How to build a discipline-specific AI concentration - A Case Study of JMSC’s AI & Innovation Concentration

Summary
This presentation will focus on how the Journalism and Media Studies Centre developed courses and a new concentration on AI, to equip our students with future-proof and discipline-specific AI literacy and skills.

Background/ Context
AI is not only changing the journalism and media industry, but also been integrated in the workflow, both in the backend and frontend. The JMSC has always been closely linked with the industry, therefore we believe that our curriculum should be revamped to be future-proof.
In Dec 2024, JMSC launched a new AI & Innovation Concentration (AIC), under the Master of Journalism Programme. It is based on the success of two new courses developed in 2023 and 2024 (Generative AI in Media Applications led by my colleague Uli Gaulke and Foon Lee, as well as AI & Media Innovation by myself).
The interest from the applicants and admitted students were overwhelming: for the 80 admitted students, around 60% indicated their interest for AIC. After some rigorous selection, we picked 30 students to be the inaugural cohort, and they started their journey in Sep 2025.
The details of the AIC can be found here: https://jmsc.hku.hk/mj-aic/

Curriculum Design
The curriculum design took into consideration of the existing in-house expertise, external experts in the region that could teach as adjunct, as well as the real needs from the industry.
In the presentation, I can cover the details of how we evaluate the necessary AI literacy for the curriculum, and how we integrate that into teaching and learning through unconventional ways. In particular, the presentation will highlight:

• The specific AI literacy skills that students will acquire (including but not limited to responsible use of AI in journalism, AI-assisted verification, newsroom automation, synthetic media and its limitations, etc)
• The pedagogical approaches – especially the heavily hands-on approach
• How different courses connect and reinforce certain principles such as human-in-the-loop and AI ethics
• The challenges in the process and how we overcome them

We believe the curriculum will offer our students both the basic skillsets and knowledge about AI, but also give them enough flexibility to pursue the direction they want within our discipline.

I believe our case would also be valuable to other departments who are considering similar approaches.