The Competence Evaluation of E-journalist – An Analysis of Problem-based Learning Course

Electronic journalism is prevailing in the era of internet. To enhance the ability of practical application of knowledge, the problem-based learning approach was applied to the undergraduate course of “News Interview and Editing”, one of the general education courses, for non journalism and communication students at Chaoyang University of Technology. This research aimed to conduct an empirical analysis to examine the learning performance of problem-based learning approach employed to the course as a form of learning factory. The results shows the three great improvements are concrete content including writing form of press release, collecting data before news interview, and evaluating data before news interview. The three least improvements are abstract content including interviewing and verifying content, writing skills in writing news release, and observing interviewees’ response. It is suggested that the evaluation of competence cultivation for a problem-based learning course should pay more attention to those non-concrete dimensions to balance the students’ learning performance.