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What ARE They Thinking? A Look Into the Minds of Today’s College First-Year Students

Image Credit: "I'm Hot" by Chris Griffin

As a college professor — and a parent — I’ve long realized that it’s important to use relatable pop culture examples when talking with people, especially when the people are significantly younger than I am. If I tell a student to stop acting like Horshack in class today, I am met with the sound of crickets; 25 years ago, my students knew exactly what I meant.

Tom McBride and Ron Nief, two professors from Beloit College, have made it easier for folks like me to realize what’s going on in the minds of today’s college first-year students, at least in the United States, with their annual Mindset Lists. Just a few hours ago, McBride and Nief released the Mindset List for the Class of 2015. Below, I’ve cherry picked a baker’s dozen of my favorite items from the list. You can find the entire list at the Mindset List website.

  • They “swipe” cards, not merchandise.
  • Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
  • Some of them have been inspired to actually cook by watching the Food Channel.
  • Jimmy Carter has always been a smiling elderly man who shows up on TV to promote fair elections and disaster relief.
  • Unlike their older siblings, they spent bedtime on their backs until they learned to roll over.
  • Music has always been available via free downloads.
  • All their lives, Whitney Houston has always been declaring “I Will Always Love You.”
  • O.J. Simpson has always been looking for the killers of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
  • Life has always been like a box of chocolates.
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show has always been available on TV.
  • Video games have always had ratings.
  • McDonald’s coffee has always been just a little too hot to handle.
  • They’ve often broken up with their significant others via texting, Facebook, or MySpace.

I encourage you to go take a look at the entire Mindset List for the Class of 2015; you just might find some ideas in there that will help you relate to today’s first-year student.

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Prof. Nixon’s Fall 2011 Syllabi

Below you will find the syllabi for my two Fall 2011 classes at Southeastern University.

COMM 2322 PR Applications Fall 2011 BBN

COMM 2423 Writing for Digital Media Fall 2011

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5 Tactics for Keeping Current in Public Relations News & Trends

JKL 5 by mag3737

As summer comes to a close, college students might want to take some time and get back up to speed on what’s happening in public relations and social media before they return to their classes in the fall. Here’s an updated version of a post I wrote last June that should be helpful to you.

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Let’s face it . . .  whether you’re a PR student, practitioner or faculty member, we’re all busy. So how can you get (and stay) up to speed with the ever-changing world of public relations? Here’s a quick guide to how I stay current in public relations.

One: Listen to PR podcasts.

Some of my favorite podcasts are: For Immediate Release, Inside PR, PRStudCast, Trafcom News, Marketing Over Coffee and Coming Up PR. My favorite time to listen to podcasts is during my daily two-mile walks in this sweltering Florida heat. I also listen to them when I drive, work out and clean the house. Some people prefer to listen to podcasts on their computers; my preference is listening to them on my Samsung Epic or iPod.

Here’s a short video on how to subscribe to and download podcasts using iTunes. If you’re not an iTunes person, you may want to visit Podcast Alley, where you can find thousands more podcasts. You can listen to the podcasts directly from the website.

Two: Subscribe to daily or weekly PR e-mailed newsletters.

My favorite PR newsletter is one that comes into my inbox daily from Ragan Communications: the PR Daily newsfeed. When I want to read the latest on PR, this is the newsletter I turn to first. Another helpful newsletter comes from Chris Brogan; Chris provides different content in the newsletter than he does on his blog, so it’s definitely worth subscribing.

Three: Follow PR practitioners on Twitter.

Are you a public relations student (or recent grad) just getting started using Twitter? Try following some (or all) of these people or organizations in my Twitter Starter Pack for PR Students. They all have something in common: they tweet useful or interesting information for people involved in public relations.

Four: Read PR blogs.

There are hundreds of blogs about public relations. I’ve bookmarked many of them in Diigo for you. You can subscribe to them using your favorite RSS reader (such as Google Reader), or just read them on the web. Some of the most helpful blogs I’ve discovered include Gini Dietrich’s Spin Sucks and Shonali Burke’s Waxing Unlyrical.

Five: Watch the news on TV.

Yes, I said “watch the news on TV.” I mean on a real TV, with a complete newscast, not just bits and bobs that you catch online. I start off every day a steaming mug or three of chicory coffee and at least an hour of broadcast news, usually with 15 or so minutes of local news followed by CNN American Morning and Today Show. By knowing what’s going on in the world, it helps frame the snippets of stories I read or hear online throughout the day. To be sure that I’m keeping up on the news, I also listen to the podcast version of  NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me weekly news quiz. (I sometimes even play the Lightning Round of Wait Wait in class on Mondays to see how much my students know about what’s going on in the world.)

Your suggestions?

What additional resources would you recommend?

(NOTE: This post is an updated version of one I wrote in early January 2010.)

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Arrive, Survive and Thrive in Prof. Nixon’s Classes, Fall 2011 Edition

Image Credit: "Echinacea" by Barbara Nixon

An Open Note to All of Prof. Nixon’s Students:

It seems like summers get shorter every year. This summer, I was asked to become the Interim Chair of the Communication Department at Southeastern University, so my summer was spent with several days a week on campus preparing for the fall. I hope that your summer was fulfilling, whatever you chose to do.

You will soon be able to see the syllabi for my two fall courses, PR Applications and Writing for Digital Media, at my Scribd site (update: available now). If a syllabus is updated during the semester, you’ll find out in class, and the current version will always be available at Scribd. To learn which books and supplies you will need now, see Getting a Jumpstart on Prof. Nixon’s Fall 2011 Classes.

So that we can make the most of this semester, please (Please, PLEASE) take some time to read through the blog posts I’ve included here. I promise you, it will be well worth your time. (How often do professors let you get inside their heads, letting you know their tips for success and their pet peeves?)

Additionally, here are a few more tips:

  • When communicating with me via e-mail (or Facebook), always put your course number (such as COMM 2322) in the subject line to help me immediately identify who you are and frame your questions or comments. Do your best to write in full sentences, paying attention to standard English grammar and spelling. Always sign your e-mails with your first and last name, as your e-mail address will not make that readily apparent to me.
  • When submitting an assignment in BlackBoard, always put your last name as part of the file name, and also include your name in the document itself. Papers submitted without your last name as part of the file name cannot earn full credit.
  • If an assignment is due in BlackBoard, the only way to get full credit for the assignment is to submit it in BlackBoard. (E-mailing an assignment to me can be risky; I receive 250+ e-mails a day, and there’s a chance I will not even see it in my inbox.)
  • Follow me on Twitter, if you really want to get inside my head. (What’s Twitter?)

Let’s make this a great semester together!

(PS: If you’re one of my Fall 2011 students reading this post, please leave a reply to this post so that I can know you have read it. If your reply doesn’t show up immediately, no worries — I may need to approve it before it appears, if you’ve never commented on my blog before.)

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Getting a Jumpstart on Prof. Nixon’s Fall 2011 Classes

Image Credit: "Maple Leaf Structure" by Steve Jurvetson

If you’re looking to get a jumpstart on my classes this fall, here are the books and other required resources that we will be using. I’ve linked to many of them at Amazon.com, but of course you can purchase them from anywhere you like. I recommend you try the Facebook Marketplace first, so you can get a good deal AND help a fellow student.

Public Relations Applications (COMM 2322)

Writing for Digital Media (COMM 2423)


Questions? As always,

(PS: Syllabi for my classes will be posted in mid-August.)


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Bok Tower Gardens Floral Photo Safari, Spring 2011

One of my favorite places to go to stroll, think, pray and take photos is Bok Tower Gardens in historic Lake Wales, Fla. Yesterday, the one-year anniversary of the passing of my mother, I made the 45-minute trek from my home to Lake Wales. Here you’ll see many of my floral photos from this spring.

If you’d asked me, I would have said I had taken a hundred or more photos yesterday. But as I was downloading them into Picasa this morning, I realized I took fewer than 50. I must have been strolling, thinking and praying more than taking photos. And that’s just what I needed yesterday.

I miss you, Mom.

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Social Media Summer Camp 2011

Image Credit: "Round Bales" by Patrick Henson

WHAT: An eight-week series of challenges to help keep PR & social media skills honed over the summer months. Examples of challenges

  • Take photos & create an online slide show of your 20 best images
  • Read and review a book on social media (perhaps even creating a narrated PPT/prezi)
  • Interview one or more PR/social media pros
  • Create (or revamp) your LinkedIn profile
  • Create a digital portfolio

WHO: Designed for college students interested in the fields of public relations and social media

WHERE: All online, at our Posterous site

WHEN: June 5 – July 30, 2011

HOW: Visit our Posterous site, leave a reply and your Social Media Summer Camp Counselors will get back with you with more details

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Essential Android Apps for Professors, Revisited

Samsung Epic 4G

At the end of last summer, I was first in line at my local Sprint store when the Samsung Epic 4G came out. I wrote a blog post about my favorite 15 Android apps right after that. Since I’ve had the phone for two semesters now, I thought it was time to revisit the post and update it. So here is my current list of favorite apps for professors.

  1. Attendance: My university has an attendance policy, and I used to make an Excel spreadsheet and manually track attendance each week. Then I found Attendance by Android for Academics. Love it. I just make a quick Google spreadsheet with the students’ first and last names and sync the spreadsheet to Attendance. I take roll reading names off my Samsung Epic now. The app tallies the dates and number of absences and tardies. Super easy.
  2. BlackBoard Learn: Though the BlackBoard app doesn’t allow me to do everything that my desktop program will do, I can read discussion items, create announcements, e-mail students, and more.
  3. Google Listen: I’m an avid podcast listener. I add the RSS feed of my favorite podcasts to my Google Reader, then I can easily download and play the podcasts using Google Listen.
  4. Evernote: Quite often I listen to podcasts while take my daily morning walk. When I hear (or come up with) an idea that I need to capture, I use Evernote’s Audio Note feature. (Typing/texting and walking don’t work well for me. But I definitely can talk and walk.)
  5. StopWatch & Timer: When students do presentations, I time them using this little app. I can have the app count up (with the StopWatch) or count down (with the Timer).
  6. TweetDeck: I confess. I am a tweetaholic. I use Twitter, for personal and professional reasons, many times a day. TweetDeck makes it easy to manage multiple accounts.
  7. Advanced Task Killer: To be sure that unneeded apps are not running and taking up precious battery power, try Advanced Task Killer. It will show you — at a glance — all the apps that are running, even those behind the scenes, and you can choose which ones to “kill.” You don’t want your Epic battery to die during your day on campus.
  8. Kindle: My husband and I share one Kindle. By having the Kindle app on my Samsung Epic, I can read books in our collection even when it’s his “turn” to have the Kindle. And it’s great to show my students how many free classic books are available in the Kindle store.
  9. Barcode Scanner: This little app works with your Android camera. It will scan both barcodes and QR codes. It’s fun to show students what those little square codes are for, and equally fun to show them how to do price comparisons while shopping.
  10. Shazam: When I can quickly refer to songs my students also listen to, it helps me relate to them better. I cheat a little using Shazam. To find out what “that song” is, use Shazam. It will listen to the song and determine title and artist.

So those are my current favorite Android apps for professors. Are there others you’d recommend?

(P.S. Though I love my Samsung Epic dearly, I am not a fan of its battery life. To help with this shortcoming, I’ve purchased two things: an extra battery to keep on hand and the Energizer XP4001 Universal Rechargeable Power Pack. I can’t tell you how many times the Energizer thingy has helped me. . . and my friends who needed a quick recharge, as it can charge two devices at once.)