Spent today up in London at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations HQ meeting with fellow students on the institute’s online diploma course.

This was the first time course participants and lecturers have actually met face to face. We’ve been studying since early June and using forums, webinars, podcasts and wikis to share learning and experience.

It’s always slightly disconcerting meeting people  face to face who you’ve previously had dealings with online. You feel like you know a bit about them but at the same time seem unfamiliar when you eventually meet them.

My fellow students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and indeed countries, with students coming from as far afield as Romania, Bahrain, Russia and the Cayman Islands.

We had some good discussions about the theories that we’ve been studying in the early days of the course. It was also good to learn that I wasn’t the only one who’s finding switching between reading work copy (plain English, most of the time) and dense academic copy a real challenge.

While I find the theories and models we’re looking at now interesting, I’m particularly looking forward to applying them and looking at more practical aspects of the subject once September’s critical reasoning test is out the way.