Category Archives: Classroom Activities and Exercises

This page may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details.

Looking for social media class assignments, activities, and exercises?

Cool! I’ve got you covered.

See all of my blog posts that contain social media class assignments, activities, and exercises. Just scroll down to access them. These are great public relations class assignments and work well as marketing class assignments, too. Enjoy!

Like comprehensive plans that are super-organized? Check out my book, Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love, that contains a semester’s worth of social media class exercises, assignments and activities.

Activities and Events, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Teaching Social Media

My New Book, Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love, is Now Available on Amazon!

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

Teach Social Media Book

I am beyond thrilled to announce that my new book, Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love, is now available on Amazon in paperback and eBook formats.

It has been a long and exciting journey. I am so glad to finally be able to share this project with you. It is one of my most ambitious undertakings. I can best describe it as an organized “brain dump” of my knowledge about teaching a social media class for students interested in careers as professional communicators (e.g., public relations, marketing).

Continue reading My New Book, Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love, is Now Available on Amazon! →

Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Writing Across Platforms

Practice writing news headlines and news leads: Re-write the headline and lead of a news story by focusing on the most interesting part [in-class activity]

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

News Headline Writing and Lead Writing Practice Exercise

News headlines – or the titles of news stories – and news leads are vital parts of a compelling news story or news release.

But, what makes for an interesting story? That’s an important question and if we are going to prepare our students to be professional communicators, we should be having this conversation with our students in many of our classes.

Continue reading Practice writing news headlines and news leads: Re-write the headline and lead of a news story by focusing on the most interesting part [in-class activity] →

Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Strategic Campaigns

What’s Changing? Creative Briefs and Using Story Arcs in Pitch Presentations

1 Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

It’s that time of year. The tradition must continue! It is time, of course, for my ‘What’s Changing’ blog post to start off the semester. I’ve been writing these posts for years as a way to highlight key changes I have in mind for the semester ahead. For example, here’s last semester’s post.

Continue reading What’s Changing? Creative Briefs and Using Story Arcs in Pitch Presentations →

Classroom Activities and Exercises, Communication Research

Communication Research Class Media Placement Assignment, Part 2: Doing Data Entry and Creating a Data Legend

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

Communication Research Class Assignment Review

This post is long overdue (I feel like I say that a lot!).

It is a follow up to a post I published in January titled “Here’s my communication research class assignment on analyzing media placement.”  Recently, I received a public comment on that post from a professor I greatly admire, Kelli Burns, pointing out that project assignment (see the bottom of this post for that document) notes at the bottom of the document that additional work will be assigned the following day. But, I never discuss what that entails in the blog post.  I apologize to everyone who read that post because, in that sense, it was incomplete in terms of explaining the project.

Thank you to Dr. Burns for bringing this to my attention. With this in mind, I’ve decided to do a much-delayed follow up post, turning that initial post into a two-part series.

Continue reading Communication Research Class Media Placement Assignment, Part 2: Doing Data Entry and Creating a Data Legend →

Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Social Media

Facebook Audience Insights Class Activity: Introducing Students to Social Media Audience Research Via Facebook

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

Teaching Facebook Audience Insights in the Social Media Class

Lately, I’ve been writing about the importance for students to learn more about paid social media as part of the media mix.

In the below post, I’m going to share a new in class activity I did this semester in my COMM 322 Social Media class [see all posts about the class | see past class syllabi] to help students further explore paid social media.

Continue reading Facebook Audience Insights Class Activity: Introducing Students to Social Media Audience Research Via Facebook →

Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Social Media, Teaching Social Media, Writing Across Platforms

What’s Changing? Hubspot Social Media Certification, Persuasion Class and More!

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

Fall 2018 is underway and I can’t believe it is already September! To keep the trend up, I’m starting the semester off by sharing some of the things that are changing this semester in my classes. As I look at former “What’s Changing” blog posts from past semesters, I’m surprised to see that I’m not changing a whole lot this year.  Still, some fun things are in the works:

Continue reading What’s Changing? Hubspot Social Media Certification, Persuasion Class and More! →

Classroom Activities and Exercises

Empowering Students to Deal With Smartphone Distraction in the Classroom: Phone Free Class Day Extra Credit

Leave a comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

Cell Phone Addiction Lesson Plan Review

In my last post, I talked about so-called cell phone addiction. I provided a cell phone addiction lesson plan that I did last semester in my social media class. That cell phone addiction worksheet and activity was aimed at building a discussion about some of the concerns that social commentators, health care professionals, and former employees of tech companies have raised regarding the negative side of smartphones and social media.

In this follow up post, I will share an extra credit opportunity I created to empower students to choose to not use their smartphones during class.

Continue reading Empowering Students to Deal With Smartphone Distraction in the Classroom: Phone Free Class Day Extra Credit →