For my Honors College thesis project, I created a comprehensive set of Associated Press (AP) Style resources, which will be used locally to support Oakland University journalism students. The resources are coupled with my written thesis, where I explained the process and analyzed the resources’ effectiveness.
Why create these resources?
I have always had an affinity for helping others. Seeing students struggle with understanding AP Style and feeling left behind by their classmates made me realize that there is a large gap in understanding among students, and I wanted to address it. The Oakland University journalism program is smaller than other, larger universities and, as such, lacks certain resources. Thus, I felt that putting together writing help as a student would support the department and well-address student needs, as the resources come from someone who experienced the issues firsthand. These resources can also be valuable to newspapers, such as Oakland University’s student newspaper, The Oakland Post, where staff writers frequently struggle with foundational AP Style skills. I was uniquely situated to compile these resources due to my capacity as a student, as well as my employment as content editor for The Oakland Post and a writing consultant/mentor at the Oakland University Writing Center. At The Oakland Post, I helped our staff writers develop their writing skills, and lack of knowledge in AP Style specifics, such as writing transitions, punctuation, quoting, and adhering to the style guide, are the staff’s main struggles. At the OUWC, I was the only writing consultant who is a journalism major for the three years I tutored students. The lack of access to journalism writing resources truly made it difficult for writers to get the help they needed. The aims of this project were to create and implement the resources, along with establishing a connection between the department and the OUWC. Creating the resources allows me to leave a lasting impact on the journalism community.
Abstract
This Honors College creative project explores the knowledge gap between journalism students who entered the major with prior knowledge of journalistic writing and Associated Press (AP) Style and students with no prior knowledge. The project aims to find out what new-to-journalism students are struggling with by speaking to Oakland University professors and then creating worksheets, style guides, and more to supplement journalism coursework. This thesis focuses on the creation of a set of resources for journalism students that can be accessible to anyone online and through the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations, and the Oakland University Writing Center (OUWC). Interactive resources do not currently exist, and no one has extensively explored which writing components struggling journalism students may be missing. “Interactive” means that students will receive worksheet-styled guides for journalistic writing, digest them, react to them, and then interact with them, a process that engages students more by going one step further than a “stand and present” teaching model (DePietro 27). The expected benefit is that new-to-journalism students will be better equipped to write in the field, and the resources could serve as a reference that journalists can interact with worldwide.
Thesis-Poster-Katie-Valley