Project Description

The main goal of this project is to develop two courses for the journalism program at the American University in Kyrgyzstan, better known as Kyrgyz-American School. AUK is a new higher educational institution that is aiming at providing the best quality education in Kyrgyzstan through improvement of its current programs.

The two courses that are being developed under the OSI fellowship are:

1. Mass Media and Society - an introductory course required for all journalism majors that would provide them with the basic knowledge and understanding of how the media work in a modern society.

2. Theories of Mass Communication - a required course for third-year students in which the current theories of mass communications are discussed, with an emphasis on social-scientific and normative theories according to McQuail's classification.

One of the main tasks for development of both courses is to adjust existing materials for Kyrgyzstan and to collect cases, examples and discussion topics from the country's experience. Another major task is translation of materials into Russian: based on the previous experiences, it was decided that Theories of Mass Communication should be tought in Russian for the students to understand better the new concepts and to be able to discuss them more effectively in their first language. This course also involves development of a handbook, or Instructor's Manual, to provide and outline and case studies for those who are interested in developing or teaching a similar course at their own institutions.

Another major component of the fellowship is to create a mass communication library that would include textbooks and works of recognized authors on general mass communications issues, as well as in more specific areas such as journalism (both print and electronic), advertising and public relations.