mix. As an alternative to listening to lectures on the PR trade, we “Skyped” with real-world professionals, other professors, graduate students and government officials who relayed their personal experiences for us to learn by example. Furthermore, students were not only encouraged to raise their hands to ask questions, but also Tweet the inquires to our class hash tag on Twitter. In turn, our graduate teaching fellows were hard at work monitoring the hash tag activity and answering questions for the 160-person class.

So what does this say about the future of communications in the teaching of communications? Well, social media has allowed us to build and maintain a network of relationships both inside and outside of the university like never before possible. Using video chat enabled us to learn from industry experts and working professionals from all over the world. But has this shift damaged the treasured teacher/student relationship? I ponder this while remembering one basic principal: One strong relationship is more powerful than ten weak ones. More traditionally: Quantity does not necessarily ensure quality.

Yes, the integration of technology with the college classroom has made the experience much more automated and a bit less personal.  On the flip side, social media has made the opportunity to take a more active role in one’s own education easier than ever before.  The members of Generation Y have grown to accept two-way communication between student and teacher to be the norm. The classroom has evolved from a place of simply consuming information and reciting it back to one where students have become active participants in the creation of content and the learning experience itself. What better way to prepare us for an economy where successful entry requires you to do much more than just intern. You must also cultivate a personal network of influencers, seek out mentors, take time to volunteer, keep up on current events, follow the stock market, maintain a personal blog and basically do whatever it takes to stick out in today’s uber-competitive job market. Learning today is much different than learning yesterday, the key is to adapt and apply each change in a way that allows you to be better equipped for tomorrow.