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Teaching the Facebook Generation

Young people may seem like social media mavens, and employers may expect them to be, but students need to learn how to exploit digital tools

By Dr. Elaine Young / Champlain College

Our goal as college professors is to open students' minds to new experiences so they can grow intellectually while they mature through the traditional four-year process. But we are also challenged to give students the immediate skills they will need once they graduate so that they can begin their professional careers and move away from the fry-o-later to the cubicle and beyond.

Over the past decade, there has been a sea change in the marketplace demands for graduates. Whereas broad skills used to be sufficient, now our students must demonstrate a set of concrete skills that not long ago were required only of those in highly technical majors. Nowhere has this change created a greater shift than in fields such as marketing and public relations, which traditionally have been viewed as nontechnical but are now demanding a technological competency that is astounding.

When I began teaching nearly 10 years ago, marketing and PR majors were expected to be stellar communicators, know the Four P's (Product, Promotion, Price, Place), have a good head on their shoulders, and have passion. Employers gobbled them up and trained them on specifics of the job.

Our traditional curriculum emphasized marketing, advertising, sales, research, and consumer behavior for the marketing major. For the PR major, writing, media relations, and campaign management were enough.  Read the rest of the story

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