2006 July Archive at cac.ophony.org

Monthly Archive for July, 2006

Blogs for Books: An Experiment

Published

on July 25, 2006

in Audience, Blogs and Blogging, Peer Review, Revision, Technology and Wikis

. 1 Comment

Hi all — there’s an intriguing article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education about McKenzie Wark, a New School professor who has posted his (as yet unpublished) book manuscript online and is taking comments from the general public. He was inspired by both Wikipedia and the academic blog format.

You can check out the article here:
Book 2.0: Scholars turn monographs into digital conversations, by Jeffrey R. Young

And you can check out — and comment on! — Wark’s e-book here:
GAM3R 7H30RY

Are we about to see the line between book authorship (and editing) and blogging erased?

Success with in-class writing

Published

Diana

on July 18, 2006

in Communication Intensive Courses (CICs) and Low-Stakes Writing

. 4 Comments

Earlier this summer I taught a class where I used in-class writing assignments extensively and was surprised by how effective it was as a pedagogical tool.

Each day I brought in a list of questions for students, although they were free to write about whatever they wanted as long as it somehow related to our readings. Most of their responses showed thoughful engagement with the texts and it was enormously helpful for me to read what they wrote. It provided immediate feedback on the kinds of things that they liked as well as on what they were not getting. I also had students bring in their own questions and asked them to talk about why they wanted to address that issue. In this way, the writing assignments helped shape class discusssion.

The questions I gave them were helpful in a number of ways. Writing them helped me prepare for class in general and it consistently reinforced to students the ways in which I wanted them to be reading and thinking. But I think the biggest success of the in-class writing was demonstrated at exam time where they had to write four essays. The class was very nervous and disgruntled about having to take an exam, but in the end most of them did extraordinarily well. I think this is because they had been writing off the top of their heads about the material on regular basis, which reinforced their knowledge and their thought.

So, I know that most people reading this blog are already well aware of the benefits of this type of assignment, and in a way I am preaching to the converted. However, I couldn’t resist sharing my success and encouraging educators to continue to integrate in-class writing into their pedagogy.

Transparency, ownership, responsibility: reasons students should write on public blogs

Published

Kate

on July 18, 2006

in Blogs and Blogging, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Faculty Development, Literacy and Technology

. 5 Comments

Back in the spring, Deborah, Mikhail, Jill and I presented on blogging (with students, with fellows) at Baruch’s technology conference. Although we had lots to say about what we were doing, we also ended up saying quite a bit about the hows and whys of blogging with students, since the audience appeared to have a wide spectrum of experience with blogging.

Underlying every such discussion is that old chestnut– “Why blogging instead of Blackboard?”

I have reasons ranging from aesthetics and useability to more pedagogical ones. I like the primacy that’s given to the writer in a blog, as opposed to the threaded discussion format of Blackboard. But the biggest benefit in blogging for me is that students (or fellows, for that matter) are having a public conversation on a blog. Here on cac.ophony.org, our institute’s conversations obviously benefit greatly from the regular reader-contributors, as well as those just passing through.

For students, I’d argue the value of a public conversation even if “outsiders” aren’t allowed to comment (though I’d also argue that in most cases, allowing the public to comment is a good idea). This allows students to engage with interested parties who surf in. For our students, it also adds an extra layer to whatever blogging the class is doing: participants have to think of a wider audience. This is a responsibility that does not accompany other kinds of class writing. Many faculty ask students to imagine they’re writing for an audience besides the professor and classmates. With a blog, and a bit of publicity, there’s no need to imagine an audience.

What better way to prepare students for writing in the world of work, than to have them write in the world, while they’re students?
Many professors thinking of blogging for the first time with students are reluctant to leave Blackboard behind as a discussion venue due to worries about the public nature of blogs. There’s the fear that your comments will be filled with viagra ads. Most objections to non-password-protected blogs relate to a lack of understanding of how well spam filters can work to keep out the riff-raff and random garbage.
Sometimes there’s also a concern that participants won’t be able to write as freely on a given issue if the venue is public. I’d argue that even in cases such as faculty development, where bloggers might like to say some things privately to one another, it would be best to have writers mark individual posts as private and password-protected (for members only) and most others public. This does make things a bit more complex for people doing the posting (they have to remember to check the right box!) but it seems do-able. And most postings are unlikely to be of a sensitive nature.

I really like the reasons Weblogg-ed gave the other day for preferring blogs to discussion boards, especially the focus here on transparency and ownership:

… the interesting thing is that he mentioned that he doesn’t see how blogs are much of an improvement over discussion boards. I’ve been reading and reflecting a lot on the conversation from a few days ago, and some of the outcomes from my workshop this week, and I have to say I think the difference is obvious: transparency. When I post to my blog, it not only has a chance to be read by a billion people, it also lives on in the Google-able and Technorati-able world of content. It also gets linked to by other people having other conversations. And it also creates a real sense of ownership of the ideas and the membership in the community.

Communication as a Bond

Published

James Drogan

on July 13, 2006

in Audience, Language and Pedagogy

. 1 Comment

One of my international students wrote the following line:

Communication is something more than a business tool, is a bond; a bond that brings closer, people with the same interests and goals (such as – but not limited to – a business transactions.)

She has provided an interesting perspective which I think should color the way we communicate. Tolkien, one of my favorite writers, forms a bond with me through his writing. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance does not.

I advise my students and others to try to put themselves in the mindset of the reader. To read what they write to see whether the reaction of the reader is what the writer intends. It seems to me that we can write what we want to write, but not communicate what we intend to communicate.

Perhaps this is all old hat to you Writing Fellows, but my 40 plus years of business experience suggests that those of us not in academia need to be reminded from time to time of this notion of communications as a bond.

The 6th Annual Symposium: Afternoon Discussions

Published

Mikhail Gershovich

on July 11, 2006

in Assessment, Baruch College, Conferences and Symposium

. 0 Comments

Remember that Symposium of ours? Below is a summary of the afternoon discussions as reported by participants at each table during the plenary session. Take a look too at the summary of the morning discussions. To watch a video of the plenary, click here and then click “Launch Media” and select “Part V: Afternoon Discussion and Report Back” on the following screen.

The 6th Annual Symposium Afternoon Discussion: Challenges and Proposed Solutions* (By Table)

Table 1: Reported by Ruth-Ellen Simmonds, Executive Director, One Stop Senior Services

Challenge: How can we teach students the kind of flexibility needed to communicate effectively in business?

Recommendation: Create a coaching culture–either through an experience mentor from another division or a team of people with whom they can practice and learn and grow. In terms of some of the activities that might engage students we suggest client-based projects. E.g., a sample activity where students have to learn to sell their ideas.

Table 2: Reported by Jody Rosen, Communication Fellow, Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute, Baruch College

Challenge: How do you diagnose yourself as a communicator?

Recommendation: Ask ourselves, our colleagues, and our students the following questions as we communicate:

(1) Am I clear, concise? complete? correct?
(2) What decisions do I need to make in communicating?
(3) How do I get the data?
(4) Is the person that I’m communicating with receptive to my communication?
(5) How can I better engage my audience?
(6) Why should someone take the time to listen to the message that I’m giving?
(7) How is time a factor in communication? If I’m sending an email at 3 a.m. does the time of sending have as much effect on how it’s received as what I say?

After communicating, ask yourself the following questions:

(1) What worked?
(2) Where did I get stuck?
(3) What can I take away from this that can be applied next time?

Table 3: Reported by Deborah Bosley, Director, Center for Writing, Language, and Literacy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Challenge: Money to support education. Business should value communication enough to underwrite CAC the same way they underwrite math and science. The College Board did a report showing that over $2 billion is spent by companies to train people in communication skills that they don’t already have out of college.

Recommendation: Seek funding from companies and other private sources for better communication training and curricular support. The BLSCI is a perfect model. How do we replicate it across the country?

Table 4: Reported by Diane DeFilippo, Assistant Vice President of Distribution and Service, AXA Financial, Inc.

Challenge: What are the conditions that make communication more likely to be successful or effective?

Conclusions:
(1) The first thing we decided is that communication is not a one at a time thing. It’s a continuum. Even when you think it’s over, it’s not over.
(2) You have to have communication strategy. And a key component to most strategies is that we are not all the same. I am visual; some are auditory. What works for one does not necessarily work for others.
(3) You need a clearly defined purpose for communicating. You have to know WHY you’re creating a communication.
(4) Your audience is not just someone on the other side. This works whether it’s email or a meeting. Ongoing dialogue is needed. Collaboration is needed. You want to be able to adjust and inspire communication.
(5) After you think you’ve been successful, you need confirmation. Ask if you explained your message clearly. Have people paraphrase. Have them play back the information.

Table 5: Reported by Bob Garland, National Managing Director, Assurance and Advisory Services, Deloitte & Touche LLP

Challenge: Educators must develop the whole person in order to train good communicators.

Recommendations:
(1) Practice, practice, practice. Students should start with small, less formal, low-stakes presentations and build over a four-year academic career to give several much higher stakes presentations. A key thing is overcoming fear. If you can’t overcome that in a low stakes situation, you won’t be able to overcome it. Students also need the opportunity to fail. College is more forgiving than a business environment.
(2) Develop students’ listening skills.
(3) Enhanced, continuous feedback for students from professors as well as outside visitors to the classroom, including career center staff.
(4) More mentoring; for instance, expansion of Baruch’s Executives on Campus program.

Table 6: Reported by Norm Brust, Vice President, Corporate Communications (retired), Contel Corporation

Challenge: Measuring the effectiveness of communication in a timeframe early enough in the process so students and employees can change their course and maximize their effectiveness.

Recommendation: Preview all types of communication. Get some representative member of your audience (who you trust to give honest feedback) to sit with you before your presentation–before you write the memo, before you write the talk–and in effect preview your communication.

Table 7: Reported by Wendy Ryden, Assistant Professor of English, Coordinator of Writing Across the Curriculum, Long Island University, CW Post Campus

Challenge: How can communication be reconfigured as a relationship–a more holistic model that includes visual and ethical dimensions of the situation?

Recommendations:
(1) Teach and practice communication as story telling. Use role-playing for problem solving. Be more attuned to what’s going on visually, how you’re presenting yourself. It is important that there be a meta-cognitive dimension to this. Participants should move from speaker to spectator, asking “Why do I make the choices that I’m making?”
(2) Use PowerPoint in a better, more narrative way.
(3) When we’re teaching communication we’ve been focusing on what the communicator can do. But we can’t forget that the audience also has an obligation. What can we teach audience members to do in a responsible communication? Why do we react the way we do? What obligation do we have to teach the audience to understand what’s trying to be communicated?

Table 8: Reported by Virginia Malone, President, ILM, Inc.

Challenge: What’s the standard for evaluation of communication?

Recommendations:
(1) Peer evaluation, e.g., using a questionnaire.
(2) Self-evaluation: Have students look at a performance review from a company so they can see what employers use to evaluate them. 70% of the evaluation is about communication. Let them see that in their future pay raises will be affected by this.

*Many thanks to Elizabeth Busch for transcribing the discussion and to Tom Harbison for creating this summary.

Enabling Constraints

Published

James Drogan

on July 8, 2006

in Pedagogy

. 3 Comments

One of the attendees at a recent meeting at the BLSCI (Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute) raised the phrase “enabling constraints” in the context of discussing how technology forces changes in communication. In particular, she referred to the small screen used for the presentation of messages as a constraint.

My first, admittedly flip, reaction was that “enabling constraints” was an oxymoron. But as we got deeper into the discussion I backed away from my initial thinking. While a small screen may be a constraint, especially when we approach communication from a traditional point of view, the enabling aspect of this constraint is connectivity.

The inevitability of technologial advances will, it seems to me, cause us to rethink communication. If communication changes then our approach to teaching communication also needs to chnge. See Another Look at Communication Effectiveness for additional points on this issue.

What actions should we in academia take to determine whether this is an issue that needs to be addressed?