Thanks for your message. I do agree that case studies do indeed provide a certain type of experiential learning. They are excellent resources and I think you use them in a very effective manner.

I guess I was thinking of something more physically or actively experiential, rather than cognitively. In other words, not having students ‘read’ bout a situation and then discuss, but rather ‘do’ something, produce something through organizing and then reflect on their communicative behaviors.

This is not to say that students can’t be put in case study groups having to produce a ‘report’ or some other case study-related outcome and then give each other feedback on how they interacted in the group. This is certainly one option.

Let me try to go further: for example (not that i want to get this elaborate:), i’ve seen classes which take on community and/or college ‘consulting projects’ to do during the semester. the whole class operates as an organization. that is, there is a president, VP, etc. and students must give each other structured feedback along the way. i don’t want to get this elaborate as i think this is a different class than we’re trying to develop with 3068 (i think;) . . .

but, maybe there’s some way to do small scale projects or some type of ‘work’ that will allow them to do peer reviewing in a more in-depth manner than ‘who did most of the writing’ for the group paper. Does that make sense?

And/or maybe as we’ve been talking about 3068, this isn’t the right place for more ‘practice’ — other classes do this better . . .

I just wanted to toss the idea out there – not that we need to do anything with this.

Linda, is there some way that student-to-student managerial communication feedback is exchanged in your class?

thanks for listening . . .

Let’s keep brainstorming . . . On the road this week, but let’s keep thinking . . .

And would they make their own assessment/ peer review?

thanks for doing this!

Hey everyone, I am playing with the visuals on our blog, so you might be seeing some changes in appearances. Also I can not set up RSS feeds between our blog and other courses, blogs, ect. So give me the sites you think would be interesting to have
here on our blog.

Thanks, Suzanne. It’s catch-22 re: technology as we continue to have so many problems w/ BBd. here at Baruch. And for weeks now (a couple of weeks last term and continuing during summer session), the dept. printer doesn’t even recognize me when I send a “print” command, though naturally I’ve alerted the usual people. Cherelle tells me it’s a continuing network problem.

Hope your summer is off to a nice start,
Linda

Good idea on the opening up the blog. Is there a way for us to connect with other blogs that are titled *both* managerial communication and organizational communication.

I agree on the centrality of technology as one of our key themes. I think we also talked about 4 key themes: ethics, domestic US diversity (if only bc we have classes devoted to international communication and not enough of a focus on U.S. issues of race, class, gender, etc. in the U.S.), technology, and history (giving students a sense that the a social constructionist perspectives shows us how language and social interaction at and about work continues to change).

Suzanne and I are going to try to work together in the fall (no pressure suzanne;) ha! to thread both reading and practice with new technologies in to my sections of 3068. We’ll let you know as our planning goes forward.

Let me start a new thread though for our Fall goals idea . . .

I think an area to really work on together is the overlap with COM3102.
It seems to me that each faculty member can continue to have different approaches to Managerial Communication while coming together on a common choice of what is the overlap and to leave it out of the COM3068 syllabus?

I would suggest starting there. The theme for our end of term meeting with Linda, Caryn and myself…?

I hope this message finds you all well and surviving the semster!

This is a long overdue blog about a recent brainstorming conversation Suzanne, Linda, and I had about 3068. My hope is to share some of my recollections of our conversation and then, Suzanne and Linda please chime in . . .

Bob and Jana, we met in March to continue discussions about the philosophy and goals of 3068 as well as just to ‘compare notes’ and share ideas. Although we haven’t been able to meet again lately, we hope to continue this dialogue.

Part of our conversation was a discussion of the various backgrounds we all bring to our teaching of 3068.

Our backgrounds span the fields of organizational communication (coming from the communication studies discipline), management communication (coming more from management studies), and business communication (a combination of communication studies, management, and english, and others). And, because of this, we all come at the class in ways that are both similar and different.

One way we came to this realization was through a comparison of teaching materials. For example, I use the Miller book, partly because it is written by an organizational communication studies scholar and reflects what i know. Suzanne has used other books in the past, but has been experimenting with Miller as well. Linda’s background and expertise draws her to Argenti’s text, particularly its case study focus and inclusion of crisis communication (one of her specialties).

We have also compared TOCs – there is a great deal of topical overlap between these texts; there are also differences with respect to the theoretical ideas being presented and history of ‘the field’ (as they vary) being presented. We all see strengths in both of these resources.

Yet we also talked about the need to reduce overlap between 3068 and, for example, 3102 as well as the pre-req management classes that are a part of the program. We also talked about the need to continue to develop a course that fully brought together a focus on *communication* with respect to management and organizing. What makes this class different, unique, and/or special in relation to other classes which may also talk about issues of leadership, conflict, etc. in the workplace?

I am putting up (as soon as I send this) a ‘working’ draft of a course philosophy emerging out of these conversations. The goal of this philosophy is for us to come together on some broad goals we want to accomplish in 3068, understanding that we may (probably will) get to these goals differently. Yet they give us some place to start. Please get on to the blog and comment, edit, revise, etc. I’m just putting up a first draft with the expectation that we’ll all add our thoughts in the coming weeks.

We all decided to share ideas via this blog, although we recognize that time is scarce these days. Linda noted that her case study approach is ‘emergent’ by nature but there may be ways for her to help teach Suzanne and I more about doing case studies in the classroom.

I think this is the jist of what I remember from our conversation. Suzanne and Linda, please add in your thoughts. Although time is scare to meet, our hope is that this blog will allow us to interact and continue to share ideas on 3068.

Have a super weekend.

Caryn

Hey, let’s look at our calendars to find another date to have coffee. There is a college faculty meeting scheduled for next Thursday at our original time and I will be in Denver that day collecting data for a project – so, let’s not meet:)

How about 1:00 Thursday the 2nd of April or Tuesday the 28th or 30th? Spring Break is in there and I have a Zicklin faculty meeting on the 23rd, so that days out.

But, let me know and we’ll plan ahead . . .