Can you help? See Theories and Tools Table at the end.

Our assignment is to suggest to the IMC faculty that some functional areas of PR can be taught in modules and that some more advanced courses can include ideas like transparency or trust but also match to teaching tools or tactics at a very practical level. Lately, a debate has been "raging" that the IMC program is more marketing-based than communications-based due to the loss of knowledge and skills of the students in communications. We need your help to sort out this debate with new ideas for the education and training of our graduate and undergraduate students.

The list below is a very primitive view of the world that I have: "All business and organizational tactics or applied tools must emanate from a theory or concept or they would not exist, e.g. stakeholder maps as tools come from the literature of stakeholders, audiences, power, networks, influence, etc." The learning objective must be that the students know "why" they select a tool to use; not just "how" to use the tool. Some theories like "authenticity" or "trust" may or may not have a developed and tested tool that helps to operationalize the concept.

Here is where the fun begins. Can you suggest from your education (sociology, psychology, marketing, communications, law, management, motorcycle repair, economics, neuroscience) theories or concepts and their related tactics or tools like the table below? If you can't match a theory and tool, can you just list both and we can match them up later?

Modules and or courses in areas from the past. Some courses now offered, but still need help. Topics in BOLD
are currently in the curriculum. Others were offered when PR was a fully staffed program in Medill.

Current and Past Courses in PR or Corpcomm.
1. Media relations
2. Employee relations
3. Public Affairs, Issues Management
4. Crisis management
5. Speech writing
6. Media and business writing
7. Investor Relations and Legal Issues (Sarbannes-Oxley and regs)
8. Stakeholders and Social Media Communities
9. Media and marketing law
10. Marketing Public Relations (product service sales)
11. Organizational Change Management

Other courses in IMC as required for all student in bold and the others are optional or electives
1. Marketing
2. Marketing Finance
3. Statistics 1 and 2
4. Database Analysis and advanced Database Analysis
5.Creative Strategy (not art but process)
6. Advertising cases
7. On-line and Internet marketing
8. Capstone IMC course
9. International IMC
10. Branding
11. Loyalty marketing
12. Consumer Behavior and Insight


Resources at NU and from the Work of the Department
1. Lexis/Nexis, Factiva full services and free at library and on-line
2. Bacon's on-line
3. Biz360, VMS-Info data tracking of media and social media
4. statistics including descriptive and analytical SPSS, SAS
5. MRI data on-line with custom runs
7. Clients (Southwest Air, YUM!, Coke, Whirlpool, Banks, law firms, Miller Brewing, etc.)
8. Non-disclosure agreements to do confidential work
9. Summer residencies and other full scale group and team projects
10. International, primarily Asian, students
11. Students with agency and corporate experience
12. Unlimited Internet access
13. Training in blogs, Second Life, Data Depot and a wide range of newer media tools
14. Micro-soft suites, Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, e-mails,
15. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tokoni, Skype, Doostang, Plaxo, Myspace, Pownce, Twitter, Spock, etc.
16. Aggregators (moving target) Akregator · Blam! · BlogBridge · BottomFeeder · Canto · Cooliris · eSobi · FeedDemon · Feedreader · Feedview · FreeRange WebReader · Hubdog · Liferea · mDigger · Mercury Messenger · Mindity · NetNewsWire · NewsAccess · NewsBreak · Newsbeuter · NewsFire · NewsFox · RSS Bandit · RSSOwl · Sage · Snarfer · Thinfeeder · Vienna
17. Resources of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at NU (18. Silver Anvil entries each year in many categories in full binder form
19. Various trade pubs including PR Tactics, PRWeek, etc.
20. Basic knowledge of marketing finance and accounting.
21. Use of the full Avid television studio for media training and editing at Medill
22. Access to professional association meetings in Chicago (PRSA, IABC, WIC, BMA, AMA, etc.)
23. Access to research documents of A.W. Page, Edelman, others.
24. Teaching by adjunct part-time faculty and visiting lecturers and possibly full-time faculty

START of A LIST OF COMMUNICATIONS CONCEPTS and USEFUL TOOLS - PLEASE ADD TO THE LIST

Theory/Concept: Tool/Tactic/Application
Persuasion: web, media audits "on message"
Stakeholders: Stakeholder maps and dynamics
Social Networks: new(er) social media including Second Life
Crowds and mobs: Crowd sourcing, Wisdom of the crowds applications
Collaboration: new telecommunications, Skype
Elites: elite and influentials
Transparency, Trust: trust studies (Edelman Barometers),
Reputation: journalism, surveys, rankings
Authenticity: A.W. Page study
Power: forms of power
Business and Government: lobbying, association management
Journalism PR Values: ethics, codes, values
First Amendment: codes, public figures, PR Ads
Futurism: issues management, predictive models
Game Theory risk analysis
Digital: large samples media tracking systems
Best Practices: communications audits and Silver Anvil review
IR: reading annual reports, performance ratios
Neuroscience: brain scans for "hot spots"
MORE THEORIES: MORE TOOLS