Hands-on, real-world experience combined with classroom learning can immensely benefit students as they build their portfolios and put the material they've been taught into action. At the School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design (SCMAD), our Storyworks course provides this winning combo, resulting in incredible work produced by our students.
The Public Relations—Corporate Communications program from our Fall 2022 cohort is an excellent example of this. The group of students worked with Centennial's International Student Support Department to create a video campaign highlighting some of the challenges international students face and how to navigate them with Centennial's resources.
Students did an exceptional job crafting together a video series called “Dear Toronto” that focused on specific challenges international students may face when arriving in Canada and some of the solutions to mitigate them.
The three videos in the series include:
The idea of this campaign first came together after there were many international students in the cohort. From balancing work and academics to living a far distance from campus (not to mention navigating a new environment), Donna Lindell, the Program Coordinator of our Public Relations program, explains they approached the International Department hoping to use Storyworks as the platform to assist international students in some of these areas.
In this peer-to-peer campaign, the group of students began researching, which included talking about their own personal stories and distributing a survey to their classmates. They discovered that affordability, housing, mental health, and TTC safety were among the top concerns among international students.
From there, the group eventually turned the topics into a video series uploaded to YouTube, which Donna says the students acknowledged was a platform many international students primarily used to get information. They also posted to the Public Relations Instagram account with photos of international students accompanied by their story in the caption, which included how they accessed Centennial resources.
Ayushman Pisupati, one of the students in the group, explains, “We deliberated on how we could deliver the best results, and we concluded that producing visually compelling content with strong narratives would be great to capture the attention of fellow students.”
He adds, “We used a documentary style storytelling and visual style to highlight the journey of our fellow international students to make the stories more relatable. By using a peer-to-peer method and making the campaign more relatable, we're showing students that they are not alone in their struggles and that Centennial College has the resources they need for them to overcome any issues they may face during their academic journey.”
“From drafting communications plans and news releases to contacting media personnel to get coverage for our campaign, this course is comprehensive and gives us students a chance to experience what it’s actually like to be a PR professional.” - Ayushman Pisupati
Donna explains how the PR program is like running an agency, and the work students complete, such as developing a strategy and plan, is something quite advanced at the student level and is something many professionals do further up in their careers.
RECEIVING MEDIA ATTENTION
Toward the end of August, the campaign began to pick up media interest. On August 29th, a segment by CBC Metro Morning aired interviewing Ayushman and fellow classmate Samah Mohamed, who was also part of the group working on this campaign.
In the segment, which you can listen to here, Ayushman and Samah discussed some of the challenges they faced being international students, including how Samah lived in a house with 14 other international students when he first arrived in Canada—a reality that further demonstrates just how important having access to resources can be for international students, which this campaign put a spotlight on.
“It was an honour to be interviewed on CBC Radio, and was my first ever experience of being on live media,” Ayushman shares. “When I first went into the recording studio, I was super nervous since I didn't want to mess up anything on live radio. When I started to answer the first question I was asked, all my nervousness faded away, and I started to talk about my personal experiences as an international student and about the campaign we did. I also got to meet the wonderful folks at CBC Radio who made the dream work. All the media monitoring work we did for the campaign finally paid off. Donna and Laurie, our professors, were key in securing the interview, and a huge thank you goes out to them.”
A couple of days later, on September 2nd, CBC’s Our Toronto aired a segment with Ayushman discussing the campaign and its components, as well as the benefits he experienced of connecting with fellow international students in his program. You can view the segment here.
EQUIPPING STUDENTS FOR PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS
Learning through experience, aka experiential learning, is a major component of Graduate Certificates at the SCMAD, and the PR program is no exception. Ayushman shares, “The PR program reflects the workload that PR Professionals in real-world scenarios deal with and prepares you first-hand by giving unique experiences, like the Storyworks course, and several guest lectures where you learn from industry experts.”
He adds, “Not only does this program prepare you for the real world, but it also gives you the opportunity to produce content worthy of using on your portfolio that you can use when you're looking for an internship or a job after graduating. The professors who teach us are also industry professionals who are ready to help with any of our academic needs or help us get in touch with someone.
Congratulations to all of the students who took part in this campaign and made it a resounding success. The content you created is informative and will undoubtedly make a difference for future international Centennial students looking to navigate school and life.
Article by: Alexandra Few
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