Content-Type: text/html Consulting as a Teaching Tool Using Private Consulting as a Teaching Tool Candace White, Ph.D. College of Communications University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-0330 (865) 974-5112 [log in to unmask] Using Private Consulting as a Teaching Tool Abstract This paper explains how private consulting was used to provide on-going instruction and examples of public relations strategies and tactics in a public relations writing course. Students were able to see immediate, real-time implementation and how problems were addressed in a real life context. A survey of the students showed the teaching method was well received, increased understanding and knowledge of how public relations tactics are implemented, and proved relevant to the course material. The recurring theme in the literature about faculty consulting is that consulting brings a number of benefits to the individual, students, and the institution, has a positive impact on teaching and research, but does not figure directly in the traditional reward system of academe. Even though administrators and academicians recognize the benefits that consulting can bring to teaching and give it lip service, the bottom line is it is important to develop research projects from consulting work in order for consulting to be considered a worthwhile use of faculty time (Coulson, 1990; Pease, 1993; Boyer and Lewis, 1984; Patton, 1980). Without going into the "which is more important, teaching or research?" debate, it may be that administrators and faculty believe it is important to derive research from consulting activities because research articles serve as concrete evidence that consulting augments and contributes to traditional professorial duties. The positive effect that consulting has on teaching is harder to measure. This study attempts to provide evidence that private consulting can be used as a tool in classroom teaching in a way that provides direct benefits to students. It reports a concerted effort to use private consulting experience in teaching a public relations course, and to evaluate the effectiveness of using the instructor's current consulting project as a teaching tool. Literature Review Pro bono consulting in professors' areas of expertise has long been honored as a public service that helps colleges and universities fulfill their missions. However, when faculty members consult for personal monetary gain, the same practice becomes suspect. Most institutions have formal policies to regulate it. There are two sides to the debate about for-profit faculty consulting. One side of the argument recognizes that private consulting can benefit students and the college or university for which the consultant works. The other side asserts that faculty consulting benefits only the consultant's pocketbook, and can lead to conflicts of interest and abuse of institutional resources (Boyer and Lewis, 1984; Johnson, 1993). Boyer and Lewis (1984) noted that professional consulting is often regarded as shirking other university responsibilities at the students' or institutions' expense, so that even if students may be the benefactors of faculty consulting, this fact is often hard to sell to colleagues who see the time spent consulting as time wasted in regard to teaching and research. A review of the literature found that the perception that faculty members who consult are less productive than those who don't is unfounded; studies based on empirical evidence show otherwise. Boyer and Lewis (1984) in a secondary analysis of several private and government studies that documented faculty productivity and consulting practices found that faculty who consult are at least as active in their faculty roles on campus as their non-consulting peers. Patton (1980) found that faculty members involved in private consulting tended to spend more time in graduate instruction while holding the same number of office hours as their colleagues, and did not find a negative effect of consulting on publishing and research. Rebne (1989) found consulting was less a time-scarcity problem and more a role-balancing problem, and that more time spent consulting did not lead to less time spent in other roles such as teaching and research. Mitchell and Rebne (1995) also found that moderate amounts of time spent consulting were facilitative of research productivity, and that teaching, consulting, and research were complementary roles, noting that their findings are at odds with the common assumption that faculty consulting amounts to nothing more than "moonlighting." Boyer and Lewis (1984) concluded from their study that faculty consulting has been under appreciated, with too much focus on only the visible costs to the institution at the expense of the substantial benefits to the individual, to students, and to the institution that are harder to measure. They believe the overall benefits of faculty consulting outweigh the perceived costs. Through interviews with business professors, Johnson (1993) uncovered a number of hard-to-measure benefits, and concluded that money was only one factor that motivated faculty consulting. His interviewees reported that consulting augmented their teaching by keeping them in touch with the business world, which in turn helped them keep course materials relevant and current, as well as allowed them to pass on real-world insights to their students. In addition, consulting often led to opportunities to involve students with clients either as a public service or to provide employment to the students. Pease (1993), in a survey of journalism and mass communication faculty, found that 92% of the respondents believed that off-campus professional activities helped their teaching/students. Another important by-product of consulting is credibility with students. Business students do not respect professors without real life experience, according to a participant in the Johnson study. The same may be true for public relations students. Though not the only motivator, money is obviously a reason that faculty consult. For business professors in Johnson's (1993) study, consulting allowed them to double or triple their salaries, which kept their salaries in line with what they could earn in the private sector. A respondent in the Johnson study reported doubling his university salary in 25 days of consulting. Income supplements from consulting enable talented faculty members to stay in higher education when otherwise they might be lured to more lucrative employment, which in turn benefits the institution for which the faculty member works. Medical schools realize this, and have liberal policies that allow teaching faculty to engage in clinical practice. Boyer and Lewis (1984) believe there is a clear economic argument for permissive consulting policies for college and university professors. An additional benefit to the institution is that faculty consulting enhances the reputation of a department or institution, and can lead to internship opportunities and contracts for grant money based on the respect the faulty member earns in the professional community (Boyer and Lewis, 1984). It should be noted there is a reciprocal benefit to the faculty member who wishes to consult: the fact that one is a college professor provides instant prestige and credibility that can help land consulting contracts. Boyer and Lewis also assert that faculty consulting can have a benefit to society in that businesses and governments can "rent" the expertise of faculty members when the need arises, expertise they might not otherwise be able to afford. Rebne (1989) notes that increased role of faculty consulting to industry "has the serendipitous effect of strengthening the knowledge base across a wide range of academic disciplines" (p. 252). From the individual faculty member's perspective, consulting can expand the faculty member's base of knowledge, and enhance self-esteem and morale. A marketing professor in the Johnson study said he learned more about how marketing works from his consulting projects than from his doctoral project. Another reported that consulting counterbalanced the tedium of teaching and research, which could lead to greater job satisfaction and performance. Coulson (1990) reports evidence of this fact, noting that educators who act as consultants are more satisfied with their careers and their schools than non-consulting faculty members. Coulson's study looked at media consulting, including public relations, in particular. He surveyed heads of journalism and mass communication programs to determine what effect they believe media consulting has on teaching, research, tenure, and promotion. Administrators ranked consulting as the lowest in importance among traditional faculty activities, even though they agreed that outside consulting strengthens and enhances teaching and is a way to attract and retain respected faculty members. Coulson's findings suggest that consulting has only an indirect positive effect on tenure and promotion, and that the publishable research derived from consulting is considered more important than the consulting itself. Pease's (1993) survey of faculty members offers additional evidence to support that fact. He found that faculty members believe that while administrators say consulting is worthwhile, they don't reward it. No study was found that looked directly at how consulting might be used as a teaching tool. Only anecdotal evidence that consulting is useful to teaching was found, and the evidence was based on responses from faculty and administrators. None of the studies considered the teaching benefits derived from consulting from the students' perspective. This study attempts to fill the gap. Bringing Consulting Experience to the Classroom The experimental use of on-going consulting work as a teaching tool was used in an undergraduate public relations writing course taught fall semester 1999. The course is a skills-based course taught in a computer lab, and required of all majors. There were 15 students in the class. Although the focus of the course is writing skills, the goal of the instructor is that writing skills should not be taught in a vacuum, but rather students should learn when and why to use a tactic, in addition to learning how to produce (write) it. A constant dilemma in public relations education is how to teach the strategic thinking component of this process. In a survey of senior level public relations executives in the for-profit sector, practitioners rated "thinking skills" including understanding organization strategy, goals, objectives and missions among the most important skills and understandings for a public relations graduates entering the job market (Guiniven, 1998). Students often have difficulty understanding the relationship between strategy and tactics, and the use of the consulting examples was intended to help accomplish the instructor's goal of facilitating strategic thinking. Background about how the course is taught. To understand the teaching method and how it was used, it is necessary to understand how the course is usually taught. Each semester students in this particular course use a real organization about which to write. Each student chooses an organization about which he or she is already familiar, and about which the student can easily and readily get information. Each student chooses a different organization - for instance, a campus organization, a parent's business, or an employer. The students are instructed that they will write about the organization, not for the organization, and that their work is for the instructor's eyes only. The use of an organization to write about, rather than for, differs from service learning or from serving a real client as is often the case in public relations courses, the benefits of which have been well documented (see Aldoory and Wrigley, 2000; Sallot, 1996). There are several reasons for structuring the course this way. The first is the course is a sophomore/junior-level course and most of the students have taken only one public relations course prior to taking it. Many of the students are simply not ready to produce work for a real client. Furthermore, reducing the pressure that often comes from writing for a real client allows students to focus on the assigned tasks and possibly dare to be a bit more creative. The primary reason, however, that the students write about a real organization for the entire semester is that it requires each student to constantly think about the visions and values of the organization they have chosen, and how each tactic they are learning can best be used to benefit their organization. It forces the students to think strategically, and actually makes the course more difficult since some assignments lend themselves better to some organizations than to others. The first writing assignment in the course is to produce a fact sheet and organization (or company) profile, which requires students to become familiar with the mission of their organization. Even though it is a tactics course, emphasis is placed on outcomes - what each tactic can accomplish for the organization - rather than only on outputs. Throughout the course, all students must complete each writing assignment (feature story, news releases, pitch letter, VNR script, etc.), based on a written objective that shows how their organization can benefit from the tactic. The course design has worked well, and is used by all faculty members teaching this particular course at our university. Using the consulting client in the classroom The students in the class were not told that the instructor was experimenting with a new teaching method, but were told that the instructor was currently engaged in private consulting. On the first day of class they were told about one of the instructor's clients. Then, throughout the semester, each time the students received an assignment, the instructor implemented the particular task for the client. For instance, the day students wrote letters to the editor, the instructor wrote a letter to a local newspaper on behalf of the client, reacting to an article the paper had published. The letter was shown in class on an overhead transparency as an example of what the students were about to do, but more importantly, why and in what context it would be effective. The difference between the instructor's letter and the students' was the instructor's was actually mailed to the newspaper. The students were excited when it was published, which led to further discussion about why it was newsworthy and how it helped the client. Another assignment required the students to take difficult, technical material such as financial information and "translate" it for a broad audience. That day the instructor passed around a seven-page legal document written by the client's lawyers. The class discussed effective ways to translate and disseminate the information to the client's target audience. The students were then instructed to pull up the client's web site on their computers to view a Q & A the instructor had written in simple English that explained parts of the legal document that were relevant to the client's audience. It should be noted that the use of the client web site was an integral part of the teaching method. First and foremost, the introduction of technology and information about how it can be used by public relations professionals is of utmost importance in every public relations course today. The computer lab had Internet connections so each student could access the web from his or her workstation. The client's web site, designed and managed by the instructor, was used to demonstrate how writing for the screen differs from writing for the printed page, as well as allowed the instructor to catalog press releases, news articles written from the releases, feature stories, and brochure copy for the students to view at appropriate times. The course progressed in this manner. When the students wrote pitch letters, the instructor showed them a pitch letter that had been sent to a publication, as well as subsequent email correspondence with a reporter that had led to a published feature story. The instructor brought in the print publication, and also explained how posting the story on the web lent credibility to other messages on the web site. The copyright implications and the permission statement that was posted on the web with the reprint of the article were also noted, the relevance of which was immediately apparent to the students in a real-world context. This is an example of one of many incidental things mentioned in class that probably would not have come up if not for the on-going consulting experience. Evaluation of the Method On the last day of class after the final exam, the instructor administered a questionnaire to the students. The students were informed that the instructor had been experimenting with the use of the consulting client to provide topics and examples for the class. They were told their opinions about how it had worked would be valued and used to decide whether or not to use the method in future classes. The questionnaire was not part of the formal course evaluation and was anonymous, requiring no writing other than circles around numbers on Likert scales so students would not be concerned about the instructor recognizing their handwriting. Questions were designed to measure the following constructs: 1) whether the use of consulting examples increased understanding and knowledge, 2) the perceived credibility of the instructor, 3) the relevance of the consulting examples to the course, and 4) how interested the student was in the practice of public relations. Results The questionnaire had fifteen items, each measured on a seven-point Likert scale. Each construct was measured with several questions that were worded differently and scattered in no particular order on the questionnaire. Table 1 shows the complete questionnaire and the means and standard deviations for each item. The direction of the wording was reversed in some of the questions to provide a reliability measure, and the items that were reversed on the questionnaire were re-coded from negative to positive for analysis. SPSS was used to analyze the data. Cronbach's alpha was used to test the reliability of the instrument; the scale was reasonably reliable (( = .8952). Since the sample was small (n = 15) and may not be normally distributed, Spearman's rho was chosen to test correlations among variables. Because several items were used to measure each of four constructs, a factor analysis would normally be used to see if the constructs loaded together. However, since the sample was so small, a conceptual grouping was used instead. The researcher grouped the items that were intended to measure the same construct and calculated the average mean for each conceptual factor to use for correlations. Many of the questions on the instrument were intended to measure whether the students thought the consulting examples increased their understanding and knowledge (conceptual factor 1). The mean average for these items, noted by the symbol ( in table 1 and re-coded as needed to reverse the scale, was 6.79. The questions intended to measure the credibility of the instructor (conceptual factor 2) are noted by the symbol ( in table 1. One item was reversed; re-coded, the mean average for these three items was 6.39 The relevance of the consulting examples to the course material (conceptual factor 3) was measured by the questionnaire items noted by ( in the table. Re-coded as needed to reverse the scale, the mean average for these items was 6.26. There was a significant correlation between the questions "How likely are you to work in public relations? and " How interested are you in learning more about public relations?" (r = .565, p<.05). The average mean for the two items (conceptual factor 4) was 5.679. Nonparametric bivariate correlations (Spearman's rho) were run to test the relationship between how likely the student was to work in public relations and how relevant the examples were (factor 3 re-coded into a single variable called "undrstnd"). The same test was run between how interested the student was in learning more about public relations and whether they believed the consulting examples increased their understanding and knowledge (factor 1 re-coded into a single variable called "howto"). No statistical significance was found. This can be explained by looking at the frequencies of the responses. For each variable in the factors above, 86% of the responses were concentrated above neutral, that is above four on the seven-point scale. It is difficult to find significant correlations when the sample is small and the responses are very homogenous. Tables 2 and 3 show the two scatter plots for the correlations, and indicate both how tightly the responses are clustered and the general positive direction of the correlations. Informal and indirect evaluation Scores on the standard course evaluation form, administered separately from the questionnaire, were the highest the instructor has ever received for the course. The mean for the item "the instructor's effectiveness in teaching the material" was 4.79 out of 5. The following semester the instructor had several students from the writing course in a subsequent campaigns course in which the class works for a real client. Students from the course in which the consulting client was used seemed to hit the ground running in the campaigns course and appeared to have more confidence about working for a real client than did some of the other students in the class. This is only an observation, and no follow-up questions were asked of the students to confirm the impression. Discussion The benefits of using a consulting client to demonstrate public relations tools to students were many. Students could watch their book-learning unfold immediately in a real life context. Often the use of a real client, in a campaigns course for instance, results in a plan, but not in real-time implementation. The data suggest that the use of real examples had a positive effect on how credible the students perceived the instructor to be. This is congruent with Johnson's (1993) findings that professional experience brings increased respect from students. It has been noted that students seem to sit up and take notice and put stock in what a guest speaker tells them (White, 1999). In a sense the instructor was a speaker from the real world. An intangible benefit was that the class dynamic was altered in a positive way. There was less of a student-teacher line of demarcation that is apparent in some classes. The students in the class became interested in the work the instructor was doing for the client, and frequently asked questions about such things as billing, strategizing, client relations, and other things that probably would not have otherwise been discussed. The students "bought in" to the consulting project and offered suggestions to the instructor that demonstrated their understanding of what they were learning in class and showed they were thinking strategically. Just as the discussion of ethics should be ever-present and pervasive in all public relations courses, it is appropriate to interject it here. The students in the class did absolutely no work for the instructor's client, but rather learned from the work the instructor was doing and the examples used in class. It would not be appropriate under any circumstances to have students produce work for which the instructor was receiving pay. The course provided the students an opportunity to learn by example. The instructor had to constantly look for opportunities to implement tactics for the client that coincided with the syllabus. To always be on the lookout for opportunities is a lesson in itself. The instructor also told the students why one tactic or message vehicle was chosen over another. The "what not to do" and "get the most bang for your buck" lessons are often the most difficult to teach. More public relations consulting on the part of public relations educators could benefit our discipline. Salaries are higher in fields such as engineering, law, and business where consulting is prevalent and well respected since expertise in those fields are in demand in business, industry, and government (Boyer and Lewis, 1984). At the present time this does not seem to be the case in mass communication (see Coulson, 1990; Pease, 1993). Private consulting could possibly increase our prestige and our salaries, but most certainly can increase our credibility among students and our effectiveness in the classroom. Limitations of the study. Obviously the data are based on a small, convenience sample and not generalizable. It is also recognized that even though the questionnaire was anonymous, it is likely that students wanted to give socially desirable answers to please the instructor. A space on the questionnaire for open-ended comments would have allowed for more feedback from the students. While several students told the instructor that the client examples were helpful, there was no opportunity to record the open-ended comments of all of the students or to allow for anonymous contradictory opinions. A limit to repeating this method of teaching is that an appropriate client may not always be available. In this case, the instructor was implementing an integrated marketing plan to a rather broad audience for the client, so many different tactics were appropriate. The audiences were such that a number of different communication vehicles were useful. Furthermore, the instructor worked directly with the top management of the company (another good lesson for students) and was authorized to implement any strategy or tactic the consultant believed would be effective. Post script. By writing this article, I have derived a research project from consulting after all; but otherwise, the contribution of consulting to good teaching probably would not be recognized nor rewarded. References Aldoory, Linda and Brenda Wrigley (2000). "Exploring the use of real clients in the PR Campaigns Course," Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 54 (4): 47-58. Boyer, Carol M. and Darrell R. Lewis (1984). "Faculty consulting: responsibility or promiscuity?" Journal of Higher Education. 55 (5): 637-659. Coulson, David C. (1990). "Effects of media consulting on faculty performance," Journalism Educator, 45 (3): 54-59. Guiniven, John E. (1998). "Public relations executives view the curriculum: a needs assessment," Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 52 (4): 48-56. Johnson, Arthur (1993). "The best teachers business can buy," Canadian Business, 6 (4): 34-39. Mitchell, John E. and Douglas S. Rebne (1995). "Nonlinear effects of teaching and consulting on academic research productivity," Socio-economic Planning Sciences, 29 (1): 47-57. Patton, Carl. V. (1980). "Consulting by faculty members," Academe, 66 (May): 184. Pease, Edward C. (1993). "Professional orientation equals second-class status in academe," Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 48 (3): 38-45. "Public relations education for the 21st century: A port of entry," (October 1999). The Report of the Commission on Public Relations Education. Rebne, Douglas S. (1989). "Faculty consulting and scientific knowledge: a traditional university-linkage," Educational Administration Quarterly, 25 (4): 338-357. Sallot, Lynn M. (1996). "Using a public relations course to build university relationships." Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 51 (1): 51-60. White, Candace (1999). "Last word: bridging the teacher-practitioner gulf," Public Relations Strategist, 5 (1): 40. Table 1. Questionnaire items, means and standard deviations, and conceptual factors. Mean Std. deviation How likely are you to work in the field of public relations? 5.357 1.549 The Little Mountain* examples that we talked about in class... ( Helped me understand the tactics we were learning about. 6.214 1.05 ( Were a waste of time. 1.643 1.15 ( Helped me understand how you decide which tactic to use. 5.427 .938 ( Helped me understand how a particular tactic would be used by an organization to carry out an objective. 6.143 .77 ( Helped me understand the media better. 5.357 1.008 ( Helped me understand which tactic to use to get the job done. 5.5 1.454 The professor's examples from her consulting... ( Helped me understand what public relations practitioners do. 6.287 .996 ( Made what we were learning in class seem more important. 5.929 .997 ( Helped me understand when and how a particular tactic could be used. 5.7.86 1.05 ( Took up too much time in class. 1.643 1.081 ( Made me think she was interested in what we were learning. 6.429 .938 ( Showed that she understands how public relations is practiced in the real world. 6.429 .938 ( Made me think she was trying to impress us. 1.714 1.39 How interested are you in learning more about how public relations is practiced? 6.0 1.519 *the client ( understanding and knowledge ( credibility of instructor ( relevance to course Table 2. Correlation between how likely the student is to work in pr and how relevant the consulting examples were. Table 3. Scatter plots of correlation between how interested student is in learning more about public relations and whether consulting examples increased understanding and knowledge.