Survey of broadcast and video advisers shows that most advisers added broadcast/video to their job duties, want curriculum materials to assist them

How much change has your school media program experienced in the last five years? These were the results from the survey of JEA broadcast and video advisers in March 2012.

High school broadcast and video programs have experienced a lot of change in the last five years.

That was a finding of the survey last spring of broadcast and video advisers — with 17 percent saying their media programs had experienced dramatic changes in the last five years, 41.5 percent saying their programs had experienced major changes, and 30.9 percent said their programs experienced moderate changes. (See bar chart.)

More than 150 advisers – most of whom were JEA members — participated in the survey that we conducted through Survey Monkey. (Some of you reading this post took that survey. Thank you.)

The majority of the video and broadcast advisers (64%) reported that teaching video and broadcasting was not part of their jobs when they accepted their current teaching positions. Of those advisers, most said that they had made the decision to include video as part of their media program.

When asked the ways they had trained for their video/broadcast advising, the largest number of advisers – 69 percent – said their training was through self-training – readings, attending workshops and job shadowing.

About a third of those teaching video were including that as part of what have been considered “print” products — newspapers, yearbooks and literary magazines.

Advisers said that one of the most helpful ways JEA could assist them was to provide curriculum materials on teaching broadcasting and video, including lesson plans, and sample videos.

Guide for Broadcast/Video, created by Michael Hernandez and members of the JEA Digital Media Committee, is just the kind of resource that advisers in the survey said they wanted.

University of Florida doctoral student Christine Eschenfelder and I conducted the survey last spring to develop a profile of high school broadcast and video programs. I shared the findings of the survey with the JEA Digital Media Committee at the Seattle convention last April.

Following the meeting, Michael Hernandez, film and broadcast journalism teacher at Mira Costa High School (Manhattan Beach, Calif.), spearheaded the development of Guide to Broadcast/Video,  an online curriculum guide that was launched at the JEA Adviser Institute in July and posted on jeadigitalmedia.org.

Christine and I will share the results of the survey at the National Communication Association Convention, in Orlando on Nov. 17. We hope to make connections with others at the convention that share an interest in promoting broadcast and video programs at the pre-college level.