Social media and building experience among public relation college students

Robert French is a public relations instructor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University. He has used social media in his public relations classes for awhile now. This semester, he and Karen Russell, an associate professor of Advertising and Public Relations at University of Georgia, are creating a community of public relations college students by using Twitter and other social media. These two instructors have also engaged public relations professionals to interact with the students.

As an outsider to the process and to the public relations arena, I am thrilled to watch the learning and the interaction between the students and PR folks. These students are using blogs, video blogs, wikis, and Twitter.

Karen's interview with Robert shows how using social media in the classroom develops learning by doing. Auburn PR student blogs and Twitter id can be found on the Loveliest Village blog.

The students are quickly "getting" Twitter. PR student Brett Pohlman blogs about his initial excitement with using Twitter. He also provides some links that are helpful to understanding Twitter. Here are some other Twitter perceptions and references that they may find helpful.

• Advantages of Twitter
• Twitter is My Village
• Why is Twitter Exploding? Because it's A Conversation Ecosystem
• The Big Juicy Twitter Guide
• Can Twitter Be Used For Business?

I look forward to lurking at their process and I hope to learn as well.