How can teachers motivate students to study theoretical modules in public relations?

Public relations education has been connected in the literature to industry professionalism. However, many PR students see the field very practical-ly, and consider PR theoretical modules as “boring” and “not important”. Therefore, this research aims to investigate how to motivate students to make sense of what they are studying in the PR theoretical modules which the researcher/teacher was teaching through learning-by-doing ac-tivities. The research uses an action research process to improve the pro-cedures of learning-by-doing exercises. The researcher/teacher established interactive relationships with the students in the classroom, and observed the learning process in order to acquire in-depth understanding of the find-ings. The research findings have revealed a significant shift in student en-gagement and recommend practical actions to motivate students to study PR theoretical modules. The research also shows that there is a positive impact of learning-by-doing activities on increasing student ‘want’ and ‘need’, and suggests several factors that can make PR theoretical mod-ules more motivating.