Class Collabs: Assessing Inter-disciplinary Relationship Building in Media Education

Contrary to popular belief, higher education does not exist in an ivory tower. Indeed, higher education is no stranger to adopting and implementing new pedagogical approaches and trends. One endeavor is the class collaboration, or Class Collab, which is a form of instruction that integrates the learning community with experiential learning. Although the basis for the class collaboration dates to Dewey, no studies have assessed this education model as it exists within media education. Given this gap in the literature, the current study uses a small sample pretest-posttest design to explore the impact of class collaborations with film and public relations courses. The results show that there are differences between the pretest and posttest data and that overall, the Class Collab is associated with positive learning outcomes. However, an emergent finding within the data is that there was an overwhelming number of students that described difficulty working across industries, especially as it relates to communication. The result is that students working to create interdisciplinary media products need more of an understanding in the strategic elements of communication.