Constructive alignment and multimodal approaches – Innovative media pedagogies in public relations

This paper aims to investigate and understand the contribution of innovative pedagogies in media education through empirical findings from the classroom that emerges out of a reflective practice. Media education in the twenty-first century is about innovation, creative engagement and social thinking. One can interpret media education from two perspectives- one, where media is used in teaching, two, media used for learning. This paper argues that when constructively aligned outcome based teaching and learning is combined with the multimodal approaches in media education, it enhances assignment output of the students and has the potential to transcend geographical boundaries. For students of 21st century, technology has proved to be their natural learning habitat. As teachers we need to be supportive and adaptive of these changes by engaging innovatively with the technologies. Even in the 21st century we find a cultural divide among the teaching populace in embracing multimodality. Hence, it is essential to be mindful of the 'digital native' and 'digital immigrant debate'. The research has a constructivist grounding and takes a phenomenological approach. The paper uses data from undergraduate classroom and critically analyses the engagement of the cohort. This paper focuses on the Public Relations modules at undergraduate level for year 2 and 3.