Fostering Key Professional Skills and Social Activism Through Experiential Learning Projects in Communication and Advertising Education

Abstract

This article examines the impact of experiential learning projects in communication education on the development of critical professional skills and social activism of students. We argue that an effective integration of ethically relevant issues that could be addressed from the communication practice in classroom instruction helps students to develop key professional competences while applying their talent and communication skills toward relevant social debates. From the Spiral of Silence and Cultural Capital theories perspectives, the research explores key dynamics, learnings, and the results of an innovative academic project focused on challenging extreme content and unethical behavior in social digital networks.

Course Internationalization Through Virtual Exchange: Students’ Reflections About “Seeing the World Through the Lens That is Soccer”

“…All these realizations fulfill, at least partly, several of the project's objectives: The students not only explored but also learned to value cultural differences between the United States and England, as evidenced by their awe of sport's power to unite. In turn, this also satisfies U.S. universities' wish to increase their students' global awareness and understanding, which can help one's career (Hachtmann, 2012;Kolotouchkina et al, 2020;Miño & Gibson, 2020;Whitehead et al, 2020). In addition to that, students have also reported the VE project helped them develop other workplace and life skills.…”

“…When student groups "work to enhance their own and their groupmates' learning" (Johnson & Johnson, 2018, p. 62), their "cooperative efforts result in numerous outcomes that may be subsumed into three broad categories: effort to achieve, positive interpersonal relationships, and psychological adjustment" (p. 65). Therefore, strong communication skills are necessary (Kolotouchkina et al, 2020), and that is even more true in VE, as students interact "with others who may not share one's language, worldviews, or cultural beliefs" (Schenker, 2018, p. 491). By its very nature as a tool to internationalize a curriculum (Duffy et al, 2020), VE promotes intercultural communication and multiculturalism.…”