a la carte Workshops
Give your students a taste of college with the College of Journalism and Mass Communications' à la carte workshops. These workshops are designed by Big Ten faculty to offer your students a hands-on experience in the course of a regular high school class period. To request a workshop complete the form below and we will work with you and our faculty to arrange a virtual visit to your school.
Top 10 Writing Tips
By mastering a few basic techniques, you can transform your writing – whether it’s writing a news story, a yearbook feature or social media content. Through hands-on exercises, you’ll practice some these valuable writing tips, which include how to use strong verbs; how to be more concise; how to show rather than tell; and how to get the most out of the revising process.
Learning Objectives
- To understand the different styles of writing and what they’re used for
- To examine how many different impacts a story and writing can have
- To learn how to improve your own writing for various mediums
Faculty Lead: Matt Waite
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The Influence of Social Media
A million new social media users are born every day and on average, people around the world spend 15 hours a week on social media. In 2018 alone, social media advertising revenue yielded ~$51.3 billion USD (Hootsuite, 2019). This one-hour workshop introduces students to the idea of social influence and how social media trends are changing the way information flows in our society. We will discuss how social media goes beyond personal profiles and how companies are utilizing social media platforms in advertising and public relations.
Learning Objectives
- To explore prominent and emerging social media trends
- To examine mechanisms of social influence in advertising
- To learn how social media impacts public relations and branding
Faculty Lead: Jemalyn Griffin
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Lights, Camera, Gametime. What is Sports Media?
The Sports Media business is exploding as rapidly and as widely as just about any part of the media industry. Sport is one of the spaces in American – and global – life where we find the intersection of race, class, economics, culture, celebrity, and media in all its iterations, new and old. This workshop will cover a variety of topics including who and what make up the sports media industry, how you can be part of the industry and what the future looks like for sports media. This workshop will look at all varieties of sports and entertainment coverage.
Learning Objectives
- Understand where the industry came from and what it’s going toward in the future
- Examine the principles and ethics of modern-day media professionals.
- Look at how sports and media have combined to become a social justice platform
- Understand that sports media covers more than just traditional sports
Faculty Lead: John Shrader
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Social Media Reporting
Learn how to use social media strategically to help you develop story ideas, connect with sources and experts, crowdsource information and engage with your audience. You’ll learn tips about searching, monitoring and organizing information on a variety of social platforms to improve your reporting. You’ll also get the opportunity to test-drive some social media applications to make the process easier.
Learning Objectives
- To understand the connection between social media and journalistic reporting
- To use social media as a tool for journalism and creating stories
- To learn different social media apps to enhance your reporting abilities
Faculty Lead: Leslie Klein
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Branding Yourself Using Social Media
This one-hour workshop discusses your online identity and how you can think of yourself as a brand. You are in a position to showcase your abilities and skills online before you ever leave high school. Building a successful web presence will only help you in the future. There are many different platforms (and they are constantly changing). We will discuss strategies for building an audience and what to do with your audience. We will discuss micro-influence and why it is important in marketing. Most importantly, we will also talk about how to avoid major pitfalls.
Learning Objectives
- Understand what it means to be a brand
- Learn how to build an audience
- Know how to make good decisions about what you put online
Instructor: Kaitlin Van Loon
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Photojournalism & Multimedia
This workshop shows students how to tell stories using photographs. Students will learn basic camera functions, how to get better images and what makes a good photograph. We will discuss the different opportunities at UNL for photojournalist and talk about various careers in photojournalism.
Learning Objectives
- Learn the characteristics that make a good photograph
- Learn camera basics to go and shoot subjects
- Better understand the experience and career opportunities at UNL and beyond
Faculty Lead: Shoun Hill
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Global Advertising
This one-hour workshop introduces students to the idea that advertisers operate in a global world, creating messages for and interacting with people from different cultures. We will discuss the complexities of cultural differences and similarities and learn a communication model that helps advertising professionals develop culturally-relevant messages around the world. At the core of this workshop are different case studies that students will use to interpret ad messages from different countries using the model introduced earlier.
Learning Objectives
- To understand the difference between domestic and global advertising
- To recognize different cultural dimensions in advertising messages
- To apply a communication model to interpret messages from different countries
Faculty Lead: Frauke Hachtmann
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Feature Writing Fun
Feature writing is fun but it can be challenging to do well. We’ll help you craft engaging feature stories by focusing on the basics of good storytelling and narrative structure. You’ll learn about ledes, nut graphs and gold coins – and how to use those elements to tell interesting stories that your audience will want to read.
Learning Objectives
- To understand the different styles of story writing
- To learn how to structure a good story
- To improve your story writing abilities to capture your audience
Faculty Lead: Leslie Klein
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Intro to Design Thinking
This is designed to be a one-hour workshop, though the timeframe can vary depending on individual class periods and requests. The workshop will introduce students to what design thinking is and how it can be used in a variety of career paths. Students will have the opportunity to work through a design thinking exercise from start to finish including defining a problem, brainstorming for a solution, creating a prototype of their solution, and testing the solution. The workshop could be done with low-tech pencil and paper or higher tech with Adobe software depending on location and access. The workshop would include examples of design thinking in action.
Learning Objectives
- Define what design thinking is and how it is used
- Apply the design thinking process to solve a problem
- Create a prototype of an idea
- Test a design solution to determine effectiveness
Faculty Lead: Adam Wagler
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Podcasts: The Basics
This is designed to be a one-hour workshop, though the timeframe can vary depending on individual class periods and requests. The workshop will introduce students to the concept of audio podcasting. Included in the workshop will be discussion of podcast structure, concept creation, writing and vocal performance for audio media, basics of audio production, an overview of equipment needed, a review of some legal and ethical considerations and basic information about podcast hosting platforms and branding.
Learning Objectives
- To understand basic concepts of audio podcast structure and formats
- To understand basic concepts of audio production and performance as they relate to podcast creation
- To understand basic ethical and legal aspects relating to podcast production
- To understand basic concepts of podcast hosting platforms and branding
Faculty Lead: Rick Alloway
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Broadcast Performance
This one-hour workshop gives students useful advice on personal performance techniques used for broadcast journalists. We’ve never looked at television anchors and reporters as performers, but anyone studying broadcast communications knows you must be a good journalist and effective on-air performer. Professional TV journalists know that doing the news is as much a performance as appearing on the stage. In this workshop you will learn many of the skills broadcast journalists use to inform their audiences and come across as credible journalists on the air. These same skills are useful for public speaking and personal presentations.
Learning Objectives
- To understand how to effectively use tone, timbre and pacing with our voices when delivering the news
- To recognize ways our physical appearance, when we deliver the news, communicates confidence, trust, and credibility to audiences
- To interpret the news and other information we present to audiences to make our messages most effective
Faculty Lead: Barney McCoy
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Build Your Own Workshop
We know storytelling and creative work in media goes beyond what we have listed. Our faculty at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications have knowledge and experience in various fields at all levels. If you want a workshop focused in a related area that hasn’t been listed, put in a description in the field below and we’ll find you a faculty member to teach the subject.
Potential Workshops to Consider
- Multimedia Storytelling
- Drone Journalism
- Adobe Creative Cloud Training
Workshops are tailored to meet your specific needs and can be conveniently held either in your high school classroom or at Andersen Hall, the home of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications on UNL's City Campus.
Have Questions? We're Here to Help.
If you have questions about the College of Journalism and Mass Communications or navigating the application process, contact us.
