The Department of Mass Communication of OUK was established on August 1, 1997. The educational purpose of the department is to foster professionals of mass communication. Both curriculum design and faculty equally emphasize theory and practice. Currently we have two full-time teachers, more than ten part-time teachers, and 120 students. In response to various societal transitions, such as domestic politics, economy, society, media ecology, communication technology, and so on, considering special property of our role as adult distance learning, the prospective development of our department will take communication technology as the core and theory as the foundation to promote profession and ethics education, and to foster professionals of broadcast, television, and Internet media with ideal, responsibility, potential, originality, and social responsibility.
Our department not only uses broadcast, television, Internet, and other media to carry out instruction, but also offers courses in the afternoon and evening due to flexible instruction sessions. On the existing basis, we will plan to establish a pre-Master credit course program and a graduate institute in the future, providing diverse on-the-job education and further education for personages of communication industries in Kaohsiung City, Kaohsiung County, andPingtung area.
The biggest difference between students of our department and those of traditional colleges and universities is the diversity of students, who participate in the learning by virtue of the passion for media and mission to the society, and make the quality of the whole learning environment higher.
The prospective curriculum planning will strengthen basic courses, including media cultivation, Internet communication, media criticism, and communication management, and focus on nonlinear montage, project and production of digital contents, integration of voice, video, compact disc production, animation, multi-media interaction, project and production of website, and practical courses of applied multi-media communication so as to enhance and upgrade students' specialities in applying communication technology. For curriculum planning and faculty expertise, we equally emphasize both theory and practice. To match up professional courses and instruction planning, we have installed two "Broadcast Recording Studios" with professional equipment, and one professional "Plane Film Studio," "Printing Center" for editing newspapers and magazines, digital "Non-linear Montage Workstation," and professionally digital "Computer Animation & Image Synthesis Classroom" and equipped our teach facilities with more than ten kinds of professional equipment and instruments, such as professional video camera and digital cameras for our students to practice producing professional film works. The Department of Mass Communication of The Open University of Kaohsiung is the only one department that takes adult learners as target students in Taiwan. Successive chairpersons of the department are Dr. Lin, Chien-Hsiung, Dr. Chuang, Ke-jen, and Dr. Kao I-Chan. The graduates of our department amount to 151 by 2005.