Branding a University Media Department/Making room for new media in the curriculum

There's no room for new media within a media department's well established curriculum. Course work has been refined for decades until every professor in convinced that only the essentials remain. Mobile media, social media, streaming media and a dozen other pervasive influences have never existed before in the form that we see them now. Yet these issues represent primary trends (if not THE trends) in modern media. Professors do their best to assimilate, but new tools and processes don’t fit into an established curriculum. And when new technologies require a significant learning curve, teachers have every incentive to minimize their importance. It's not possible to add something new to an already over-stretched curriculum unless something is deleted. It's necessary to teach more in less time in order to make room for the "new" but there's already too much momentum in the wrong direction. Teachers must define their core content and almost NOTHING is "core" to a curriculum - there's very little that should be considered "sacred." Faculty must "clean house" and define the fundamentals that should remain in their curriculum. What classes are outdated? It's necessary to delete duplications in course content, but professors don't know what everyone else is teaching. Perhaps a media department should record EVERYTHING that is repeated more than once, provide students a video link and quiz them the content for verification. (DE) There are technical barriers to effortless recording/publishing, so perhaps the only alternative is to stop teaching certain things.

The university has a responsibility to not only teach tools but theory and ethics. We must require students to apply these in projects which require industry best practices, critical thinking, and multivariate problem solving. Christian universities should extend this teaching to filter Christian worldview. Technology should be used as an app for this knowledge, not as a framework for course design.