Within the International Scientific and Educational Forum entitled «Communication Leader of the 21st Century, ISSH students majoring in Advertising and Public Relations and in Journalism held an information-and-intellectual battle called “A Hero’s Profile”. The creative educational project elaborated jointly by academics and students provided for such contest stages as pedagogic inventiveness, situational modeling, and a creative experiment. As a result of these contest stages, students were expected to demonstrate their skills and developed professional reflection as well as the ability for modernization of their work and constant renewal of their knowledge, whereas academics were supposed to fulfill themselves not only as an academic supervisor of the creative process but also as its direct participant, who stimulates and directs interests of students and their creative pursuits, and encourages them with one’s own example.
“We chose several study groups for working over the project,” says Associate Professor at the Department of Mass Communication, Candidate of Sciences (Pedagogy), Irina Lychagina. “Each group formed its own hero’s profile. The goal of this event was studying the experience of the outstanding specialist in media, whose professional activity made a significant contribution to the theory and practice of public relations and advertisement. The source of inspiration for participants of the game was the path to success of the Doctor of Sciences (Politics), Director General of International Press Club Chumikov PR and Consulting Communication Agency LLC, senior research fellow of the Federal Research Centre of the RAS, Professor at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, academician of the Russian Academy of Public Relations, Aleksandr Chumikov. As a result, we obtained several competing projects which were similar by their conceptual objectives but different by the means of their solutions and by their final implementation.”
Three student teams took part in the battle. Second-year students prepared and presented a long read entitled “How to become a suPRhero?”, which contained colourful comic drawings, quotes from Aleksandr Chumikov’s books, and photos from his personal collection. The group of third-year students called their project “The Big Growth Theory” and presented it in the form of a photofilm that depicted the main stages of professional and personal fulfillment of A. Chumikov. First-year students presented their own version of a popular TV show called “Secret for a Million”.
“For me, it was a priceless experience,” said student of SG-104, Evgeniy Anisimov. “Making presentation in front of a big audience was unusual, exciting and interesting. I liked it very much, and I’m going to take part in such projects in the future.”
“We were all working on the project together, in a friendly environment,” added student of SG-111, Anastasia Volokhnina. “The whole team was searching for information in the Internet and we used books written by A.Chumikov. We allocated responsibilities between team members; everyone took preparation very seriously and used creative approach to it.”
The hero of the battle, Aleksandr Chumikov, evaluated and commented on every project. When drawing the results, he said: “You made an excellent professional competition, but, of course, students still have a lot to learn. For example, they need to understand that information in the format of a legend possesses a significant communicative potential and effect. Overall, I suppose, students acquired a lot of useful skills in the game process: they learned to cooperate with their team co-members, quickly adapt to changing conditions, work with information by themselves, and solve technological objectives at a high level. I hope that such intellectual games will strengthen the desire among students majoring in Advertising and PR and in Journalism to get better in their profession.”
