Teaching Technical Journalism with an Engineering Foundation

摘要

Clear, impartial and engaging dissemination of engineering, technological and scientific endeavors is an important requirement for democratic societies. A massive amount of news and information is continuously available online - creating new challenges for journalists. We have developed a project-base bachelor course that introduces students to modern, professional technical journalism and advances their soft skills. Each student is required to create three features (i.e. two multimedia articles and one social media piece) that report on technology. Each created feature must contain an original multimedia component using state-of-the-art journalistic tools (e.g. videos, interactive graphics, animations). Those features that meet this requirement and fulfill journalistic standards are subsequently published online using a professional platform (i.e. WordPress). While writing in German is allowed, the use of English language is highly encouraged for crossing cultural boundaries and engaging the world-wide community. Students who are seeking a technical journalistic degree must also pass engineering courses. This concurrent technical journalism education is important for developing critical thinking and reporting. Furthermore the course increases gender-sensitivity in reporting, an important ongoing issue in a traditionally male dominated discipline.