Explore Communication

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Jenny Robinson:

Wominjeka, hello. My name is Jenny Robinson and I'm the program manager of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Communication Strategy and the Master of Communication. My background includes science communication, TV and film, and even a stint researching interactive advertising. I also have over 20 years teaching communications at the undergraduate level. It's my pleasure to introduce you to the suite of programs that make up the bachelor of communication here at RMIT. I encourage you to pause this video if you want to return to the slides or check any specific information.

Communication is a powerful way to not only share information and perspectives on all sorts of issues, but can also connect us as human beings. So let's find out more about the variety of fields within communication and how you might be able to come and learn about them with us. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge the people of the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the university. RMIT respectfully acknowledges their ancestors and elders past, present. And emerging. And while we conduct our work remotely, I want to pay my respect to the wider unceded lands of this nation.

The bachelor of communication is located in the School of Media and Communication, which is ranked number four in Australia for communication and media studies, and among the world's top 100 universities in this field. You will have access to world class experts and cutting edge thinking about media communication, the internet, and the role that they play in society. The bachelor of communication suite has five programs; advertising, journalism, media, professional communication, and public relations. Graduates work globally in many different types of organizations, including media, corporate, not for profit, government and cultural institutions. The communication industry in particular has high employability with over 81% of RMIT's graduates gaining full time employment. While the media and communication industries are converging with the fields overlapping and working together in various ways, there are still discipline-based distinctives that are important, and which will lead you to be most attracted to one discipline or another. As I introduce you to these degrees, see what most appeals to you.

Before we get to the disciplines, let's start with some common information. The entry requirements can be found on these two slides. Most of the programs select by ATAR, or any other year 12 equivalent, as well as having minimum prerequisite requirements, especially for English. The advertising program has a selection task that all applicants must complete as well as meeting the minimum prerequisites. More information is available on the program websites. Each of the bachelor of communication programs has a variety of possible pathways into and within RMIT. These include certificate advanced diploma or associate degrees. You can see a sample of these here on the slide. All of the programs also recognize previous study from other institutions. Students who come through pathways into the degrees have successful outcomes, so be sure to ask about this if that applies to you or consider a pathway program, if that feels more natural.

The bachelor programs will also set you up for further studies, such as honors masters programs or even a graduate diploma in journalism, and some of you maybe even consider a PhD or other study. RMIT's new media precinct offers state-of-the-art and industry quality studios and production facilities to support learning and industry engaged projects. In times like the COVID pandemic where all students can't access these facilities, RMIT is still providing high quality access to equipment and software to use from home as well as developing best practice in online and at home media production. One of the facilities that is used a lot is the Capitol Theater, which is used for screenings events, and even classes. Industry partners are a core ingredient of the media and communication programs at RMIT. They're in our DNA. Working with partners like Bupa, Acme, RRR Radio, ABC Fact Check and community organizations like Vaccho and Street allows students to apply their concepts and knowledge to real world issues and learn professionalism skills as well.

All of the bachelor of communication programs share a common structure. The professional strand is in blue. At least half of the degree coursework will be discipline specific from your home program. This is complimented by a contextual study stream that's designed to provide a social and theoretical perspective that broadens your understanding of media and communication and sits alongside your discipline and professional knowledge. You'll complete at least four courses from one of these streams. They are Asian and media culture, cinema studies, literature, popular culture, and politics, economies, and communication. Finally, each program has allocated space for you to take at least two electives from within the school or selected from university wide elective options. As we go through the programs, you will be able to identify professional, contextual and elective courses in the study maps provided.

So let's start with the bachelor of communication in advertising. What do you know about advertising? You probably see it in the world all around you. We're used to things like advertising for Coca Cola, but what about social marketing? Things like Drink Wise, stop smoking campaigns, all of those involve advertising and especially advertising creative. So studying advertising at RMIT allows you to draw on and to explore your natural curiosity about what makes people tick. The staff and faculty at RMIT have experience in social marketing, advertising creative, creative story writing and copywriting, and a lot of the business and account management side of things that will be really important for you to develop a world-class career in advertising. One of the distinctive elements of the advertising program is pitch night. You can see for the graphic here, "So much talent, so little time." Pitch night is held every year and is a big industry event that's popular with agencies both locally and interstate.

Held last year at the Capitol theater with 63 advertising professionals from 20 agencies, it's a chance for them to interview third year students. This year, of course, it will be held online, but it's already got lots of recruiters from interstate, international and local agencies lined up and excited about our students. You can see by the structure of the advertising program that the core and professional discipline subjects are highlighted in blue. So you start in semester one year one with advertising foundations and creative advertising and move through the semesters to include things like advertising industry practice and finish with the advertising capstone. You also see in this map how the contextual studies aligns and you study that throughout the degree, and there's also space for your university and school electives.

Advertising is proud of our award winning students. The bachelor of communication advertising students have been nominated as Cannes Future Lions finalists. They've won several D&AD awards, i.e, The Pencils, including three of the best of year student awards selected from thousands of entries. You can find out more about our students on the program website.

With the bachelor of degree in journalism, you've got the opportunity to learn how to produce high quality news and current affairs for all mediums. The staff and the faculty within the journalism degree come from highly recommended and illustrious careers. They have experience with data journalism, photo journalism, from various different countries and bring their academic expertise in the journalism profession into the classroom with you. While journalism really relies on having access to the world class facilities here at RMIT, there's also been some really great initiatives in this time of the covert pandemic where we've learned to do online productions. One of those, as an example, is the Undercover podcast series, which has been produced by RMIT journalism students, using all of their technology and expertise based in their homes.

When we look at the core structure of what you will study in the journalism degree, you can see, again, the core courses include journalism writing and reporting, ethics and law, as well as fact checking and verification, which is so much a part of today's culture of fake news, learning how to do fact checking is really important. Having that grounding, you then build your degree through the years to finish with newsroom practice, and of course, your journalism professional placement.

RMIT's journalism program is known for having award-winning students and being one of the forces for journalism in Australia. Two of those examples you can see on our screen were Nick McKenzie, you probably can see on ABC and check him out on the 19:30 program or other program that is still occurring on ABC today. There's also Jackie Costa, who is a journalism graduate. The journalism students are consistently nominated for and winning the Walkley awards, and you can find out more about our students and our program on our website if this is of interest for you.

So now let's talk a little bit about the bachelor of communication in media. Most of us are familiar with feature films, Hollywood, even some of the TikTok short stories and things that you find in popular media. But have you thought about interactive media? Nonfiction and documentary production? All of those are areas that RMIT has wonderful expertise in. When you study media at RMIT, you're really learning to analyze media in this broad cultural context. There are several key features of the media program at RMIT that make it distinctive. One of those is the studio style of learning. I'll talk more about that when I get to the program slide, but it really is built on the ability to develop your craft, to look at context, and then to perfect the way that you tell story in a transmedia way and across a lot of the different options. So you're learning media production, yes, but you're also working with traditional and digital environments and learning about creative media practice in the industry.

So if we look at the program map for the bachelor of communications media, you'll see the blue squares that are really telling you about where you're going to do studio based learning. Studio-based learning includes vertical integrated studios, where you're working with a client project, you're working on the production values with other students from different years across the program to pick up the basics, to learn the techniques, the context, and the production skills that you need working on a real world scenario, studio learning. You're also going to look at things like story and place in media. You can see the contextual strand that fits really well there, where you can study cinema studies. You might want to study popular culture or even Asian media and culture, which go along with your media production skills.

One of the keys to the media program is obviously graduate success. There are plenty of internship opportunities as you're going through the media program, opportunities to be out there in the real world, working with some of the industry's leading media makers on projects that are relevant for them. One of those, for example, is working with Imogen Thomas on the human rights film festival and working with producing small films within that. There's other opportunities that you'll have for project collaborations and alignment, which leads to great success in the graduates. So again, you've got two examples here on this slide, but look up our website for examples of the kinds of films that are out there in the film festival. Look for examples of our work that's on Fed Square. Look for examples of the kind of graduate success that you would have coming to the facilities and working with the faculty here at RMIT in the media program.

The bachelor's degree in public relations will prepare students to provide effective communication strategy during times of crisis like that we're seeing now with bushfires and COVID pandemics, but also in regular times, keeping an eye on reputation, values, social responsibility, and the perception and image of an organization. If you have an interest in how organizations listen to their stakeholders, work with employees, or even bring representation into an organization and how leaders communicate, then public relations might be for you. It's not just about publicity anymore. It is so much deeper, and people work in a variety of sectors building on their public relations degree. RMIT's degree develops student's capability in research based strategic communication applicable to corporate, government, not for profit and even consultancy sectors. It is accredited by the Public Relations Institute of Australia and meets the requirements of the international standards for the global capability framework. With a compulsory internship, the degree has a 90% employability rate for its graduates.

If you look at the program structure for the bachelor of communication in public relations, you will see that on here is learning things like media management in influence and impact, in public relations. There's a focus on ethics and social responsibility, issues, risk, and crisis communication, but even more importantly, on the importance of research and applied research as it informs campaigns. One of the distinctives of the degree is that student prizes are supported and provided by key industry partners like Thrive PR and Communications and Six O'Clock Advisory who also turn up to help judge the public relations campaign in the capstone program.

From the graduate success, you can see that public relations practitioners work in a variety corporations. On this slide Will Collie, as an example of someone working with an international leading consultancy, Edelman, in America, and Charlotte Watson and Sam Leaman are examples of graduates who are distinguishing themselves in their careers locally, with Charlotte working with Transurban and Sam as the digital content manager for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

For the bachelor's degree in professional communication, this is the degree where you're going to draw upon the other four disciplines and bring them all together into one degree that will sample from across media, public relations, advertising news reporting, and bring them together in an interdisciplinary way. The professional communication degree is a flagship global program of RMIT and it's available and you can go and take classes in Melbourne, Singapore, and in Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi cities in Vietnam. The curriculum's the same, and you can study it in any of those locations. With professional communication, the staff and the faculty that you'll be working with come from a variety of fields. They draw from feature writing and news reporting, advertising and creative copywriting from community radio and broadcasting, as well as public relations. So it's a diverse group of leaders and teachers who will guide you through what it means to be in a truly interdisciplinary program that's meeting the needs of a converging media and communication environment today.

The core structure reflects that. So if you're looking at the cost structure for professional communication, you see that semester one is a foundation in all four of those disciplines. Then as you reach into semester two of the first year, and then beyond, you'll be introduced to the foundations of professional communication, but then choose a specialization and a stream in either journalism, advertising media, or public relations, coming back together at the end of the program to bring it all together in your professional communication studio.

The graduates from professional communication have gone on to work in all of these different industries and you'll see them in journalism, public relations, media, and a variety of organizations. Two of those are identified here for you with Nichola Spain, being someone who has been a radio presenter at the ABC and a radio producer and segment producer, and also Oliver Gordon, obviously who's a winner of the Walkley award and Young Australian Journalist of the Year. As you can see, the field of media and communication is all interrelated and we all work together and across our various disciplines. So once you've developed your disciplinary expertise, one of the advantages that we have is being able to work together on project based wicked problems and addressing social issues that bring all of our disciplines together.

So you might be a media student who will work with a public relation student on a social problem and a social enterprise problem. We might look at a wicked problem like obesity in young people and university students, and how to encourage you to eat healthy, but draw on that from advertising, communication, public relations, and also media people coming together to see how we might be able to change that behavior. So interdisciplinary projects become key to one of the ways that RMIT distinguishes itself from other programs and something that you'll find really valuable moving into the workplace.

RMIT's ABC Fact Check is another example of those kinds of partnered projects that we have with industry, but also interdisciplinary. While Fact Check is a really good outlet for journalism students who are interested in learning about fact checking and working in that area, it's also good for public relations students or media students to learn how we present those facts. How do we check them? So there are a variety of interdisciplinary projects that are emerging out of RMITs ABC Fact Check initiative.

RMIT ranks number four in Australia for industry partnerships, with the media and communication programs being a leader in this area. There are a wide variety of opportunities for students to work with industry on real world briefs and projects, both within their core curriculum, but also electives in extracurricular opportunities. Students can apply for study tours, internships and placements in local organizations, participate in competitions and even receive mentoring from industry professionals. The cornerstone of these connections are the projects completed for coursework, where you will work together to prepare, co-design and present work to industry partners that include corporations like A&Z and Telstra, as well as nonprofits and community organizations.

Here are three examples of those industry partnered projects done by undergraduate students at RMIT. They worked with the Human Rights Arts Film Festival to produce short accompanying films, the Victorian Electoral Commission on a campaign to encourage young people to vote, and with Metro Trains to communicate with staff about challenges and opportunities arising from the Metro tunnel project. These opportunities often lead to internships or even full time jobs upon graduation and provide students with the confidence to be work ready.

When we talk about the DNA of RMIT, global opportunities and global connectedness is a part of what we really stand for. RMIT has partnerships with 215 universities around the world and students from the media and communication programs can go on exchange for one semester or two semesters. They can also do short term study programs in places like London or Europe or even New York, depending on what's available. The journalism program has had exchanges to Indonesia, where students have gone and worked with media organizations in Indonesia. You might go to the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore. So the global opportunities that you have available at RMIT are opportunities for your extracurricular endeavors that will help expand your portfolio and make you global and work ready.

So where do students work? What are the career outcomes from a bachelor of communications degree at RMIT? You can already tell that pretty much graduates work in the widest variety of settings and in the widest variety of professions. You can see here on the next two slides that journalism students might end up as digital content managers, podcast and webcast producers. They might end up in a TV setting, or even as a media advisor. Professional communication students are media producers, media liaisons, TV and radio producers, content developers, account managers, and professional communicators and communication strategists. Again, see the variety that's available. In public relations, they do everything from corporate communications and being change managers to issues in crisis, public affairs officers, event managers, and even brand managers.

The career outcomes for media and advertising are also changing and quite varied. For media, people are still presenters and producers on traditional TV platforms, radio, television, but they're also website developers, podcast, digital content, producers, station managers, and even editors. In advertising, you might end up as an art director, a copywriter, an account executive, or even a media planner and buyer as automation and advertising and marketing work more closely together.

Here you can see some of the important dates that you'll need to be aware of if you're looking at studying with us next year, which we hope you are. For dates and deadlines that you need to meet to apply to study at RMIT in 2021, please check out the open day information, all of the Vtech guides, and they will provide you with the locations and dates of what's required to either do selection tasks, or to make sure that your offer is being considered.

As you can see, communication has many different facets and applies to a wide range of organizations and social issues. We're proud of our industry connectedness and socially oriented focus at RMIT in our bachelor of communication programs.

If you have questions about the best fit for you, or want more information, please chat with us via the text chat and look at the program information on our website.

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