Eleven female broadcast journalists from South Asia came to OU to take part in a 10-day visual storytelling workshop designed to improve their broadcasting skills.

The “Visual Storytelling Workshop” is a program funded by the U.S. State Department and started by Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication Dean Joe Foote, and included women from the Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

“The goal is to teach experienced journalists more advanced skills in broadcast production and how media and the newsrooms work here in the U.S,” said Celia Perkins, public relations specialist for the Gaylord College. “The plan is for them to take these skills back to their countries and advance the media in those countries.”

Perkins said the workshop was important because it helped encourage further freedom in the newsrooms of developing countries.

The workshop partnered with the electronic news gathering class taught by broadcast professor Ken Fischer. According to Perkins, the class would have been cancelled without the participation of the South Asian journalists.

Fischer said the program was intended to expose the journalists to American broadcasting and culture. Most of the participants are already highly experienced broadcast journalists who work for major news outlets in their home countries, he said.

“It’s great to see students interact with the journalists,” Fischer said. “It’s been pretty good, but the process is ongoing. We’ve had students get interested in international studies because of this class. We got a lot of people involved, but it’s a collaborative learning experience for everyone.”

Fischer said the class went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial Friday morning, KFOR-TV-DT in the afternoon and horseback riding Saturday.

He hopes the women take back the skills they learned in the workshop and become leaders in the newsrooms in their respective countries, he said.

“I hope that they’ll leave feeling that they got a little more of an understanding of what Americans are about, even through it’s one week in Oklahoma,” Fischer said. “I hope that they learned more about Americans and see what we’re about.”

Scott Hodgson, media arts associate professor, was partnering in teaching the South Asian journalists, along with five other faculty members. He said the nine OU students taking part in the electronic news gathering class also worked and learned with the visiting journalists.

Hodgson said the idea of the class was to train the journalists so they could train others in their home countries.

“Our hope is they’ll be trainers,” Hodgson said. “We train the journalists, and our hope is that they go back and do some additional training where they work to pass on the thing we’ve been able to share with them.”

Hodgson said that the eleven women were split into three teams, each one representing a different country. They each competed to come up with the best news package, and that two of the teams focused on wind energy.

The news packages shot during the workshop will be aired on the journalists respective news stations when they return home.

Meherun Nahar Runi, who broadcasts out of Dhaka, Bangladesh, said the workshop was interesting and helpful.

“I feel that every part of this workshop is so interesting,” Runi said.

Runi said she has 10-12 years experience in reporting, but that she still learned a lot through the class. She said she came to OU for one week of a workshop because she hopes to become a leading broadcaster in her home country of Bangladesh.

“I want to improve my professional skills,” Runi said. “I hope that after a few years I will be in a standard position in my country.”

Runi said she was impressed by the knowledge of the program instructors, and found their advice and training useful.

“I want to thank our teachers,” Runi said. “They are very, very good. They gave us our knowledge and solved all the problems we’ve had.”

The 10-day workshop began July 11 and concludes Tuesday.