Activity design for cultivating students' online inquiring minds and journalistic skills

The purpose of this study was to examine how students improved their inquiring minds and journalistic skills through designed activities in a journalism course based on a case study. This research was conducted in a Japanese university course, called 'internet journalism in practice'. The authors conducted mixed method including participant observation and questionnaire investigation to collect and analyse data. The authors identified that the following five design elements were important in activities to cultivate students' inquiring minds and journalistic skills. These elements were: 1) role-playing as journalists in a team; 2) visualisation of scaffolding of the four-pattern framework; 3) situational support of writing techniques and critical thinking; 4) game elements that made students experience fun and the unexpected; 5) encouraging students' active participation to critique assignments online after they reached a higher level of journalistic and critical thinking skills.