To achieve our establishment objectives and educational goals, for years we have come up with certain practical tactics, concretely seen in our designed curriculum, teaching, student affairs, and research performance. Through our realization, the institute stands out among national journalism education. Below are the reasons why:
1. Implement professional practical teaching system and connecting with news practices
We have the most prominent, senior professionals from the media field as our practical courses teachers. The teachers, before having accepted their appointments, were already professional news workers who had remarkable expert performances and were widely accredited by the academia and the industry. For many years, the practical teachers have not only helped with instructing graduates with their thesis, but also cooperated with our full-time teachers to lead students to engage in the publishing of in-depth report books.
In recent 3 years, the institute pushed forward ‘Remarkable Journalists stationed in NTU Institute of Journalism Program’, recruiting the year’s brilliant news workers to our institute to give lectures, teach courses, setting up workshops and promoting book-writing projects etc., students can learn from the best in the field while doing practical work. In addition, we followed Ministry of Education’s “expand employment plan” and hired a professional teacher, who assisted with establishing an internet news platform that can be students ’ground to publish and explore digital news.
2. Offers 5 major courses, joining on/off campus resources
As the aforementioned features, our establishment objective is “enhance news professionalism”, put together theory and real practices. Based on this objective, we planned our curriculum. Core required courses include ‘professional theory and legislation’ and “professional intelligence implementation’. We constantly strengthen the contents, such as theory courses should start with the discussing of news issues and case studies. We also continue to improve our way of teaching, for example, most required courses have all changed to small class teaching. In line with the four main goals, we developed 5 extended elective courses (including theory/method, media citizenship, international outlook, field expertise, and professional practices). For years we have changed in accordance with the transitions of news communication, continuously developed new professional courses (for example, magazine planning practices and internet communication practices). We extended theory and method courses and kept on collaborating with other related institutes and departments in NTU, expanded field expertise courses and introduced new courses that join journalism with other related areas.
3. “Learning by doing” courses
The institute focuses on “learning by doing”, that is we teach in small numbers and have individual assignment discussions and etc. We hope that students will be able to obtain journalism skills along with actual practices, and the moral and ethics senses that they, as reflective media workers, should have as professionals. Our faculty will guide the students to participate in related writing projects and web publications etc.
4. Combine journalism theoretical and practical courses
The practical courses we offer are all taught by the best senior news workers. The theoretical courses are based on practical journalism issues and aimed at analyzing practical issues, also intensified theory studies. At the same time, practical teachers work with full-time teachers, leading students to “learning by doing” to conduct related studies and in-depth report plans. Therefore, our education developed unique features, especially the combining of theory and practices.
5. Carry out diverse international exchange
For increasing global vision, the institute has the following methods: (1) Open globalized news communication related courses, (2) increase international institute exchanges to offer to student and (3) provide small grants so as to encourage students to publish their papers abroad.
6. Plan of publishing in-depth report books
To implement our ideal of “learning by doing”, we emphasize the professional training of news practices, combining teaching and real practices to cultivate students’ creativity. The institute actively encourages students to take part in in-depth report writing programs, deepening their professional techniques and literacy knowledge through real practices and present to and share with the public their accomplishments.