Increasing Practical Component In Journalism Education

The EU-TACIS-BBC Project "Development of Media Skills" is meant to help reinvent journalism education in Ukraine and bring it closer to standards which are recognised and are being successfully applied in many other European countries.

Increasing the practical component of learning is one important aspect of this effort.

Theoretical and practical studies are split at the approximate rate of 50/50 in many European countries, and this proportion had proven to be effective in teaching future journalists. In Ukraine, the real proportion is still bent towards theory, so there is a lot of work ahead.

The Ukrainian short version of the Project's name is "Zhorna", an abbreviation which means "grinding stones."

The Project's team organise seminars and workshops for teachers from Ukrainian schools of journalism where they get to know how teaching modules should be developed and introduced according to requirements of the Bologna Agreement.

On the right-hand side of this page you can find links to information about partners in the consortium responsible for "Zhorna" Project.

The Project's budget has money meant to buy modern professional-level equipment for journalism schools at Kiev, Simferopol and Uzhgorod universities.

Teachers and students in Kiev, Simferopol and Uzhgorod will be acquiring practical skills of working with modern technology using this equipment within universities' walls.

Student internship placements in media outlets will remain an important component of teachin but students will come to editors better prepared to work with equipment and with knowledge of major technological production chains.

Another aspect of practical assistance that the Project is offering Ukrainian counterparts is publication of books on journalism, also supported by money from the Project's budget.

"Zhorna" is an unusual project in that that it works, first of all, with journalism teachers.

"The project will end but the cause should continue," says the Project's media expert, Andriy Kulykov. "This is why it is important to pass skills on to those who will continue to work at Ukrainian universities, to teachers."

Fronm the three pilot schools, the acquired skills of organising education along the lines of Bologna documents are meant to dpread to other higher schools of journalism in Ukraine.