Breaking down walls: inter-organizational collaboration in 'The Trifecta'.

Communication education relies heavily on experiential learning, but such an approach rarely provides opportunities for students to participate in inter-disciplinary collaborations and build inter-organizational relationships. The current paper describes a simulation, called 'The Trifecta,' in which students in the disciplines of journalism, public relations and video production worked together to produce media content over a six-week period in a fictional municipality. Debriefing research following the simulation showed that students gained not only technical knowledge, but also began to see how to build and maintain effective relationships across disciplines as well as point out ineffective relationships. To this end, 'The Trifecta' stands as an example of how communication education must push toward a third paradigm which crosses into innovative problem solving from students and mentoring from instructors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]