0
Australia’s Griffith University, have made Twitter classes a mandatory part of all journalism courses to combat what they deemed ‘boring tweets’ in the industry.
According to a senior lecturer at the University, “Some students’ tweets are not as in depth as you might like.”
The solution? Make Twitter writing practice a compulsory part of the course curriculum for would-be journalists.
University officials cited increasing demand from employers for employees to be well-versed in social media, and Twitter’s importance in global events like the Iran elections earlier this year, make it the most desirable.
While we perhaps would have given up a prized appendage to have anything as cool as a Twitter course available back when we were in school during the original Myspace Era, the Griffith students’ reactions have been mixed.
Some students had no idea what Twitter even was (proving the point of needed education for future journalists), and a few outspoken J-schoolers who felt the class was “a waste of time.”
Clearly kids these days don’t know how good they have it.
What’s your take: should Twitter fluency be required for future journalists? Or is it impractical to expect students to inject “more depth” into their tweets?