competencies or skills that are important for your students to master, and the performative roles students will need to enact to be successful.
So, how can communication specialists help you? Communication specialists working in cross-curricular programs can provide you with the vocabulary from communication theory and research to help you name, understand, and teach so that you can achieve your instructional goals. From their own expertise, communication specialists can help you by asking you the questions that are important to ask in order to help you best tailor your choices to your own instructional emphases. Based on research, communication specialists can help you understand the particular issues students might face when trying to learn communication in your discipline. For these reasons, if you have access to initiatives on your campus focused on oral communication across the curriculum, we strongly encourage you take advantage of them. Even if you do not, if you have writing-across-the curriculum specialists, they can assist you in thinking about using this book as you think through multiple modalities of communication assignments and activities. This book should ideally supplement your work with these specialists. If you do not have access to these resources, we hope this book will provide the vocabulary, ask the questions, and give some insight into the teaching and learning issues relevant to oral communication in the disciplines.
We recognize that there might be some other challenges and concerns you have with incorporating oral communication in your courses. We discussed some of those institutional constraints in Chapter 1, in fact. We, however, want to address the more individual challenges (the “yeah but’s . . .”) here, because we acknowledge the valid constraints many faculty are under and the important concerns that emerge from these constraints. Our goal is not to deny that these constraints and challenges exist, but rather to provide insight on how to best handle these constraints using the strategic framework we present in this book.
Time, Time, Time . . . in Class
“Ok, so I have thirty-five students. Even if I simply have them do short presentations—say 4–5 minutes each—that will take 2–3 class periods away from my lecture material. Also, what if they don’t do a very good job with the content? Then I have to go back and review the stuff they were supposed to address. If I put them in teams to save time, well—then there’s the whole team issue. So, maybe I’ll just scrap the whole idea. Plus, I have a lot to get through and can’t waste class time.”
Statements like this are typical—many of us feel the pressures of trying to find class time to cover all the material we want. The coverage issue is an extremely valid and important concern when considering incorporating oral communication activities in your courses. We all have material that is important to provide for our students in whatever content area we are teaching. In fact, many of us spend hours and hours of time trying to figure out how to get everything in—ultimately having to make painful decisions about what readings to cut, what lectures to combine, and what to assign for out-of-class work because the in-class time is full. Time in class is particularly an issue in courses where students’ knowledge of the content is essential before they move on to other courses. Additionally, some courses are flagged for gathering assessment data in order to address accreditation issues, and therefore covering the material is essential. In other courses, students are completing a final project that necessitates a significant amount of class time. So why would you bring in something that will take precious time away from lecturing on course material?
One of the primary reasons coverage is an issue for many faculty members is that they have a narrow view of what it means to incorporate communication in their courses. The first thing that comes to mind are formal, business-like presentations—students in suits using PowerPoint, perhaps in research teams, giving 30+ minute presentations with a question-and-answer round afterwards—a situation that most definitely takes up a large amount of class time. For some of you, these high-stakes presentations are important and you can create the class time to allow them. But when these kinds of communication events are not relevant to your goals or your discipline, there are other options. The strategic framework starts with your goals—not with a presumed set of communication activities. You decide how to best use communication within the confines of your content area. The decision, however, begins with your goals. If high-stakes business presentations do not help you achieve your goals, then you should choose something else. If you are teaching a course in which the content is packed, consider using communication to help your students learn about the course material. Perhaps two-minute reading summaries or pair-and-share critical questions about the content will help students engage with the material is new ways. If you are interested in professionalizing your students, consider a variety of communication assignments that might help you do that. For a faculty member in business management, that might be a “performance review.” For someone in soil science, that genre might be a “customer response.” Or, if your goals revolve around having students critically analyze material, you could use discussions to encourage students to synthesize ideas, put information in a coherent form, listen to others, and critique ideas of others in constructive ways. These kinds of activities can help students more fully integrate course content, far beyond what they would be able to do by just listening to a lecture. The point is that you get to decide how to weave communication within and around your content so that it supports the material, instead of detracting from it.
It is worth remembering that using communication in the classroom can be about both developing students’ abilities to communicate orally and developing students’ abilities to understand course content. Part of the answer to the in-class time crunch is that in order to be successful, the oral activity should clearly help students learn the course material. In Chapter 3 we will discuss this particular goal in more detail. For now though, consider oral communication as integrative, rather than additional. Oral communication assignments and activities should not simply be add-ons, created to meet an abstract requirement. Course content must be fully integrated into the requirements for the activity.
Time, Time, Time . . . Out of Class . . .
This sounds like a great idea if I didn’t already have three syllabi to prepare, an evaluation report to write, a faculty retreat to go to, and—oh yeah—that is only before the semester starts. Then there’s the undergraduate committee, the scholarship committee, the publications committee—I actually think I’ve also agreed to be on a committee on committees! And then—keeping up with email questions from students, excuses about missing homework—sick grandparents, dying pets, technology problems . . . ah! Like I said—great idea. I just don’t have any extra time during my day to think about this or make this happen. I already work long hours after I leave the office—there’s just not enough time.
Sound familiar? One of the primary challenges faculty face when considering the possibility of adding communication activities to their course(s) is time. Regardless of the type of institution you are in, there are likely to be a number of requests, requirements, and commitments eating up your daily time slots. Not that these are necessarily negative activities—in fact, many of them are extremely important and are simply part of what we, as faculty, signed up for. But oftentimes the daily activities that we engage in leave very little time for us to focus our attention on initiatives such as communication across the curriculum. And if we are asked (or required) to engage in such initiatives, we find the time—but do so at times regretfully, at times unwillingly, and at times even spitefully.
If we could add more hours to the day or relieve you of some of your duties so that you could focus on communication across the curriculum, we would (and we would probably become rich in the process!). Time is an issue—an important one. Many of you have particular professional, personal, or administrative commitments that make such an initiative challenging. We understand that these constraints might be overwhelming. Our goal with this framework is to make your time spent on your course more efficient. The strategic framework does not necessitate you to completely revamp your course. It is flexible and rests on you making choices that fit within your disciplinary context and help you achieve your instructional emphases. Your choices might, in fact, support the teaching tasks you are already spending time on in your course preparation.
