An Interview with Steve Mackey about his programs and teachings of his Public Relations students
(“Int” refers to the interviewer and “RES” refers to the respondent Steve)
Int:	Steve, I am interested in the subjects you teach in the public relations program and the unique ways they make a contribution to the education of PR students.
RES:	The two subjects that I do mostly are something I call electronic and internet public relations, which is a second level unit in the undergraduate degree. But also there is another version of it in the postgraduate course work masters. I am responsible for two other units. One is Crisis and Issues Management which will now only be in the masters and I have changed the unit to be called Government Relations and Issues Management in the undergraduate degree. I have a particular incentive to use technology as much as I can because I quite like Warrnambool. If you look out the window there, you will see that it is a very pleasant environment to be living in. And after the merger of the universities I decided I would like to stay here. I thought, the more I could get into the technology, the less I will be required to be bodily present in different places. So I have made it a bit of a hobby, I'm not sure if that is the right term, but I have made it a bit of a project to use the technology as much as I can. That has also been helpful for the off campus students because, with my subjects with off campus students, it was obviously a bit daunting. How did I teach off campus students to use electronic technology for public relations purposes? In other words, website technology. Also using news groups, information on the internet. How do I show off campus students how to use PowerPoint presentations effectively? How do I encourage off campus students to make basic graphic presentations? This isn't a graphics course by any stretch of the imagination but, there was a whole load of visual and hands on computer work which I needed to be able to discuss with and show the off campus student. In my other unit, Crisis and Issues Management, how do I encourage teamwork between off campus students in order to envisage and discuss with each other and come up with tactics and strategies for dealing with the sorts of crises that effect most organisations and corporations and major public organisations? It was trying to be able to extend that sort of discussion which, obviously one can do it in the classroom situation, the tutorial situation, the lecture situation, but how do I get all that across to the off campus students?
Int:	Steve, you mentioned you teach electronic and internet public relations, so clearly the internet new technology is critically important to the good practice of contemporary public relations. Could you explain that further? Why is it important for PR students to know a lot about internet based PR communication?
RES:	Anybody in the public relations industry will tell you that the internet has completely revolutionised how public relations operates. Or how organisations project their personalities, defend their reputations, reach their public, reach their customers, reach government, reach all sorts of different people in all sorts of… What I mean, us in the university understand this so well, that any activity which requires a large amount of complex information, now has to be done with the use of sophisticated communication technology of which the internet and the world wide web are the backbone. Then there are all sorts of other activities that take place within those technologies. Public relations, because of what it is, it is essentially the management of communication to produce certain perspectives onto… give certain points of view, is a really central activity in that sort of sphere.
Int:	You mention the value you place on teamwork and the use of online technology to achieve that. I am really quite interested in your overall views about what constitutes effective teaching and learning in public relations to you before we get too much into the technology. How do you see effective teaching and learning in this whole professional field?
RES:	I don't think I am saying anything new at all, but it seems to me that there is such a great amount of talent and ability and energy and innovation and all sorts of intelligent thought out there among our students and it is a matter of how you enthuse them and tap that and then organise it in a constructive manner so they can bring that huge amount of energy to bear. To create much more interesting outcomes in terms of education or teaching. As opposed to standing in front of 100 students in a lecture theatre and droning on and telling them things which they may or may not know and are probably going to forget within a few minutes of you telling them that. Obviously in the tutorial situation there are all sorts of different suggestions about how one can organise tutorials in order to make them lively and entertaining and more rewarding as educational exercises. I think more than that, if you can somehow give students tasks that will motivate them and interest them and energize them, and then set them off on their own track, they will produce so much more, or they will get so much more out of their education. So that is my general process. To try to set up an environment or level of enthusiasm… I mean as it where, like the blue touch paper and retire, so that they are ignited in terms of going and doing lots of things now. The internet and computers and getting into all sorts of educational activities that are on a global basis which is what is involved in both of my units, really is a way of doing that.
Int:	I was also interested Steve, in your own postgraduate study and research and scholarship and to what extent you feel that has informed your perspective on these subjects, and your teaching and learning? Do you see a nexus there between scholarship, research and theorising on the one hand and effective teaching and learning on the other?
RES:	I haven't personally been able to integrate that as much as I would like to. The 50% that fits into what you are asking me, I think, is the fact that public relations and the concerns, the politics, the business implications and the cultural and the interests that are involved with that, are now global. Part of what I do in my research is looking at public relations at the global level. That then of course translates to the world wide web, because the sorts of things that students are dealing with in both of these subjects are things that are working globally. For instance I do hook ups to other universities in other countries and try and get my students as much as possible to talk to students in other countries. On that basis, and I have just been very lucky enough to go on a round the world global ticket to conferences around the world and I have been able to get more networks, and put students in touch with other students. Interestingly I put some American students in touch with some UK students during this recent trip that I have just had and I will be bringing those people in touch with my students. So in terms of the global aspect, in terms of my specific research interest, which is public relations theory, I haven't quite been able to harness that into what I think you are asking me at the moment.
Int:	You have mentioned the motivations for wanting to be involved in online and you have probably been through a number of phases in regard to technologies coming and going at Deakin University and different phases of your thinking and practice with online teaching. Could you give us some potted account of the origins of your work and how it has evolved over a period of time to the point of what you are doing today?
RES:	I will do that very briefly. When somebody first told me that I was going to be responsible for a unit called Crisis and Issues Management, I would estimate, probably 1992, I immediately went “eek” because the way that I taught that unit on campus with students working in teams, because to deal with any crisis in a public relations sense, or any crisis in any sense, it has to be teamwork. It has to be people co-operating with each other. Hectically constrained timeframe in order to come up with the correct way of responding to things. It has to be teamwork. How do you do that when you are told your unit is an off campus unit? How are you going to include the off campus students? This was 1992. This was pre First Class. Did we have a system before First Class? It was some other technology before First Class, anyway, the only technologies that were available to me were regular e-mail, because it was regular e-mail before SPAM, thank heavens, and the world wide web which I only have half of an idea of, and at that time and because I was a bit isolated down here and there wasn't anybody to help me, I was taking trips up to Waurn Ponds to get people to give me a basic idea of how to make websites and it was a combination of using websites and using the ordinary e-mail, that I actually managed to get groups to work together and put their pictures up and talk to each other and also talk to each other on the phone. Everything that has come after that has been a bonus, really. As technology just got more complex and different systems have come and gone, some of which have been a lot better than others, each of which have caused more complications and difficulties having to learn different systems, but I think slowly but surely, three steps forward two steps back, but nonetheless we are getting better systems to do that sort of work.
Int:	I wonder whether you might be able to talk through, Steve, the way you have designed the DSO environment to establish these groups to do collaborative groupwork? What is the whole process involved in regard to design and conduct, what the students are doing, how they submit assignments, how they are marked, graded, returned? Could you step us through that process?
RES:	Fifty per cent of the answer is as per the DSO system. So if you know how the DSO system is supposed to work, first submitting and returning assignments, I try to use that, although, because I think you will also find that if you talk to people who are trying to use the submission system, that there are some problems with it. Sometimes I might be using the private mail function in DSO for students submitting and returning assignments if they can't use the proper submission box. I suppose the main innovation which I use is that, as I used to do with First Class, is I would get the off campus students to contact me early in the semester so that I could put them into groups of five, this is in the electronic and public relations unit, so that they have a little group within which they can communicate with each other. So in other words I can set up a discussion group within the general noticeboard area for the course as a whole and limit it to a certain group of people. The technology seems to change each time and I got fairly familiar with using the First Class system for this process. The DSO system, I have only used it for one year or one semester each unit. So I am still trying to get my head around that. But I suppose the basic answer to what you are saying is to use the systems to get small groups of students to relate with each other. To talk to each other, to produce their projects. What tends to happen in any class, is that the enthusiastic, energetic students come in early and get into their groups and work tremendously. You see there are lots of conversations where they are talking to each other. You then later find out that they have been phoning each other, text messaging each other and they have met… three of four of them in Melbourne have met in somebody's flat, or gone out for a drink somewhere in Melbourne and the person who is in Singapore who is still in touch with them has managed to still keep in touch with them and relate to them some how or other. I try to encourage the use of pictures as much as possible because that is important as well. If people want to put their pictures on, if people want to put pictures of their pets on, there were issues to do with do people want to have their pictures on the world wide web? Do they want to be that available to each other and have their names and details available to each other? But there are generally ways that… for instance I have a pets corner, where people put pictures of their dogs and cats and some put a description of their fish on that pets corner, which I didn't think was quite as much fun as some of the other pets. There are lots of fun things that the system can be used for to hook up, particularly off campus students who get involved and feel as if they are part of an academic community or a student community.
Int:	In terms of insights into the kind of rhythms of online teaching life over a semester, how does it unfold from week to week? What are the critical points where you might need to intervene, actively moderate, back off? How would you describe a typical semester as an online teacher in this type of unit?
RES:	Crucially, right at the start of the semester, the unit guide, I have a short line in there somewhere that says students that ask to come into groups early in the semester tend to do better. That is a fairly thinly disguised statement that maybe some students don't use the systems as much as they could do, but the people that do work quite well. What tends to happen is that the people who use the system properly, within the first three weeks, let's say I have about 40 off campus students, I would say that by week three, 25 of those students off campus have got themselves into groups. The first group will have had about thirty or forty different message exchanges discussing about “well have you looked at the unit guide? This is what I think we should do. Why don't we do that? That's a great idea.” You find that some people will take over as leaders and facilitators. Sometimes you get the feeling that there may be a little bit of foot stamping and tears among some of the groups when maybe people don't get on as well as they might do. But generally by week three, most of the groups, the fourth or the fifth group might not have had a lot of exchanges with each other, but surprisingly by about week six when the first assignment is due, hey presto, somebody will take the initiative, make sure the group is whipped into line. The first assignment which is like a group assignment, only for 5%, but all members of the group need to get their name on that assignment to get any marks, which means that in theory at least they all need to pull their weight. And hey presto, almost miraculously sometimes, it appears and it appears on time. One of the other effects of having a group is that I think there is some sort of psychological effect which seems to happen which means that people concentrate their minds on their deadline more than perhaps they would do individually. I don't think I have ever had a group assignment which hasn't come in on time. Somebody in the group has reminded somebody else and I think there is also a feeling though of, quite frankly, not letting each other down, which also seems to operate in the group situation. So that seems to be fine. One of the other points I would make, the semester I have just finished which is not for the electronic unit but for Crisis and Issues Management, and again I was quite surprised in talking to somebody in admin the other day. I was double checking that I don't have… this is a unit which has 150 students in it and not one student was requiring a re-sit examination. All of the students, that were going to, had taken the exam in the timeframe they were supposed to. Again I put that down to group work in terms of people supporting each other, people reminding each other, people not wanting to let the other person down. By doing the preparatory work as a group, which they needed to be focused on the, in this case, the crisis scenario task which I set and discussing it with each other face to face or electronically or by phone or SMSing. I think engendering a bit of a dynamic, which would be harder to do if you were dealing with people face to face in the class or just receiving printed materials through the mail.
Int:	Steve, how do you go about judging the quality of the online environment? The effectiveness of it in promoting quality learning? I guess the proof of the pudding is in the quality of the student group assignment work and their exam. How do you go about making that type of judgement?
RES:	I have a fairly detailed marking criteria sheet which all the students need to conform to. In public relations, unsurprisingly when the first criteria is clear, accurate writing, and clear factual work, what your question sparked off in my mind, was more to do with an on campus group who were creating their website together. What I do briefly is, each student makes a five page website, five students therefore have, working together, have a twenty five page website and they have to link these websites together to try to make some sort of logical succession of pages. The group that I have got in mind from first semester of this year, I found the group was not a strong group. It was fairly weak group, but it was interesting to see them through the year grappling with what was quite a hard task for them and coming in fairly regularly and all trying to help each other. I felt as if they were all trying to grasp and understand and deal with a whole range of issues to do with personal interactional issues with each other. How to work with each other. How to tackle an alien technology which they didn't really understand. Who to give responsibility in the group? Was it the person who talked with the biggest mouth, to be a bit rude, or was it the person who seemed to be saying the most, or was it the quieter person who didn't tend to be seen as the most active in the group. It was quite interesting, I don't know if I am answering your question at all, but there was a whole developmental activity which took place and they fulfilled the basic requirements of the assignment, which is only to understand the technology and to understand how the technology is used in the public relations environment and to familiarise themselves with it and equip themselves so that in the exam they could answer questions. My unit is not a graphic design unit. My unit is not a unit where people will make excellent or industry standard websites. It is a unit which familiarises people with that whole process and if they then want to go onto a TAFE course or to some other course where they can do the technical side in more detail, then that's fine. What I felt that the students were doing over a period of time, was dealing with a whole range of educational, personal and interactional activities and group work activities. Some of the things that you are supposed to do in universities. I was able to observe that closely with this particular group who used to come along and maybe weren't the best attendees in the group. I hope that the off campus students were doing that as well. Of course it is much harder to know exactly how off campus students are communicating with each other, but you tend to find out subsequently that they have been having these meetings at a coffee shop in Melbourne, or find people who were on another continent will maybe write me a note at the end of the semester saying that they felt so much in touch with other students in the university for the first time, because of the use of this technology and the particular way of doing their assignments. I get the feeling that it works pretty well. I can't say that I've done any vigorous research into the sort of questions that you are asking me.
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