THE SCHOOL of Communications, Wisconsin International University College, is expected to host its maiden public lecture today on the challenges facing communication education and training in Ghana.
The event, according to a statement issued by Victoria Chimbwanda, Communications/Public Relations Officer of Wisconsin International University College, is billed to take place at the university’s main campus located at North Legon, Accra.
According to the statement, the guest speaker for the lecture is Dr Kwame Boafo, a renowned African Communications scholar and an international communications and information consultant.
Giving some background on the lecture theme in a statement, host Prof. Kwame Karikari, now Dean of Wisconsin’s School of Communication Studies, was quoted to have said, “Globally and in Africa two major developments have impacted radically on all facets of communications in the last three to four decades. The two developments are technological and political.”
He accordingly added that “The effect of the rapid growth in the mass communication industry is the emergence and proliferation of schools and institutions of communications, media or journalism education and training, especially at the tertiary level, in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa.
“These developments obviously raise enormous and critical challenges for communications education and training for the institutions and their educators and trainers. They impose on educators and trainers an imperative need to initiate critical reflection on the question and to search for new – as well as review existing – principles, ideas, methods and programmes to meet the challenges of education and training in communications necessarily brought about by these new technological, political and social developments that have so impacted on communications.”
The lecture is proposed as a colloquium that is expected to set off a series of discussions that might provide some directions for addressing the issue in Ghana, says the statement.
BY Melvin Tarlue