May 13, 2008

Week 15: Key Learnings

I can't believe the semester is nearly over! I have definitely learned a lot in this course throughout this semester, and unlike many other courses I believe that this information will actually stick with me in the future!
I appreciate all of the hands-on activities as those really helped me to understand the concepts we talked about in class. I feel that I have learned useful public health communication skills plus tools that will make me a more critical and aware consumer. I do find myself paying attention to and analyzing the numerous messages I am exposed to in the world. Our group project has been lots of work but very interesting and a great experience -- I enjoyed the fact that we got to put our newly learned skills to use to produce something tangible, and hopefully useful for our 'client.' I anticipate using many of the skills we learned in class in my public health future, especially formative research and audience segmentation, since there is always an audience to reach and formative research can help inform nearly any project/campaign/intervention. Thanks for such a useful class!

May 2, 2008

Week 14: Now What?...

In this week's class it was interesting to talk about the our futures after grad school, and is nice to hear that we will be marketable and have the potential to find public health related jobs in many fields.
This course has definitely taught me numerous skills about conducting formative research, creating health communication campaigns, and about health communication in general. Hopefully all the skills and information I've learned will be put to good use when I land that fabulous job after graduation! Although we did get to touch on it during the last class, I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to spend more time discussing program/campaign evaluation. In my current student position at the Institute for Public Health that is what I get to do all the time and I have come to realize how important evaluation is to programs. Evaluation is vital for convincing funders that your program is wonderful and effective and should continue to be funded, thus helping the public plus ensuring us jobs for at least that much longer :)