This article is concerned with how the environmental crises on Lake Victoria is addressed by the media in Uganda, while confining its focus on a single radio case study, and presents a critical textual analysis of the discourses and discursive practices of the Victoria Voice environmental radio documentaries aired on Uganda’s Central Broadcasting Service (CBS) radio in 2005. The analysis focuses on two representative episodes of the Victoria Voice radio series relating to the situation on Lake Victoria. It argues that the framing and construction of the situation on Lake Victoria tend to privilege the wealthy or powerful elite rather than address the root causes of environmental degradation. The marginalization of the powerless (or ordinary people) recurs in these episodes, and while their voices are included in the programmes, they are framed by the more socially powerful.

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With a wide variety of easily-accessible internet tools, social media have revolutionized the way people access, create and share information. Apart from facilitating social networking, these online platforms are also considered critical enablers of professional competence development, with perceptions of their use in promoting learning – in a domain like journalism – gaining currency. Using Rwanda as a case study, this article explores students’ attitudes towards social media use in professional learning and how these predict their self-efficacy for online journalism work. Empirical data was gathered from mass communication students from five Rwandan universities (n=143), who completed a researcher-constructed ‘online journalism self-efficacy’ (OJSE) survey. Descriptive findings indicated that the students are highly efficacious in most online journalism skills. Inferential statistical analysis demonstrate that the students’ beliefs, feelings and actions regarding social media as professional learning tools, significantly correlated with the students’ online journalism self-efficacy. The results disconfirm the null hypothesis that negate the existence of a significant relationship between these variables. In light of the study’s results, educators need to leverage the students’ positive social media attitudes to enhance and innovative student-centred teaching and learning approaches – where learners harness the affordances of the social media tools for their professional growth. Keywords: Online Journalism, Journalism students, Attitudes, Self-efficacy, RwandaHow to cite this article:Njuguna, J., Mberia, H.K. & Jjuuko, M. 2020. Influence of attitudes to social media use in professional learning on students’ online journalism self-efficacy beliefs. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 4(2): 160-179. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v4i2.134.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The digital age is reshaping media industries locally and globally, forcing media firms and media producers to master new media tools in order to remain competitive and employable. This technological revolution has had a marked impact on the structures and economic viability of media, necessitating media training institutions to rethink how they prepare future media professionals for work in the twenty-first century. In order to keep pace with these rapid technological changes, educational institutions have had to adjust journalism curricula to integrate online or multimedia journalism courses that build online competencies and the technological skills needed for graduates to flourish in digital media domains. Despite these efforts, industry players still decry the apparent unpreparedness of graduates, largely attributing this to the learning approach taken by universities.Quality skills training has been argued to ensure that learners can relate with real work life. However, in countries like Rwanda, little is known about whether these new strategies are fostering the knowledge, skills and professional dispositions needed to work in a country that is undergoing rapid technological and economic change. Drawing from experiential learning theory, this study uses five focus-group discussions from five Rwandan journalism schools to glean the views of final-year students on how trainers employ practical pedagogy to cultivate students’ online skills in readiness for employment. Findings reveal that students consider the experiential learning approaches to be essential to their perceived online readiness. These enhanced skills were achieved using digital scenarios relating to students’ future work environment. However, the perceived quality of this experience varied from trainer to trainer, based on a range of factors including their how students perceived the trainers’ attitudes towards new media, their perceived ability to teach the digital skills and the learners’ own digital experience and competence.   How to cite this article:  NJUGUNA, Joseph; JJUUKO, Margaret. Online journalism education in Rwanda: students find value in the Experiential Learning Approach. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. v. 3, n. 2, p. 84-101, Sept. 2019. Available at: https://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=91&path%5B%5D=48   This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This study explores the relationship between students' online behaviour and their perceived readiness for professional online work. A sample of mass communication students (n=143) from five Rwandan universities completed a questionnaire. Analysis showed that the three dimensions of online behaviour correlated positively with the students' perceived readiness for professional online work. While the respondents' audience engagement levels had the highest correlation with online skills readiness, the frequency of online accounts usage had the weakest correlation. The multiple regression results revealed that levels of engagement and ownership of online accounts were significant predictors of the students' perceived professional online skills readiness. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant difference in perceived professional online skills readiness between students who rated themselves as highly prepared and those who expressed low levels of preparedness for professional online skills. Implications and future research directions are discussed based on the findings.

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