Determining what learner objectives broadcast professionals feel are important in teaching broadcasting in a career college accredited by the National Association of Technical and Trade Schools (NATTS)

Career schools have played an important role in education. Many of the subject areas now being taught in public colleges and universities originated in career schools. Although a great deal of research has been done on federal funding of these schools, very little has been done on their curriculum development. This research project took the broadcast curriculum offered by Princeton Technical Institute and created a Likert-scale survey using 167 learner objectives. These learner objectives were grouped in eleven subject areas. A modified random sample of thirty broadcast professionals were contacted by phone and sent the survey. Twenty-six of the participants responded. Mean scores were calculated for each of the learner objectives using Lotus software. Mean scores were also calculated for each subject area and the subjects were ranked. For each objective an overall mean, AM mean, FM mean, and TV mean were reported. Using the overall mean score, a rank order was established for the learner objectives. The researcher used the top quartile and bottom quartile of the rank order to determine what objectives the professionals felt were most and least important. The findings of the project were the following: 1. the top four ranked learner objectives were from the Broadcast Selling area; 2. all the Broadcast Selling subject area objectives were included in the top quartile; 3. Electronic Field Production and News Gathering, Broadcast Journalism and Copy Writing, and Television Studio Production subject areas all had seven objectives in the top quartile; 4. Radio Production and Programming ranked the lowest of the subject areas primarily due to the low importance the professionals placed on programming; 5. Video Photography had four of the ten lowest ranked learner objectives. Conclusions reached from the findings include the importance of Broadcast Selling objectives to the curriculum offered by Princeton Technical Institute, the need to re-evaluate the radio programming objectives role in the curriculum, and the need for a formative approach to curriculum evaluation in career schools.