Benefits for Faculty
Not only are there benefits for students when they engage in communication within their discipline, but there are also benefits for the faculty. First and foremost, and we’ve said this again and again, the communication activities and constructs you choose to focus on should help you achieve your course goals and outcomes. If particular activities or assignments do not help you do this, don’t use them. Perhaps one of your course goals is to have students become more competent in responding to the public with accurate yet simple information about your discipline. A renewed focus on communication could and should help you achieve this. In terms of teaching, perhaps one of your goals is to become a more interactive teacher. Increased focus on communication could provide you an opportunity to do this. Again, focusing on oral communication will not meet all goals, but it certainly can help you achieve many of them. Another way of looking at this is that communication can help you address some of the challenges you want to fix in your classrooms. At a recent faculty workshop, for example, one of the authors was working with dance faculty who could not see how communication could fit into their course goals. When the author asked what problems students had with the course that the instructors would like to see changed, one faculty member immediately said: “They don’t understand how their movements tell the story.” Bingo. Now, the question is: How can you use communication to help students understand the narrative behind movement? At that point, the faculty member thought of a number of possibilities.
In addition to being better able to achieve your course goals or solve course problems, we have found that many faculty members experience a renewed excitement and engagement with teaching when incorporating oral communication assignments and activities. A number of early surveys done on faculty involvement with communication across the curriculum showed that faculty liked the process of using communication in their courses and found the experience rewarding as a teacher (e.g., Cronin & Glenn, 1991; Cronin, Glenn, & Palmerton, 2000; Roberts, 1983). As you think about refining your course(s) to increase attention towards oral communication, you might experience new insights about your discipline, content area, and teaching in the process.
Also, as you better understand the genres, arguments, competencies and performative cultures that define your discipline, you might find benefits for your own communication abilities within disciplinary and professional contexts. Perhaps you will be able to navigate those communication activities and events you are called upon to participate in with an increased knowledge about what is considered persuasive, valued, and pertinent to the audiences you interact with because you have taken the time to help your students understand and learn the same.
Finally, and pragmatically, a focus on oral communication activities could provide you with tangible products to help you evidence successful teaching and improved learning. If assessment or accreditation is a concern in your department or institution, it could be important for you to gather information that illustrates teaching development and achievement of particular learning outcomes. If you are expected to engage in research and have an interest in instructional research or the scholarship of teaching and learning, a focus on oral communication activities provides you with the opportunities to engage in research about communication in your courses or programs. Essentially, there is a possibility that some of the pressures you face as a faculty member or program director could be reduced by creating opportunities to gather information about students’ oral communication processes and abilities.
Benefits for Departments and Programs
If your department is considering a more sustained focus on communication across the curriculum, or if you are working administratively within a cross-curricular program, there are several benefits to including oral communication as one of the initiatives you implement. First, if you are in a department or program with an already established focus or educational initiative (e.g., writing, technology, service-learning), broadening to embrace oral communication will provide your constituents with more options. Perhaps faculty members you work with are having a difficult time embracing the concept of technology in the classroom, but it seems easier to consider oral communication activities given their disciplinary culture. A focus on oral communication provides them an option that they wouldn’t have had with a narrowly defined program. This option could translate to increased participation, more likelihood of sustainability, and a more diverse participant pool.
Second, providing a breadth of options could allow support for other initiatives. Perhaps, for example, faculty who fear the technology initiative but are less fearful of oral communication activities will be able to better comprehend and embrace technology as it is woven within informal speaking assignments. For those in writing across the curriculum programs (in which there is already a national movement towards including oral communication) oral communication can be used in support of writing instruction. Students in psychology, for example, could give one-minute oral presentations describing an outline of their research project (perhaps in poster session format, informally) to help them talk through the logic of the project and get feedback on it. There are a number of different ways oral communication can support writing, and/or other educational initiatives, depending on the focus on your program or department.
Finally, and again, pragmatically—there has been increased focus nationally and internationally on communication across the curriculum, and participating in this movement could provide you with an opportunity to engage in an initiative that is gaining strength, popularity, and attention in educational conversations. The national and international interest in this initiative is growing and is opening doors to opportunities that could lead to productive and interesting teaching and learning collaborations and good public relations for your department or program.
Managing Challenges
Before we move into the section with examples of different kinds of communication assignment designs, we want to return to where we started in this chapter—recognizing that you might face challenges when considering incorporating communication in your courses and curricula. Take some time to consider what those challenges might be in light of the discussion in this chapter. Table 3.2 provides planning questions to help you think about institutional challenges you may face.
As you answer these questions, we hope you begin to gain a broad sense of the communicative life of your discipline. As you continue on to the next chapters, we ask you to focus in on your own objectives and to consider various communication activities and assignments that could help you meet those objectives. Our goal is to help you align your own goals with the broader context of your discipline, your students, and your own teaching style.
Table 3.2. Planning Questions: Managing Institutional Challenges
| What distinctive challenges do you face that could influence the success of using communication in your course(s)? |
| What distinctive challenges do your students face when preparing for and engaging in oral communication assignments? |
| What distinctive challenges does your department or unit face that might influence whether or not efforts to integrate oral communication activities into your unit’s classes will be successful? |
| How would you describe the communication culture of your discipline, and in what ways would using communication activities be viewed positively/negatively? |
| How would you describe the communication culture of your students, and in what ways might that influence their participation in oral communication activities in your class? |
Section II: Designing Assignments
In this section we provide examples of the kinds of assignments