I just signed up for an online course in PR through Humber College, here in Toronto, Ontario. I thought it would be a good idea to spruce up my “official” PR knowledge and bolster the things I’ve learned over the past five years. (And better understand — or even produce — charts like this one.)  I’ve never done an online course before, and the price was right ($229), so I thought it would be interesting. It is, but there are lots of things about it that were a bit unexpected. For one, the infrastructure that supports it is kind of weird, in a late-90s Internet experience kind of way: chat rooms, bulletin boards, all the stuff  I used to use when I first got into Internet communities. Second, it feels weird to simulate the class experience online, when there really is no class. I guess that, as a freelancer, I’m so used to working at home, alone, and setting my own deadlines that the idea of trying to create a community around the experience is a bit strange. Thirdly, the lack of direct instruction — when they’re trying so hard to create a class feel — seems a bit off. But I hope that when I come out of it, I’ll have a good understanding of how to structure a PR campaign and, more importantly, will have a stable of cool business-style catch phrases to throw at people in meetings and interviews: “I think that idea fits really well into the encoder-receiver matrix” or something like that, haha.

Photo: Ogilvyprworldwide’s photostream, Flickr Creative Commons