The micro-degree program is an exceptionally brilliant innovation! Extremely engaging courses with tremendous takeaways – I absolutely loved them. Attending these weekly sessions brought me immense joy. As the semester draws to a close, the inaugural run of the New Media and Digital Cultural Communication micro-degree program at NKU School of Journalism and Communication has successfully wrapped up, earning resounding praise from participating students.
Guo Haobin, a student from the College of Life Sciences, left a comment saying: ...far more fascinating than I had anticipated, with direct relevance to real-world applications that demand practical implementation in daily life. Gao Fanqiao from the School of Philosophy noted that the course significantly deepened her understanding of the journalism and communication industry. The curriculum strikes an ideal balance between theoretical foundations and practical skill development, making it highly applicable to real-world scenarios. At the same time, there's truly so much to learn. Self-media isn't something that just anyone can do easily, she remarked.
At the end of the semester, lecturer Zhang Huan reflected, Class attendance remained close to 100% throughout the term, with students actively engaging in discussions and delivering exceptionally high-quality work in both regular assignments and final projects. Lecturer Shi Xiaoxi commented, Students' aspirations to develop professional perspectives and career competencies align perfectly with the construction objectives of the micro-degree program. Therefore, we adopted a variety of integrated pedagogical approaches to achieve the teaching objectives. Innovative reforms have been implemented across multiple dimensions, such as the selection of course content, instruction of underlying principles, practical teaching methodologies and assessment forms, all tailored to meet the needs of micro-degree education.
In early 2024, NKU unveiled its Micro-degree Program Construction Plan to implement the NKU System 3.0 for Cultivating Outstanding Talents with Public Morality and Professional Ability, innovate undergraduate program development pathways, and build new talent cultivation models. The construction objective is to develop micro-degree programs through creating clusters of core courses that focus on specialized academic concentrations, interdisciplinary domains, or related cutting-edge fields by leveraging the university's disciplinary strengths to support innovation-driven development strategies while serving economic and social development. The micro-degree programs are designed to broaden students' professional horizons, enrich their knowledge base, cultivate their core competencies in specialized fields, enhance their capabilities in academic research or serving economic and social development, and achieve the educational goal of optimizing the cultivation of interdisciplinary talents with composite competencies, encourage students' individualized development and self-directed growth, and provide them with a diverse environment for personal development.
The School of Journalism and Communication proactively responded to the university's call, aligned with media development trends, organized corresponding faculty resources, and meticulously designed courses for launching the micro-degree program of New Media and Digital Cultural Communication, which was among the first batch of such programs within the university. According to Chen Peng, Vice Dean of the School, this micro-degree program is grounded in cutting-edge media development in the new era, and systematically covers the fundamental knowledge and skills of audiovisual production, enabling students to understand the principles and characteristics of new media content creation, and equipping them with the ability to design new media products and manage new media projects. It focuses on cultivating interdisciplinary, application-oriented professionals competent in new media production and dissemination.
In line with the university's requirements, the micro-degree curriculum is designed to embody high-order, innovative, and challenging qualities. Its fundamental objective is to enable students, through systematic study, to either gain an in-depth understanding of a specific disciplinary field (interdisciplinary fields) or academic research area, or develop domain-specific core competencies or industry-ready professional capabilities. The Digital Cultural Communication micro-degree program comprises six compulsory courses delivered through an integrated theory + practice pedagogy, requiring completion of 18 academic credits for certification. The inaugural semester concluded with two cornerstone courses—Fundamentals of Journalism and Communication and New Media Product Design and Project Management—receiving high praise from enrolled students.
Figure 1. Final Presentation for New Media Product Design and Project Management
Fundamentals of Journalism and Communication comprises three core modules: Communication Studies, History of Journalism, and Journalism Theories and Frontiers, delivering comprehensive curricular coverage. The course primarily aims to equip students with core concepts and competencies in journalism and communication, while cultivating their information analysis capabilities, critical thinking, and ethical awareness, thereby broadening their theoretical and practical perspectives.
New Media Product Design and Project Management serves as a foundational course for new media product managers. The curriculum focuses on predominant forms of contemporary new media products such as mobile application-based new media products, and online show and micro-drama content-based new media products. It combines theoretical instruction with case-study methodologies to provide comprehensive coverage of general design processes and approaches across these product categories. Through this course, students will not only grasp the fundamental knowledge of user analysis, market analysis, requirement analysis, and competitive product analysis, and master the basic processes and commonly used approaches in new media product design and project management, but also enhance their cultural literacy and aesthetic sense, and cultivate product-oriented thinking, new media mindset, and user-centric cognition. Following the study of theories and methodologies, students are required to develop a design proposal or functional prototype for a new media product, gain an in-depth understanding of the new media product industry, and acquire the fundamental competencies required for professional practice in this field, thereby prepared to address real-world challenges in their future careers.
The standard duration of the micro-degree program spans 3–4 semesters, with 4 more courses scheduled for the coming semesters: New Media Videography, Audiovisual Editing, Appreciation and Production of Digital Multimedia Works, and New Media Data Visualization. Courses are typically scheduled during weekday evenings or weekends. Upon successful completion of the program, participants will be awarded a micro-degree certificate, although this credential does not constitute a formal academic degree.
In consideration of highly possible scheduling conflicts with daytime academic commitments and the logistical challenges posed by the two-campus setup, in the next semester, the School will continue arranging the courses in the evening and the time slots for the two courses will be staggered. It is expected that the number of the first batch of graduates of this micro-degree program will be around 15.
