Public Relations Plans and Proposals

Course Resource
Writing Winning Proposals is written to be a resource in teaching Public Relations Campaigns, Public Relations Writing and Public Relations Plans & Problems courses.

How the book works for campaigns courses
Are you currently teaching a campaigns course? Are real clients from the community standing in line to recruit students for a term? Are students fully engaged in productive activities throughout the term with their clients and in the classroom? Are students and clients equally benefiting from the experience? Following the course are students impressing potential clients with the skills and knowledge they acquired from what is commonly considered a capstone course? Let’s be honest. Most everyone is challenged with the campaigns course to make it worthwhile. Consider conducting campaigns on two parallel tracks. The outside track is working for a real client. The inside, classroom track is teaching students how to write winning public relations plans. Students pursue their client work outside of class, tackle a diverse series of challenging cases and writing assignments in class and complete the term with a public relations plan that pleases the client and grabs the attention of potential employers.
How the book works for writing courses

How intense is your public relations writing course? Are your writing assignments producing basic documents, such as news releases, backgrounders and media alerts? Would you like students to experience writing in a broader context to solve problems, meet challenges and seize opportunities. Writing Winning Proposals has 70 challenging writing assignments directly related to 10 diverse, real world cases. Would your students find it engaging to learn about an assignment by acting out a case with a screenplay script and taking on a range of writing tasks designed to address the case situation? You might be concerned about managing the depth of 70 assignments, not to mention grading them. Not a problem. Included in the Instructor's Manual are lesson points for each of 70 writing assignments and a system that expedites grading.

How the book works for problems and plans courses

I would like to share with you what I learned in using a draft manuscript of the book more than eight times in teaching Public Relations Plans & Problems. My class size is about 16 students. I organize the class in three teams. Each week I introduce one of the cases in the text and the teams have one week to write a plan. In addition, each team member must do a different one of the case’s seven writing assignments. I allow one week for me to critique the team plans and individual writing assignments and another week for students to revise their work. There is one grade for the plan; each team member receives the team grade. When a final plan is submitted, students also must submit an evaluation of each team member’s work. It is not a graded evaluation; it’s a quick check for me to detect early any individual who might require encouragement and coaching. Included in the Instructor's Manual is the team member evaluation sheet.