Practicum Study

Overview

The Journalism and Communication programme offers four practicums to students, namely, U-Beat, Varsity, Pinpoint and Creative Media Laboratory. Students can choose to participate in the writing, editing and production of one of the School’s two journalistic practicum magazines: U-Beat, which is published in Chinese, or Varsity, published in English. Pinpoint is a springboard for students to acquire hands-on experience in advertising and public relations by developing strategic social and commercial campaigns for project partners. Those who join the Creative Media Laboratory will gain professional knowledge and skills in audio-visual production and creative media curation.

Each practicum consists of four courses. Students will need to take one course per term from their second year of study to complete a total of 12 units.

Student Sharing on the School's Practicum

Principles for Practicum Assignment

Each major student will be assigned to one practicum. All year-one major students need to indicate their practicum preferences and take the practicum aptitude test administered by the School by the end of their first year of study.

The School assigns students to the practicums based on three principles: 1) every practicum must have a minimum number of students for its basic operation and the maximum capacity that the class can manage, 2) the School tries to follow students' preferences as long as the situation allows, and 3) when we have to allocate some students to their second or third or even fourth choices, we take into account various considerations such as the students' performance on the aptitude test.

Every year, one or two practicums may be "oversubscribed," while one or two may not have the required number of students to take them as first choice. In this scenario, the School may need to relocate a few students from the "oversubscribed" ones to the "undersubscribed" ones.

84% and 85% of students got their first choice of practicum in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

Medium of Instruction

U-beat is the School’s Chinese journalistic publication and Varsity is the English one. The medium of instruction for these two practicums is Cantonese and English respectively.

For Pinpoint and Creative Media Laboratory, the medium of classroom instruction is mainly Cantonese, but students can use English/Mandarin in class discussions. There will also be flexibility in the choice of language for course assignments. The School will provide subsidies or necessary support for non-Chinese/non-Cantonese speaking students to attend Cantonese workshops/courses in their first year of study to facilitate their possible enrollment in Pinpoint or Creative Media Laboratory.