By Laurel Hetherington, Lecturer in Public Relations

I’m writing this the week before induction and thought you might all be interested into what goes into preparing for your arrival from the teacher’s point of view – a lecturer’s lament if you like. 

We’ve all been preparing our videos and sways and when you meet me, you will soon realise that  I’m a true digital immigrant – a term all you digital natives will come to know in the coming weeks.   

The basic theories and concepts of PR do of course stay the same, although there are new interpretations of these constantly coming through.  What does change is the application of these concepts in current and recent situations,  so that we can help you to understand some of these, sometimes complex concepts, by applying them to what is happening in the real world.    

For example, I am writing this on the day that Cineworld has just announced it is temporarily closing all of its cinemas in the UK and the US.  We can discuss this in the internal comms lecture in 8065 ( how were the employees told about this – very badly handled!), the implications for the share price dropping by 25% in one day in the financial lecture – what does that mean to all the financial stakeholders? How will it affect their overall reputation – a key theme in 8065.  And so on and so on – and by the time you get to Ramona’s crisis lectures in 8060 in semester 2, they may well be back in business or may have hit the wall like so many others in the leisure and hospitality sectors.    

We are always looking for generic case studies and examples that will interest you all,  so goods and services that we all use or buy are very popular, we don’t like anything too niche or too specialist an interest.   

We’ve also got to change the method of our delivering our lectures to you, at least for this semester, which brings its own set of problems.  If I am standing in front of a large lecture group I can get feedback – good old two way communication as Grunig & Hunt, (who you will get to know very well on this course) advocate as the ideal.  I can see the expressions on your faces, feel the mood in the room and listen as I walk amongst you and appreciate if you are coping with or struggling with the mini questions that we set in class, and then can adjust my session accordingly.  It’s all going to be very different this year. 

But we are looking forward to seeing you all very much.  We’ve missed all our students; I only had six dissertation students over the summer plus my two PhD candidates to keep me company.  So it will be great to meet you all, whether on line or on campus.  And do spare a thought for me please if the technology doesn’t work as well as it should, and please please please follow the guidelines on online etiquette, otherwise I shall end up talking to myself if no one turns their camera on!