Using digital tools in WIL to enable student journalists’ real world learning

Abstract

This paper explores how student journalists’ adoption of digital technology, during real world work-integrated learning (WIL) reporting projects, enabled authentic learning. Student journalists at a regional Queensland university interviewed the candidates for each of the four-yearly local government area elections, from 2008 to 2016, in Australia’s second largest inland city and its surrounds. They published their multimedia stories on the Radio Journalism Online blog. This study considers the importance, when framing WIL projects for student journalists, of embracing the traditional and new technical skills and digital literacies that graduates will need to be job ready for multimedia newsrooms. It also considers the impact of recording and telling stories in the talents’ or actors’ own words on the students’ perceptions of the accuracy and reliability of their election reports.