Interactive Practice-Oriented Techniques in Professional Media Education

The article focuses on the educational techniques, which are conducive to forming the journalist’s creative personality. It estimates the degree of their effectiveness as exemplified by teaching experience of such subjects as ‘Creative Workshops’ and ‘Copyediting’ at the Institute of Philology, Journalism and Cross-cultural Communication (Southern federal university). It is obvious that the new social and cultural context as well as new technologies will inevitably change teaching techniques. Nowadays there is an acute necessity ‘to immerse the student into hands-on experience’ within the context of their university studies to enable them to improve the acquired skills and abilities later on. The aim of the given study is to provide the theoretical and pedagogical analysis of proprietary methods focused on developing skills and competences to create media texts, develop students’ potential and form a creative personality. The authors investigate the transformations of the conceptions, content and methods in journalism education in the light of political and social changes that have occurred in the country. Special attention is paid to one of the acutest problems that has always sparked a storm of controversy within the professional community — the balance between the theoretical input and practice in the learning and teaching process at university. The article analyzes the forms of conducting classes in the role-play format that models the functioning of an editorial office. Students go through the whole process of creating a media product: from conceiving an idea to the final output. The authors come to the conclusion that the interactive techniques used in teaching media students help the latter to focus on their professional and personal development, work out their own individual plan of action in their future career and widen the range of creative methods in the process of creating media texts.