— 2018

A major prospective study of communication and media professionals

The renewal of a certification is usually an opportunity to review the teaching model for the programmes. To ensure that it fully corresponds to the future expectations of the market, the teaching teams for the Audencia SciencesCom programme (for those with an equivalent of five years of higher education as certified by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, MESRI) wanted to launch a prospective study two years before the renewal of their certification. The study would focus on communication and media professionals drawing on the expertise of the research division of the academic affairs department. “Before getting into the course subjects and the teaching model for the programme, we thought it would be interesting to conduct exploratory research on professions which are severely impacted by digitisation and quickly evolving in order to understand the changes occurring in communication and media professions and anticipate the skills we need to develop,” says Sylvie Chancelier.

What are the major changes you have seen over the last five years? What are the skill profiles you are currently looking for? What trends do you expect to see in five years? And how will they impact the skills our students need to learn?

No fewer than 18 individual interviews and three focus groups were conducted with industry professionals and experts including heads of communication agencies, communication directors, associations, the media as well as innovative and hybrid organisations such as the Cantine numérique (a coworking space) in Nantes or Numa in Paris. Today, the results of this study serve as a basis for the construction of the new teaching model that will be launched in June 2019, “so that students who graduate from the programme in the future will continue to be 100% prepared for the careers they want”, concludes Sylvie Chancelier.