Mallam Muhammad S. Rabiu is a lecturer of mass communication at Nasarawa State University. In this interview with BARAKAH ISMAIL, he spoke on differences between classroom and field communication.
What are your experiences as a lecturer in this university?
I do not have many words to express it. It has been interesting and enriching.
How can you rate the attitude of students towards learning?
As they say, boys will always be boys and girls will always be girls, so you find some that are unserious. They give more attention to social activities than their academics and those are the majority. Then you will find a few that are hard working and are serious with their studies.
Have the school provided enough teaching facilities like lecture halls, equipment and laboratories?
Well, you can never have enough because the students’ population keeps rising an then the funding from the state government does not match the annual increase in number of students and lecturers.
So there are challenges, but the university management is trying its best and the state government too is trying its best.
We have challenges, but we are coping and we hope things will get better.
Is there a difference between mass communication in class and in the field?
Of course, there must be differences between mass communication in the classroom and in the field because the field is the largest laboratory for a student to learn. As they say, knowledge cannot be earned within the four walls of a classroom. So even after your degree, you will still learn more when you go out to practice.
You will learn much more than you learn in class because the classroom lecture are for some hours and then across four years. Within that period, you cannot be thought everything direct to mass communication, there are some things you have to learn in the field and in your real life encounter of course, there is a great difference between classroom mass communication and mass communication in field.
Mass communication in class is just a fraction of the knowledge you could have. Therefore, when you graduate and go into practice, whether its news writing, editing, or broadcasting, you begin to learn more in the field. It’s bigger and much more enriching.
You can see so many people that didn’t even study mass communication but they are practicing journalism and they are doing so well on television or radio.
Even without going to the class, you can still learn in the field how things are done and you can cope well.
Your advice for students
My advice is they should work hard wherever they find themselves. That is the best thing they can do and leave the rest to God.
