Poynter Partners With Indira Gandhi National Open University on Custom Certificate Program

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. and NEW DELHI, Sept. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Poynter Institute's News University (www.newsu.org) today announced a new partnership with Indira Gandhi National Open University's (IGNOU) School of Journalism and New Media Studies to create a custom certificate program for students in the school's Journalism and Mass Communication program. Beginning this term, 25 students will participate in a pilot launch of the new e-learning program, and those who successfully complete it will receive a Poynter NewsU Certificate of Proficiency.

NewsU's Certificates of Proficiency are designed to measure a student's knowledge of the journalism industry's essential skills and best practices. To receive a certificate, a student must take a selection of NewsU courses and then successfully complete the online assessment for each course. Details are at www.newsu.org/tools/certificates

"It is the mandate of IGNOU to reach the unreached with a quality education with all means of educational techniques. In pursuance of that, the School of Journalism and New Media Studies (SOJNMS) of IGNOU is proud to collaborate with an internationally acclaimed Poynter News University to offer online-based journalism education to IGNOU journalism students," said Prof. Subhash Dhuliya, Director of SOJNMS. "This collaboration is a new beginning.  The School would like to undertake more training opportunities in the field of journalism in the Indian subcontinent."

Launched in 2010, the NewsU Certificate program provides schools with a cost-effective way to augment their curriculum and take advantage of online learning. Because NewsU provides the readings, activities and assessments, instructors have more time for hands-on teaching and coaching.

"This is an exciting opportunity for The Poynter Institute to extend its e-learning training to journalism students in India via our NewsU platform," said Howard Finberg, Poynter's director of interactive learning.  "We are honoured to partner with IGNOU to create a program that is tailored to their students and their educational needs."

IGNOU's custom certificate, Basic Journalistic Skills, includes the following NewsU self-directed courses:  

• Understanding Media: Process and Principles
• News Sense: The Building Blocks of News
• The Lead Lab
• The Writer's Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use
• Get Me Rewrite: The Craft of Revision
• Cleaning Your Copy: Grammar, Style and More
• Five Steps to Multimedia Storytelling
• Reporting Across Platforms
• Leading an Online Newsroom: What You Need to Know
• Functional Web Design for Today's News Audiences

To help provide academic rigor to the program, instructors are able track the students' participation and their assessment scores through the NewsU Instructor Dashboard™.  This real-time method is available on both Poynter NewsU Certificate programs and the newly launched NewsU Digital Course Packs.

After assessing the results of the pilot, IGNOU and NewsU plan to roll out the Basic Journalistic Skills certificate program to more students at the school. In addition, there are plans to launch additional certificates that focus on other journalism skills and provide a discussion area for students and faculty.

About Indira Gandhi National Open University
The Indira Gandhi National Open University (www.ignou.ac.in), established by an Act of Parliament in 1985, has continuously striven to build an inclusive knowledge society through inclusive education. Today, it serves the educational aspirations of over 2.6 million students in India and 36 other countries through 21 Schools of Studies and a network of 62 regional centres, around 3,000 learner support centres and 67 overseas centres. The University offers about 445 certificate, diploma, degree and doctoral programmes.

India is witnessing a media revolution, resulting in a massive expansion of media in general and the news industry in particular. This has opened up tremendous professional opportunities and the resultant need for trained human resources in the industry, academia and research. Accordingly, the University has established SOJNMS, which has opted for a blend of on-campus and distance education programs.

About Poynter's News University
Poynter's News University (http://www.newsu.org) offers training to journalists, journalism students, teachers and the public through more than 200 interactive e-learning modules and other forms of training. It has more than 195,000 registered users in 225 countries. The Poynter Institute trains journalism practitioners, media leaders, educators and citizens in the areas of online and multimedia, leadership and management, reporting, writing and editing, TV and radio, ethics and diversity, journalism education and visual journalism. Poynter's website, (http://www.poynter.org) is the dominant provider of journalism news, with a focus on business analysis and the opportunities and implications of technology.

CONTACT
Howard Finberg
Director of Interactive Learning
The Poynter Institute
[email protected]

Prof. Subhash Dhuliya
Director, School of Journalism and New Media Studies
Indira Gandhi National Open University
[email protected]

SOURCE The Poynter Institute/News University