From Classroom to Client: Integrating Practice and Critical Reflection in a PR Capstone

Building professional competency in Public Relations by connecting academic learning with industry practice through client briefs, portfolio development, and reflective academic writing

Our challenge

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) undertakes a biannual State of the Profession report. In 2022 this highlighted how the industry was facing a recruitment crisis with graduates and new entrants coming to the field without the relevant entry-level skills. Alongside this, the team recognised that only a small number of their students go on to do further research.

Our solution (approach)

The team, led by Anne-Marie Lacey as Module Leader and Dr Jesus Salzar as Co-Module Leader, created a new capstone module, MCH8099 Media & PR Final Project, which they offered as an option to students alongside the existing dissertation module.

They mapped the CIPR key skills across the programme and identified potential gaps for students depending on which options they had selected. They designed the project module to draw together strands from across the degree, extend skills development, and assess these in a different way.

The teaching and assessment on the module centres on students working on a real client brief. In the first phase, students attend a series of intensive in-class sessions with taught content in the morning and time to work on outputs in the afternoons. This intensive summer school is supported by PR researchers, academics, and working practitioners. Professional values are emphasised throughout, with students and the academic team working to the CIPR Code of Conduct.

The first output that students submit is a “Portfolio of Content”, containing their research, analysis, and content production addressing the client brief. This 5,000-word content strategy is formatted and presented with the client as the intended audience.

In the second phase of the module, students write a 3,000-word “Critical Analysis of Practice”. This is written for an academic audience and gives scope for students to reflect on the selection and application of relevant theories and methods in their work. In this piece they also evaluate their work and discuss the rationale behind their strategic decisions. This second piece is designed to make firm connections between theory and practice.

For the first iteration of the module the team worked with one client who provided four distinct project briefs (a consumer-to-business brief, a business-to-business brief, an internal comms brief, and a crisis comms brief). Students selected one of the four briefs and were teamed up in the afternoon across workshop settings with peers who had different briefs. This enabled them to apply methods introduced through teaching and to gain informal feedback on work from peers and the workshop leads.

Each workshop group was facilitated by a member of the teaching team, plus a working PR practitioner (drawn from PR professionals who regularly contribute to teaching). This meant the students not only gained academic input from the core PR teaching team at Newcastle University, but also gain access to and gleaned invaluable insight from working PR practitioners who could demonstrate how the ‘day job’ works, helping to bridge the theory and practice.

The client attended the first lecture of the module to introduce the organisation, deliver the briefs, meet the students and address any questions they might have. Following this, the client responded asynchronously via the module team, answering questions posed by students on a discussion board.

After the workshop sessions designed specifically for the Portfolio of Content, the team provided students with guidance on their critical reflection via a Sway and offered further drop-in sessions. This was a conscious decision with more hands-on support offered for the first phase of the assessment, as this was a new type of assessment for the students, whereas the Critical Reflection was more like an extended essay, and a format of assessment the students were already familiar with.

The assessment design proactively supported criticality in the use of AI. Students were permitted to use AI tools in one of their portfolio outputs and required to ethically disclose this. In the critical analysis, students had to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses AI brought, the prompts they used, how they had developed these prompts based on their research, and how they had then worked with the output.

The impact (results)

The module was positive for both staff and students. Colleagues enjoyed working closely with students in the intensive period, student attendance was excellent, and there was informal time over lunches to get to know each other better.

Student attainment was significantly better, fewer students than normal had to do resits, and there were minimal PECs.

Students have reported using portions of their portfolios as evidence of their skills in job applications.

The external examiner provided excellent feedback on the assessment rationale and linkage between the two submissions.

The CIPR were impressed with what the team was doing and offered their students discounted membership.

As a working PR professional, if one of these top performing students had handed their portfolio over to me, I would have hired them in a heartbeat. Anne-Marie Lacey

Lessons learned

The first time this ran, students submitted their client work before the academic piece in a two-phased approach. Student feedback indicated they would have liked more time to conduct research for the client submission. In future years, students will submit both pieces together at the end of the module.

For future years, the team have agreed that markers should evaluate both pieces of work to enable them to identify links between the client-facing and the associated academic/reflective piece. Originally, the PR practitioners assessed the Portfolio of Content with the academic teaching team assessing the Critical Analysis of Practice as two separate submissions.

The module retains two pieces of assessed work, but these are now submitted together, which also gives students more time to conduct research.

This module is offered alongside a more traditional dissertation-type module with a 10,000-word count. The team needed to set expectations with the marking team for what students should be expected to produce in their academic piece (now 3,000 words).

Getting students with different briefs to work together was effective for peer learning. For example, when the team set a task to detail stakeholders, students could talk to each other about their setting and work through ideas together without collusion.

Tips for colleagues

Expect to recruit a new client each year, using the student outputs from previous years to showcase student capabilities.

Schedule workshop sessions to run to mid-July to support students with the client-facing work, leaving a lesser support requirement over the remainder of the summer.

The academic team should remain responsible for marking client-focused submissions to ensure consistency and fairness. (Having said that, clients may like to review and give commendations for the best submissions.)

Consider further options for students to showcase their involvement with this module. Future clients are going to prepare digital badges students can use on their LinkedIn profiles, as well as potentially selecting a student to complete short-term work experience opportunities.

In the scheduled workshops time, students had space to work individually on their client-focused submission. The fact that colleagues were on hand provided efficient group supervision for this aspect.

Set expectations with students around communication with the client. The team used a discussion board to manage the flow of communications between students and the client. They passed on questions on Fridays and posted the client’s answers to students via the discussion board at the start of the next week.

Give students early information on the Capstone options and the nature of the client brief to help them select the capstone option that most suits them. The dissertation and project-based capstone options test and develop different skills; the teaching team introduce this to students at induction, then develop in further during the Research Methods Module in Semester One. This means that for a module which runs in Semester Three, Module Leaders must have agreed the client and the brief(s) at the start of that academic year

For subsequent years, the team have had to restrict numbers and have asked students to apply to take this module (with CV, cover letter, and short video detailing why they want to meet the client).

Work closely with timetabling to support room bookings for workshops in Semester 3.

Take a team-teaching approach to summer activities. The team aimed for two people with each group of students to give them resilience when supporting the workshops. They also set up a staff group chat so they could stay in touch between rooms.

Skills and attributes

Students were able to develop the following attributes:

Education for Life Strategy

This case study reflects the following aims of the Education for Life strategy:

Encounters with the Leading Edge: To put at the heart of our curriculum and learning experiences, encounters with our world leading research and the leading edge of industry and practice.
Fit for the future: To ensure our students are fit for their future, our teaching is fit for the future of our offer, and our colleagues are fit for the future of HE

Authors

Anne-Marie Lacey
Senior Lecturer
School of Arts and Cultures