Continuous learning and upskilling is crucial not only for media professionals to excel in their careers, but also for the industry to progress as a whole.
Luckily South Africa’s media education institutions have a variety of short courses, which they are constantly evolving to keep up with the rapid pace of change in South Africa’s media industry.
Heléne Lindsay, head of customer at Red & Yellow Creative School of Business
Q: What types of short courses does your institution offer?
We offer a variety of online courses that span essential business skills to marketing to the digital consumer. Our highly-respected reputation stems from a 25-year proven track record in delivering education focused on equipping students with not only the knowledge, but also the know-how, to be able to add immediate value. Our courses are tough, and intentionally so. We want a Red & Yellow certificate to be a ‘badge of honour’ – proof that our students have truly gained new skills, and done the hard work to get there. We collaborate with industry continuously to ensure our courses are relevant, and in tune with market needs and technology changes.
Q: How do the skills taught at your institution match up to the demands from media owners, media agencies and marketers in the working world?
We constantly consult with industry to ascertain the skills gaps and training needs. We have a corporate division that meets regularly with media owners, agencies and marketers – and this information gets fed back to the online team to shape course development and updates. Furthermore, our future-focused commitment to preparing humans for the jobs that robots can’t do, means that every course or programme we offer includes uniquely human skills that will be essential in the 21st century.
Q: What is currently your most popular short course and why?
Our flagship digital marketing course. Developed by a leading digital marketing agency to address the skills gaps they experienced when hiring new recruits, and now constantly enhanced and updated by Red & Yellow’s skilled instructional design team.
Q: What skills do you believe will be in demand in future in the media industry?
The obvious skills are content creation and copywriting, the ability to tailor messaging to audiences appropriate to the distribution channel, understanding how to analyse data in order to see the bigger picture, and a fervent desire to tailor the product or service to changing consumers’ needs. The less obvious skills are actually more important. Humans need to develop the attributes that make them more human; it’s the only way they can ensure future career survival, let alone success. We’ve identified 10 uniquely human skills that we believe will give humans the upper hand over machines, among them are creative thinking, communication and empathy. We weave them into every course to ensure our students are equipped for the future.
Q: What is your institution’s educational mandate and how do you go about meeting it? What market research is done to inform the choices?
We do loads of research – not just desk-based, but actually talking every day to industry to ascertain their current needs. We also use our on-campus learnings and exposure to the next generation consumer to inform our online course offering. Our purpose has always been to prepare humans, properly and truly, for the working world going forward. And this has been confirmed by many HR people, who attest to filtering job applications by looking at Red & Yellow alumni first – because they know they will not only have the theoretical knowledge, but also the practical skills and emotional adeptness to add real value.
IMM Graduate School
Q: What types of short courses does your institution offer?
Our short courses specialise in marketing and advertising, business management and supply chain management. We will also be on-boarding 10 short courses in quality management.
Q: How do the skills taught at your institution match up to the demands from media owners, media agencies and marketers in the working world?
Our course content is developed by subject matter experts who are currently working within the respective environments. In other words, our content is industry relevant and developed by individuals that work in the industry and have extensive experience in the field of study.
Q: What is currently your most popular short course and why?
We have a number of top performing short courses. These include project management (this subject is not job specific or industry specific and is a very good introduction into project management – we are also working on a number of new short courses in the project management space), then all our social media and digital marketing courses – there truly is something for everyone and these courses are very practical of nature
Q: What is your institution’s educational mandate and how do you go about meeting it? What market research is done to inform the choices?
We liaise with corporates and in so doing get an understanding of what the key learning requirements are, we also regularly investigate what’s available on the market. And our current students give us valuable information as well.
Lisa Schneider, managing director of the Digital School of Marketing (DSM)
Q: What types of short courses does your institution offer?
We offer short online courses in the following aspects of digital marketing: social media, paid advertising, SEO, digital copywriting, content marketing. We deal with all of these aspects in our digital marketing short course.
Q: How do the skills taught at your institution match up to the demands from media owners, media agencies and marketers in the working world?
The world has gone digital. The marketplace has moved online. This means that to effectively communicate with and reach people, your company needs to be marketing online. A survey conducted by McKinley Marketing Partners states that the following skills are most in demand among media owners, media agencies and marketers:
– Digital advertising,
– Content creation,
– Content curation, and
– Digital marketing strategy
Our unique blend of courses responds well to this need as we offer a comprehensive digital copywriting and content marketing course that look at how to use content on digital channels as a cornerstone of a digital footprint. Our paid advertising and web analytics course looks in-depth at how to use pay-per-click advertising – both on Google and social media – to your business’ benefit.
Q: What is currently your most popular short course and why?
Currently, it’s the digital marketing course. A great deal of online purchases start with a consumer seeing an advert about the product on digital platforms. Marketers want to take advantage of this trend for their own companies and to learn how to stimulate engagement with their brands.
Q: What skills do you believe will be in demand in future in the media industry?
Definitely content creation – be it in the form of blogs, infographics or video. People want to know other’s stories and this is the best way to convey this message. This is a trend currently and won’t die anytime soon in the future.
Q: What is your institution’s educational mandate and how do you go about meeting it? What market research is done to inform the choices?
Our educational mandate is to provide accredited digital marketing education. We offer only online courses as we realise that a sector of our target market consists of marketers and small business owners – who already have full-time jobs – but want to upskill. This means that they want to learn on their own time. This is why we have designed a bespoke learner management system that caters to this need.
Carike Verbooy, academic head and branch manager at Boston Media House
Q: What types of short courses does your institution offer?
Radio production and presenting, television production, Soul Candi: digital music composition and production, DJ101, and The Music Business
Q: How do the skills taught at your institution match up to the demands from media owners, media agencies and marketers in the working world?
Boston Media House short courses were designed based on the needs of our industry stakeholders. We had several queries from the industry, especially community radio stations, where the staff lacked the skillset to operate in their media environment.
Q: What is currently your most popular short course and why?
Our Radio Production and Presenting short course, as there are quite a number of people who are interested in working in broadcasting. Either in the community media field and/or the digital space.
Q: What skills do you believe will be in demand in future in the media industry?
The shelf life of hard skills in media will become shorter as technology advances more rapidly, and inputs become more automated. Soft skills, or power skills, including collaboration; communication; critical thinking; and the ability to make quick decisions from a set of information will remain essential for all employees and will also be increasingly sought out by hiring managers.
Q: What is your institution’s educational mandate and how do you go about meeting it? What market research is done to inform the choices?
Boston Media House strives to enhance, uplift and continuously improve the quality of media education – this is achieved through continual discussion with our stakeholders through guest lecturers, external moderation and industry partnerships.
