X204 Business Communication
Business Communication challenges students to handle complex
communication scenarios common to business settings. Many of the
scenarios call on students to engage each other in multi-stage projects
involving research and analysis of business situations, interpersonal
communication, and finally collaboration to create professional work
products. The course includes brief writing assignments, including
e-mails, memos, and letters. The course culminates in an involved real
world writing and speaking project designed by the Target Corporation. As
an instructor, I use the case method and group work to create a great deal of
discussion and debate in and out of class.
Thirteen instructors teach Business Communication. The
course objectives and consistency standards were set by these faculty
members. Course delivery, however, is determined by each
instructor. The uses of Sakai discussed in this application were planned
and executed by me.
Taylor (2008) suggests that interactive learning coupled with mechanisms
to create accountability is necessary to facilitate learning for millennial
students. This led me to social media channels to discuss cases or
class-built resources embedded in blog posts or the course wiki.
Cases include multi-media resources by embedding them in the wiki or blog
or byreferring to course modules developed with Melete or multi-media html
pages. I also decided that my students should learn about a variety of
social media channels given that businesses now use wikis, blogging, twitter,
and other channels.
BusinessCommunication objectives involve listening and interpersonal communication
including inter-cultural communication skills. I, therefore, created a
blog post that asks the students to consider inter-cultural-non-verbal
communication. The post describes non-verbal communication then leads to an
embedded video scene from a documentary called Well-Founded Fear, screen
shot below. In the scene, a woman from Romania is being interviewed about
her application to stay in the United States because she fears returning to
Romania. In the US asylum process, these interviews are, by law, to be
conducted in a non-adversarial manner. However, the woman and the
interviewing officer both have aggressive communication styles, resulting in a
power grab by the asylum officer.
My students respond to the blog post using the blog's comment feature. Typically,
when I've facilitated in class discussion of this case as opposed to online, a
majority of the students begin discussion by thinking the woman is lying.
But as the discussion develops their eyes tend to open and see the richness of
non-verbal communication...which, of course, is a substantial part of the
expected learning outcome. When I switched the process to a pre-class
discussion on the course blog, I noticed that students who saw the problematic
non-verbal cues of the asylum officer spoke up more forcefully and quickly.
This was unexpected; however, it was extremely beneficial to student learning,
as the students discovered the complexities of non-verbal communication without
my influence. In the past, in class, I often had to make the points about
how the asylum officer's behavior impacted the interview; in other words, I
lead the students to a key learning outcome. I was thrilled that the
students made this leap without me.
The example above demonstrates how this process works before class. The activities
create accountability in a few ways. First, the information posted by the
students creates accountability during a "readiness assurance" process.
The readiness assurance process ("RAP"), discussed in detail below, is
part of the Larry Michaelsen's team-based learning approach which I adapted for my
class. The point of the RAP is actually to confirm that students have
learned course concepts at the lowest level of Bloom's taxonomy, so that they
are ready for in-class activities that emphasize application and higher levels
of the taxonomy. The second form of accountability emerges; because, the student
comments are generated before class and are available for consideration by all my
students. Third, the social media discussions become the source of follow up assignments.
I teach three sections of Business Communication every semester. I use a practice
course site as a resource area for my active course sites. Resources that
are consistent across all three sections are developed and maintained in this
site. Typically, I create these resources as publicly viewable html pages
and connect them to my active course sites. Html pages are also written to
augment the textbooks' delivery of course concepts. For example, my
students learn how to use indirect persuasion. I have added to the
textbook's treatment of this issue by creating a custom html page in the
resource site. The page describes key concepts, such as the Attention
Interest Desire Action ("AIDA") persuasion model, as well as logos,
ethos, and pathos elements of persuasion. I also embedded a flash animation
(createdwith Jing) of a document exemplar. I link to this custom html page in
the course site Resources. Below is an example wiki post that relates to the
students' reading of a module on team work. I wrote the case using the
"create html page" in Resources, so that I and my students could easily
link to it from multiple locations. (see wiki screenshot)
My class uses team-based learning, much as described by Larry Michaelsen. Thus,
students are placed in teams on the second day of class and work in these teams
every day for the rest of the semester. In order to move beyond in-class
lecturing on basic concepts and to active learning with a focus on application
of content, the course has three readiness assurance days, one focusing on
characteristics of professional writing, writing style, and message
organization, one on communication theory and audience analysis, and one on
teamwork and leadership. Before each readiness assurance day, the
students respond to a case posted either in the course blog, Communication
Skills for Success, which is an external blog accessible through the web
content tool, or the course wiki. (I'm hoping to use the Sakai blog tool
when it moves from beta.) Blog posts and wiki posts prompt students to:
1. Identify concepts they consider most important,
2. Apply them to business communication scenarios, such as the Well-Founded
Fear post described above,
3. And to compare or contrast another student's work with their own.
The students bring copies of their responses to class for review by their team.
The team determines the response that is "most helpful for learning course
concepts." I collect the "most helpful" comments and redistribute
them, so that each team receives a copy of every teams' "most helpful"
responses. Each team then ranks the other teams' responses from
most to least helpful. Readiness assurance grades are based on these rankings.
This mechanism creates incentive to write and select strong comments.
Team discussions lead to debate among the teams as they work toward consensus
about application of course concepts. As discussed above after readiness
is assured, subsequent class activities rely on either the case presented in
the readiness assurance process or cases in additional blog or wiki
postings.
One purpose of asking students to comment in the course blog or to create
wiki content was to facilitate team-based learning. The external blog also
brings all three of my course sections into the same discussion. The pre-class
collaboration sets the stage for my students to interact with their team every
class session. In-class application activities require discussion in the teams
to come to consensus to answer application questions. Across teams the students
debate their answers. I facilitate the process and discussion. In the
future I would like to collect and share the teams' answers in real time.
Collecting the data in polling software would also allow me to track student
progress more easily.
The learning materials hyperlink between each other as much as possible, so that
I could simplify the interface. For instance, the syllabus appears in the
worksite information space on the course homepage, and students can link to
html pages for the course policies, course schedule, a description of the
Target Case Competition which is the major course project, grading criteria,
and so forth. The course blog is accessible through the web content
tool. The wiki includes, not only the IU help resources, but also a
screen capture flash animation on how to get started with the wiki tool
specifically for my course.
In order to reach students with various learning styles exemplars of excellent
business communication are shared in multiple ways: as stand-alone documents, as
documents with annotated comments, and as screen capture flash animations with
voice overlay. To engage students, aural and visual media are embedded in
course modules, resources, and the blog and wiki posts.
Course objectives are defined by the department as follows:
At the end of Business Communication, students will be able to:
* Apply the complex communication process model to specific communication
contexts in the classroom and in business
* Write clear, concise, and audience-centered business documents in a variety
of formats (memos, letters, emails, and reports)
* Speak effectively interpersonally and in groups
* Listen to instructions and critically analyze arguments
* Collaborate effectively within team environments
My course is designed to maximize realization of each objective. Students interact
in the blog, wiki, and in-class application activities regarding complex
communication scenarios. Their work results in writing of a variety of
business documents. Their group work requires consensus building and
debate. One student last semester stated that commenting on the blog was
valuable to him because he had to learn how to disagree with other students in
a constructive and respectful way.
Feedback occurs every day in class. I also post grades in the Oncourse CL gradebook,
so that the students have convenient access to them. As my students work on
in-class application activities, I circulate and ask probing questions, review
their work, and observe their progress on the case application activities as
well as in their team work. I provide feedback in an ongoing fashion
often sitting down to facilitate a team that seems to be lost in debate.
I also have my students bring their blog comments and drafts of their written
work to class for peer feedback. They are so used to ongoing feedback by
mid-semester that, for example, after completing presentations in class
recently, they asked if they could get their feedback on the spot. I
hadn't planned on giving on-the-spot feedback, but gave verbal feedback in
class. The ensuing discussion was concrete and demonstrated the students'
engagement in their learning. After class, I wrote the feedback and distributed
it in the Oncourse CL gradebook comments.
Oncourse tools are helping me uphold my teaching philosophy of facilitating learning
by giving me the data and opportunity to have a clear picture of my students'
progress. I spend a great deal of time between classes creating application
activities and other learning activities that meet my students where they are
in their learning.
One vivid example of their learning is demonstrated by how much more adept they have
become at integrating course concepts into their blog comments. In the readiness
assurance process, the students have to select the "most helpful comment for
learning course concepts." The first time, the process is difficult
because they feel unsure about what is helpful for learning the concepts and
the comments typically were either too narrow or too superficial.
However, by the third blog post, they had a hard time deciding which student
comment to select as "most helpful" because they were all so much better at
applying the course concepts to the complex cases.
The course site was designed to be easy to navigate. I strategized how to simplify
the look of the home page. And I planned the course to use the minimum number of tools necessary to facilitaterealization of the learning objectives. Embedding of html
pages allowed me to link the course overview, which appears on the course site
homepage, to the most important information students need to know to prepare for
class,complete their work, and understand the criteria for success in the
course. The external blog and the course wiki are accessible through the
homepage. Student feedback on course design and Resources is constantly
sought and responded to. Most resources, as well as blog and wiki activities,
include text and multi-media in an effort to respond to various learning styles.
For instance, the Blood Diamonds blog post includes videos, an NPR interview, and
flash animation with text introductions and transitions between media.
The syllabus and resources are available online. Throughout the semester they are
updated, including responding to reasonable and appropriate student requests for
information. I use Oncourse CL Announcements regularly to update my students about
class preparation. On occasion I create podcasts that summarize milestones achieved
in class or to clarify content issues that may arise in class. I use email throughout
the day; however, I set ground rules about turn-around times, so students do not become
frustrated at not receiving responses at 1 am. IU also provides accessible 24 hour
support for technical issues. My contact information is available in multiple locations
on the course site. The course policies also provide links and contact information for
writing and presentation help located at various places on the IU Bloomington campus.
Blogging and the wiki facilitate student collaboration
outside class. Multi-media resources and hyperlinks embedded in my blog
posts or the wiki drive student engagement with these activities.
As this collaboration takes place, I monitor progress and intervene
as necessary to assure expected outcomes. The collaboration then becomes
the launching point for in-class, team-based application activities through a
readiness assurance process. And to tie the course design together,
the course's writing assignments address the cases embedded in the blog posts
and addressed in the in-class, team-based activities.
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