The Ukrainian Media and Communication Institute, with the support of DW Akademie, has prepared an analytical report entitled ‘Journalism Education in Wartime: Methods and Approaches,’ covering the period from 2020 to 2025.
The authors of the report aimed, in particular, to assess the impact of the six-year training program ‘Journalism Teachers’ Academy’ on changes in teaching methods in higher education institutions. It is a large-scale UMCI project for the professional development of teachers. Each semester, the staff of a particular journalism faculty or department completed four training modules covering teaching methods, approaches to knowledge assessment, the introduction of problem- and project-based learning, peer-based working techniques, and the use of online tools in teaching. 130 teachers from 23 higher education institutions (it is almost a third of all universities that offer bachelor’s degrees in journalism) got certificates of successful completion of the Academy.
To prepare the report, the team used qualitative and quantitative methods of information gathering, including:
- An online survey of Journalism Teachers’ Academy graduates. They answered questions about teaching experience, workload, changes in the content and formats of educational programs in 2020–2025, the impact of the war and the COVID-19 pandemic on the educational process, the use of new technologies (in particular AI), and the introduction of new disciplines, as well as the assessment of learning outcomes at the Journalism Teachers’ Academy.
- An online survey of Journalism Teachers’ Academy trainers. We asked them to assess the effectiveness of the program and its impact on the professional development of teachers. Respondents also identified key recent changes in the journalism education system and the factors that will determine its further development.
- Semi-structured interviews with faculty/department heads who had undergone training at the Journalism Teachers’ Academy. We aimed to explore the issues raised in the online survey in greater depth.
There are some key findings from the report:
- Over the past five years, the system of university-level journalism education has undergone significant changes under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. The most widespread new courses include War Journalism, Disinformation and Fact-Checking, Journalist Safety, Conflict-Sensitive Journalism, along with technology‐oriented subjects such as Artificial Intelligence in Media and Data Journalism. However, journalism education fails to keep pace with the changes in the media industry. The key barriers to swift transformation in the education system include bureaucratic constraints, insufficient funding for educational programs, and a lack of highly qualified practitioners among teaching staff. Bureaucracy is intensified by the fact that university autonomy is declarative rather than effective, as the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine continues to control many key decisions.
- Almost half of the teaching staff (43.6%) have a workload comprising five or more courses. They are also obliged to conduct research and to prepare regular reports for the university administration. Around one-third of the respondents rate their workload as excessive, with the extremely low remuneration further undermining their motivation.
- Almost half (47.5%) of the surveyed Academy’s graduates rated the program’s impact on their professional growth at 10 points (on a ten-point scale), and a further 30% assigned it a score of 9. Half of the graduates (50%) reported that they modified their teaching approaches after completing the program. 90% reviewed their syllabi to update teaching goals and expected results, course content, student-centred methods, and assessment practices.
“We are pleased to have been able to make our own contribution to the transformations the Ukrainian education system has undergone in recent years. This report highlights the key trends in journalism education and summarizes the outcomes of our training program. We have observed considerable change. There is no doubt that many issues remain, but a major step has been taken toward moving beyond the Soviet and post-Soviet paradigm in terms of both content and approaches. Much of this is due to the substantial efforts of a small but committed group of enthusiastic teachers across various Ukrainian universities. Yet they are slowly transforming the entire system. And they are creating a real opportunity for its future,” says Diana Dutsyk, Executive Director of the UMCI, in the foreword to the report.
You can download the analytical report here:
This analytical report was prepared within the framework of the Journalism Teachers’ Academy Project implemented by the Ukrainian Media and Communication Institute NGO in partnership with Deutsche Welle Akademie with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).