I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill's J-School in Multimedia, and looking back, the real skills I find myself remembering as most helpful were not the details of software that have since changed, but the fundamental concepts and principles behind story telling and covering events from all points of view.

If you are familiar with programming, it's about learning what a loop or array is versus the syntax of how to code them in a particular language.

Now, I know you will have to overcome the hurdle of teaching software in order for students to complete projects, but with the fundamentals firmly grasped, they should easily sit down at any audio/video editing suite, photo management/manipulation suite, or design/layout suite, and within a short amount of time find the buttons or actions needed to accomplish the task.

The reality of what happens after graduation is that companies like Adobe buy the Macromedia's of the world, change and move a lot of the menus, and leave graduates with a dilemma. Do they know what a good photo looks like, why it works with the copy and story, and that it needs color correction? Or are they stuck trying to remember step one of clicking this menu then that menu two versions back on a software program that is no longer the industry standard? Let's hope it's the former.