Solution: New Direction

After meeting with two of my experts—Steve Jones and Josh Singer—I've come to the conclusion that my solution should focus on bringing to light compelling evidence—in the form of interviews, quotes, survey results, comparisons, and other data—that demonstrate a great need for professional practice education for students. This might possibly come in the form of a publication (print or PDF) or a website (maybe Flash?).

Previously, the concept I had for my solution would be to create a visual campaign, comprising of a poster and an information website/online petition, to raise the awareness of the need for professional practice education for students. Basically, the audience would see a powerful poster with a URL link to the website/petition. However, I've had to go away from this idea after talking to Josh.

Josh is actually the one in charge of developing the curriculum for Visual Communication Design, so he has some good insight. He told me: "Shame is not enough. What they want to see is that they want to see evidence. They want to understand why. They want to see what the benefits to students are. They want to see what the positive outcomes are. They want to see examples of other places where this is done, and done successfully. Shame is just a little bit of spice." Basically, "everybody supports this. Everybody likes the idea"—so my original campaign would only be preaching to the choir.

On the other hand, he told me to make the case. Surveys, interviews, successful examples of a class like this, feedback from alumni, etc. My direction should shift from negative to positive: "Say that we need this. Not that it sucks we don't have this—but we need this to succeed, right? We need to succeed and this is what we need".

Making the case with evidence is more important than something that says this sucks. "What's more important is a survey that says all of these things."

Well, I've been meaning to improve my publication design ability.