Well, maybe not a million but a lot.
Let’s play a game: Imagine that a big corporation wants to give your school, program, or department a lot of money over three years for an innovative initiative aimed at improving your undergraduates’ ability to communicate orally and/or in writing. How would you spend it?
Now for the rules: 1) The initiative you propose can be hinged on a single big program or a bunch of little ones and can involve curricular support and development as well as co-curricular programs; 2) The outcomes have to be measurable. Assessment of program outcomes, however, may be built into your proposal so that some of the money would go towards assessing how well it’s working. That brings us to . . . 3) Be sure to mention how you plan to assess your program; and 4) Be sure to identify the population of students your program is intended to target.
So that’s it. Put your thinking caps on, people. To add a comment from the cac.ophony.org homepage, click on the post title or the number next to it.
Okay, I’ll bite.
How about a multi-pronged program which attempts to integrate CAC techniques thoroughly into a course, shaping pedagogical methods and assignments to fit the course content. I’d propose:
A cadre of carefully-trained CAC consultants (Fellows perhaps?) who worked with individual faculty as they re-thought an entire course to make it thoroughly Communication Intensive, using any resources we could offer them,
A seminar where these faculty shared their techniques, experiments, and successes with other faculty, facilitated by the fellows, on a monthly basis, and
A program supporting students’ needs (which may include workshops to support oral and written communication skills at all levels, geared to the content of the course) would work in tandem.
Assessment could include pre- and post- oral and written diagnostics, as well as oral and written portfolios (of students’ representative samples of work). Although such assessment is not perfect, I do not doubt it would show improvement.
Does this sound like what we’re already doing? Yes, but the scope would be larger and all the components carefully work together.
Faculty would need stipends for participating and course release time to work on revamping. They’d also need an adventurous spirit.
Fellows would need money and continued training, and open minds.
Students would need resources: rooms, video cameras and recording equipment, dare I say it, if money allowed for them, laptops? Frankly, I believe oral and written communication would improve considerably if we simply made sure _all_ students had laptops (and training in their use) and were forced to use them _creatively_ to complete a variety of types of assignments? If faculty are creative about how they require this component to be used, it will work. Again, there has to be time for planning, experimentation, and idea-sharing so that faculty can think of useful ways to integrate this.
Everything I describe is either being done in our current program, on a smaller, more diversified scale, or is something I’ve been involved with as a Writing Fellow or Technology Fellow at other campuses. A year of this kind of work (minus the laptops and focusing on reading/writing only), on a small scale (20 faculty), yielded measurable improvements in students’ writing at Lehman. I believe the same can be done combining oral/written communication, and I do believe that with a large amount of money and good planning, that this could make a difference for students. For administrators, a noticeable difference.
What population would we target? That’s a good question. This sort of program could benefit students across the board–in fact, I think it would have to, since I’m talking about courses being made even more communication-instensive (I’m thinking we couldn’t, therefore, isolate certain populations within those classes.) But it could focus on one program, or work with faculty in a multitude of fields (as we did at Lehman).
Reply to Kate
I read your post, Mikhail, and immediately knew what I would wish for: a first-year seminar program utliizing Mark Carnes’s award-winning “Reacting to the Past” pedagogy. See Reacting to the Past at Barnard College for comprehensive information about this innovative initiative.
“Reacting” is a student-centered pedagogy, utilizing role-play, that invites students to immerse themselves in a volatile moment in the past and engage in debate with their peers. These elaborate exercises, called “games,” foster both written and oral communication. Over a dozen games are available (published by Longman) with several more in development. They range from the reinstatement of democracy in Athens in 403 B.C., to the succession crisis of the Wanli emperor in 16th-century China, to the French Revolution, to Kansas vs. Board of Education (1996). Students read seminal texts, perform outside research, and submit several pages of writing over a three-week period, which serves as the basis of their in-class participation. And, because students are required to portray historical figures rather than themselves, they are less self-conscious and less worried about what their peers think — which makes them better speakers. It gives them the freedom to develop their communication skills in an entirely new way.
Anecdotal evidence and formal research indicate that the “Reacting” experience dramatically improves written and oral communication skills — mainly because students are extremely motivated by the pedagogy. Because students basically run the class (the professor sits quietly on the sidelines, offering help and guidance via written notes when necessary), they absolutely MUST speak. The inherent competition in the games also drives them to help and support their teammates, which fosters community-building and promotive interaction among students. But I think one of the most significant benefits of the experience is that it sparks students’ interest in the liberal arts — philosophy, history, literature — which is a real challenge at a professions-oriented school like Baruch.
More than 90 colleges across the country have experimented with “Reacting” games. At least three professors at Baruch (myself included) have run a game as part of an introductory course. Personally, I have been blown away by how the game transformed my classroom. Students who rarely spoke in class became motivated, energetic, and persuasive. Everyone spoke at once. The arguments grew more sophisticated and nuanced as the game progressed; students also demonstrated increased sensitivity and awareness of audience (i.e., the best rhetorical tactics to use for a particular audience).
With my fantasy grant, I would create a first-year seminar program at Baruch for incoming freshmen based on the “Reacting” pedagogy. Many colleges have done this (Trinity, Smith, Pace, Queens) and it has worked well. As at other schools who have used the pedagogy, professors from every discipline would be invited to teach these seminars as part of their regular course-load. In each seminar, freshmen would play three games over the course of a semester. For example, Margaret Imber at Bates College runs a seminar called Trials of Conscience — you can see her students’ blogs (written in character, of course) by clicking here. Her students play games set in Athens (trial of Socrates), Puritan New England (trial of Anne Hutchinson), and 17th-century Rome (trial of Galileo). Students delve into Plato’s REPUBLIC, Aristotle’s PHYSICS, Galileo’s STARRY MESSENGER, and the Bible, among other texts. But many combinations are possible.
The grant would:
1) ensure that “Reacting” seminars remain small (ideally 13-20 students, although I’ve run games with 22-23 and it still worked well);
2) offer stipends to Baruch professors to attend a “Reacting” conference, usually held in NYC in the summer (the best way to learn about the pedagogy is to experience it, and at the conference professors play abbreviated versions of two games);
3) pay for a work-study student or peer mentor for each seminar, who would serve as a T.A. or proctor (because games move so quickly, many professors find that a student proctor who is familiar with “Reacting” is very helpful; s/he shares strategies and helps students peer-to-peer);
4) offset costs associated with assessment of the new “Reacting” seminar program. At Barnard College, where “Reacting” began, researchers had students in a “Reacting” group and a control group give impromptu speeches into an audiotape recorder at the beginning and the end of the semester. (“Reacting” students showed improvement, whereas the control group did not.) At Baruch, I would utilize the Schwartz Institute’s video assessment tool, currently used in THE 1041C, to measure changes in oral communication skills. Similarly, I think the CIC written diagnostic would be useful to determine improvements in writing.
“Reacting” has already become integral to Queens College’s Freshman Year Initiative program, and has found its way to other CUNY campuses. I believe Baruch freshmen (and faculty) would benefit greatly from a “Reacting” program as well.
Reply to Amy Hughes
I am not sure if former students are allowed to comment but i will anyways.
Reacting is a good idea i wish it existed for me. But maybe the programs should
avoid large essays where students write colorful words just to make things longer.
In this day and age we all are trying to say more with less, not less with more as
we are forced to do in classes. We are not learning anything in these classes because
we honestly care very little for them, but put us in a major course of interest and ask us
to write an essay on something we care to read up and do work on and it is nearly always
better than a writing course where the goal is to get a B and leave the professor who likes to hear themselves sound nice all the time.
Reacting sounds like a very good idea, but let us have some say in what we should do,
not many people care what Shakespear ment, but some do of what Steve Jobs or Clinton said in his speechs. College students are highly opionated quite a few of us don’t care to speak in class, because half the class wouldn’t know where Canada is. Please don’t you dare let someone read a G.W. Bush speech… i get hangover symptoms after his speeches.
Try an anonymous Blog site that is linked to their blackboard accounts, where points are given to a student that actively participates in discussions online, only they would be auto graded by maybe the MS Word spelling/grammar checker with a resonable weight attached to the length of the response. only the professor should know who is writing what. not students. this ensures that no one holds anything back while maintaining a degree of professionalism… just no Bush reacts please
Reply to Omar