Monthly Archive for October, 2007

A New Communication Intensive Course at Zicklin

Published
by
Yukiko
on October 3, 2007
in Baruch College, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs) and Oral Communication
. 0 Comments

This semester, I have been supporting a new Communication Intensive Course, Advanced Accounting (Acct4100). The instructor, together with a Communication Fellow, developed the syllabus over the summer, which adopted some elements of ‘innovative assignments’ (introduced in articles from Business Communications Quarterly). The course aims to develop students’ oral communication skills by having them present in front of the audience in various occasions for various purposes (individually introducing themselves, group presentations on a predetermined research topic, and presenting their evaluation of other groups’ presentations).

After our own expert Suzanne Epstein’s visit to the class for a mini-lecture on oral presentations, the students are now preparing for their own. I am only beginning to have rehearsals with the students at this point, but so far their response to the tasks seems positive. The professor, as I visited the classes, repeatedly emphasized the importance of gaining skills to clearly and effectively present and discuss complex materials like accounting research as something that would directly benefit them in the workplace. Another good thing about this new syllabus is that the topic and required research for the presentation is kept simple and straightforward, so that the students can focus more on the presenting of the material rather than panicking themselves with getting the content together. Also, the group size is small (2-3 per group) and hence the presentation is fairly short, so it is not overwhelming them. I think it is a good preparation to the presentation that they will put together in the capstone course that awaits them, typically within a couple of semesters.

I am excited to be part of the execution of this new CIC syllabus and I look forward to posting more as I work with more students and find anything interesting to share with you during this journey.

Writing as Process/Writing as Product

Published
by
Luke
on October 1, 2007
in Blogs and Blogging and Writing Instruction
. 1 Comment

The primary innovation that makes the expanding use of instructional technology in the classroom so exciting, for me, is that it empowers students to disseminate their own work. Such empowerment can have unintended consequences, and creates new challenges for us as teachers. One faculty member with whom I discussed blogging said “I don’t want my students analyzing Plato for each other; their understanding of Plato is shit.” Aside from the fact that the statement might have been true (if loathsome), it further illuminated for me the tension between writing as process and writing as product. Exploration of this tension is central to the WAC/WID way, but seeing it played out in a couple of the course blogs that I’ve launched this term has been illuminating.

In a first-year writing course, students were required to attend a reading and then to post their reactions on the blog. The first blog post was from a student who railed at length and in detail about how boring the reading was and how uncomfortable he felt at the venue. The post wasn’t nasty at all, but it was quite negative in tone.

Rather than taking the post personally or defending the assignment, the Professor praised the student on the blog for his honesty and, importantly, for his willingness to reflect upon his disengagement. She also devoted much of the next class session to a discussion of “what it means to be liberally educated,” and how we can find value in things even if our reaction to them is negative. She had been disappointed by the behavior of some of the students at the event, but she didn’t let this filter onto the blog, preserving that space as an area for students to work out their ideas and write without her hovering judgment. It would have been easy for her to chasten the student (whose post actually begat more complaining), but that could have negatively impacted the virtual space the remainder of the term. Instead, the faculty member modeled for her students an approach to studying the world that found value in what on the surface–complaining and rejection–held little at all.

All writing is both process and product, though some types of writing assignments necessarily emphasize one element over the other. What was successful about the teaching described above was its loyalty to the goal of the assignment within the context of the class. That faculty member who was concerned about his students’ grasp of Plato was seeing their writing exclusively as a product, and missing the extent to which informal, public, process-oriented writing can open areas for responsive teachers to intervene.