Business Communication students stare down the barrel of group work with general disdain and resentment. The main questions I receive, (paraphrased for readability) particularly in reference to assignments where students are working together yet graded individually, are: Why do I need to do this? How can I get this assignment done if my team members Read More…
Author: abarrett1
Did Anyone else Understand What she Just Said? Plain Language in the Classroom
Students will often glare at me in confusion as I stand before them and attempt to communicate essential rhetorical concepts, and in those moments I am transplanted. I am no longer the teacher of a very tired and very perplexed class, I am the student that sat in ENL 101 and struggled to understand what Read More…
Advocacy in Action
Ethics and Professional Communication As communicators and teachers, it is required of us to create pedagogical practices that are both functional and ethical. And how do we do this? How do we create material that is socio-culturally situated as well as practical? Sarah Warren-Riley describes methodologies that educators can utilize to execute classwork and discourse Read More…
Gatekeeping Diversity
Diversity is a pretty word. A band-aid word. A word meant to be helpful, hopeful in the face of words like ‘intolerance’ or ‘bigotry.’ It is also, unfortunately, a word that rings hollow to many educators entangled in an endless web of guidelines, permissions, and considerations. This is not to say, however, that inclusive pedagogy Read More…
Ethics for Dummies
Alternatively: Teaching Ethics in a Void I’ve been teaching Bizcom for two semesters now and one thing is clear; the business field is not a very ethical one. Well, duh, you might say, there’s a reason the evil corporate overlord archetype exists. And yes, I would answer, I enjoy an “underdog vs. big business” Read More…
Collaboration in the Classroom
We’ve seen it before: blank stares after asking the class a question, confusion when proposing a new concept, and of course, that one kid- the one who’s certain he knows a lot more about the subject than you- raising his hand to undoubtedly ask “why are we doing this?” Much of this, I’ve found in Read More…
Goldilocks and the Three Standards: Intellectual Participation in the Classroom
As teaching fellows, we often quantify our work by audience participation. However, while participation is just fine, intellectual participation is a standard of excellence that many strive to achieve. How do we define intellectual participation visually? Verbally? Physically? And how do we measure intellectual participation in the classroom?
Embodied Participation and Those Who Dread it
To Speak, or Not to Speak- is that Really a Question? Class participation, in general, can be rough. If you’re the teacher, and you’re lucky, your class is a fruitful Socratic ideological marketplace. If you’re a student, and you’re lucky, a few oral heroes take on the weight of perpetuating an active discussion. Either way, Read More…