This chapter offers an enlivened mass communication education approach adaptive to traditionally taught, face-to-face, and hybrid delivery systems. Aimed at preparing students for active participatory and responsible global citizenship, this tripartite approach bridges mass communication and social entrepreneurship mediated through service-learning. The proposed teaching application encourages students to challenge status quo arrangements, provoke disruption, and promote societal change using disproportionality in school discipline, K-12, and challenges related to executive-level search committees and the failure to diversify college administrations as illustrations.
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The amalgamation of mass communication education using a social entrepreneurship framework has the potential to inspire communication students and majors. Allen (2010) writes, “…social entrepreneurs has as their central goal, societal impact, with capital wealth creation a secondary consideration.” In short, social entrepreneurs search for new pursuits that have the potential to make a societal impact (Dees, 1998; Thompson, 2002; Seelos, 2005). Social entrepreneurs are motivated by building enterprises for the greater social good. Social entrepreneurs begin with a clearly articulated business plan that outlines mission, short- and long-term goals, scale, metrics for gauging social impact, and sustainability planning. A nexus between mass communication education and social entrepreneurship has the capability to train the next generation of mass communication students to become agents of social change with the tools to challenge status quo arrangements. This constitutes a major paradigm shift in mass communication education and educators can equip their students with new skills using service-learning pedagogy.
Service-learning is an ideal pedagogical approach for mass communication embedding a social entrepreneurship framework. Jacoby (1996) defines service-learning as “a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development. Reflection and reciprocity are key concepts of service-learning.” Jacoby also underscores the critical importance of the hyphen in service-learning. It “symbolizes the symbiotic relationship between service and learning.” Service-learning encourages students to take theory and subject matter learned in the classroom and apply it to “real world” situations. Students provide an authentic service to assist community’s with their unmet needs. Community needs run the gambit from providing enrichment and after school programs for youth to wellness and exercise programs for the elderly, and from local shelters for the homeless and community gardening, to assisting with voter registration drives. Reflective thinking is part of the pedagogy and students discuss, present, and discuss their service explorations with other students. Students can draw linkages between course content, theory, and service. Students learn to formulate important questions from their observations, and to develop solution-driven strategies. In short, students enhance their critical thinking and problem-solving skills while expanding their depth of understanding.