Teaching First-Year Communication Courses

Paradigms and Innovations

Pat J. Gehrke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367139483
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351986526
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In this book, eleven teacher-scholars of communication provide a robust study of the challenges and opportunities facing those who teach first-year communication courses. The first half of the volume offers paradigmatic analyses, including a survey of the ecology of the first-year course, a plea to integrate our first-year courses into our research agendas, a study of the gap between scholarship and pedagogy within rhetoric, a proposal for seven core competencies to unify the various first-year communication courses, and an argument for a critical communication paradigm. The second half details innovations in classroom practice, such as the teaching techniques of social justice pedagogues, team-based learning as a model for the public speaking course, response and feedback techniques in teaching public speaking at the University of Copenhagen, teaching online speech as a new course focused on the unique challenges of digital communication, and the role of oral interpretation and performance classes in the first-year curriculum. Finally, this volume concludes with the editor's manifesto for teaching public speaking.

Understanding the ecology of the public speaking course

William Keith

Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A

ABSTRACT
This essay explores the nested interdependencies and feedback systems that help explain why the “basic” or introductory communication course can only evolve slowly and with difficulty. It considers differences between the basic course and first year composition, and the challenges for bringing them into a closer alignment around a civic theme.

Introduction

The introductory course in Communication (previously Speech or Speech Communication) departments has existed for almost a century. Yet it does not exist by itself, but exists as part of a kind of ecosystem that has stabilized it in relation to various elements. Consider how name changes reflect this fact: it has been called “public speaking,” the “basic course” or the “Intro course,” and includes several variations addressing topics beyond presentation skills. These choices matter, since “basic” takes a particular view of the field (and potentially an anachronistic one at that) as the key system, where the curriculum overall is unpacking the skills and context of the first course, while “Introduction” equivocates between introducing the field, the major and a school-wide skills requirement. So while it commonly has been called the “basic” course (in various versions) since at least the 1960s, the extent to which it is still literally seen as basic, foundational to the curriculum, is an open question. Certainly the vision (common in the 1930s), in which the Speech curriculum grows out of the skills and concepts of the first course, is less generally accepted. In part, the conception of the Communication B.A. degree has expanded, and in part there are competitor courses (Business and Professional, Introduction to Communication, etc.), which are both a cause and a result of the diffusion of the curriculum.

The name has changed, yet in a surprising number of ways, the course (especially in its public speaking variant) is little different from the one taught 100 years ago: three or four speeches in familiar genres, delivered extemporaneously from notecards, requirements for research, grading of deliver, etc. Maybe that is as it should be—but then, do we actually have a choice about the framework or details of this course? Could the course evolve intentionally? How much control do specific schools or individual instructors have? The purpose of this essay is to lay out a framework within with we could talk about the intentional evolution of the introductory course in Communication departments. While its perspective is inevitably partial to the author’s experience and commitments, it aims to embrace the dizzying diversity of U.S. higher education and aims to open a space in which people with widely different commitments and experiences can dialog about where the introductory course is and where it can go.

Such a goal probably requires more questions than answers, and the main question might be: why is the introductory course (still) taught in the way it is, yet why do so many variations on it exist? Just as in a natural ecosystem, variations in the course’s “species” (specific versions or types of introductory courses) emerge in response to different environmental factors. This essay will try to identify main systems that impact the shape and outcomes of the public speaking course, and try to suggest ways of managing the resources and constraints of the system that would allow us to conserve the best aspects of it.

For those who think they can change the course, their obstacle is their impression, easy to fall into as a faculty member or course director, that you can actually change just one or two things at a time. Sometimes that is possible, but for the most part, the systemic interdependencies are both strong and out of view, and so it seems we cannot change the course significantly or only very slightly, because the system is so stable it snaps back into shape in response to attempts at change. My hope is that an ecological analysis would allow us to answer substantive questions such as these:

(1)Why could/couldn’t Public Speaking integrate with First Year Composition?

(2)How difficult would it be for introductory courses to evolve toward the Mt. Oread (civic education) model?

(3)Why do most public speaking textbooks look pretty much the same?

To understand and answer these questions, we need to first consider the general characteristics of systems, and then analyze the main systems of the university public speaking course.

(Eco-) systems

Systems are fundamentally nonlinear. Not just in the mathematical sense, but in the sense that one cannot tell the “story” of a system in chronological way, and they do not produce outputs like an assembly line. Analytically one can start anywhere in the system in order to understand it.¹ It is always tempting to start one’s analysis at a pain point, a place where something seems difficult or broken. But this can lead to a distorted analysis, as if that were the center or origin of the system. Systems problems are not like domino problems, where you can stop the forward progression; systems consist of mutually reinforcing relationships that produce states of the system that are desirable, while they collapse or become dysfunctional when relationships in the system are misaligned or break down.

Elements of a system can only be understood relationally, that is, they exist primarily in relation to other elements, and cannot be explained or engaged in isolation. As indicated, this property of system forbids a simple notion of causality; a picture of causality derived from the physics of mechanical systems must give way to an organic or organismic picture of causality. Any given element or state of the system is coproduced by a (possibly large) number of elements and states. In addition, a system may contain other (entire) systems as subsystems, or be contained itself in a supersystem. Consider a single person’s body as a system. It contains (for example) a subsystem for the digestion of food and excretion of waste, which has biochemical subsystem for breaking down food and transferring nutrition to the rest of the body, but all that is contained in the larger (economic and technological) food production system that allows us to eat.

The normative dimension of a system can be seen through its cybernetic aspect, that is the tendency of the system to return to a specific stable state after a disruption. Feedback (or “cybernetic”) mechanisms are familiar, from thermostats to missiles to the ability of our bodies to fight off infections. Feedback loops can be positive (they increase disorganization or entropy) or negative (they increase or reinforce pattern and organization). For institutional organizational systems, feedback loops may evolve to maintain a system in a state that its creators did not exactly intend, which can result in some frustration. Changing systems can be very difficult, since you have to change multiple relationships and feedback loops simultaneously.

The basic course ecosystem

When we talk about the basic course as a system, it is important to remember that various versions of the course exist. Some are mainly public speaking, some have interpersonal and group experiences folded in (“blend” courses); some are explicitly business/professional communication courses, some have just a bit of that. A few are online. At small schools, where just a few sections are taught, some of this analysis will not directly apply, since public speaking is treated the same way as any other course, not as a widely required general education or skills course.

To understand the systemic structure of the basic course ecology, we should start by identifying its main feedback loops. These are the relationship most likely to change other things in the system. The main feedback loops are money/revenue (both that the course requires and generates), the theme and/or pedagogy of the course, and its relationship to campus stakeholders. The importance of these loops lies in their interconnectedness. For example, the main loop that stabilizes the course is that students take it, and they take it because some unit on campus requires it, but it is only required because the outcomes of the course fit the needs/interest of that unit. Conversely, if it is required, and students are already taking it, then the unit offering it is motivated to align its outcomes with the stakeholders who require it, maybe more than the students who are in it.

A systems analysis positions the components of a system in relation to each other through feedback loops. The primary components for the basic course system (each having, of course, subsystems) are the students, the instructors, the book and the course itself.

Students

The most critical fact about students is their reason for taking the course. Some might be doing it from personal interest, which mean they perceive the aims and pedagogy of the course to fit with their interests, perhaps civic, perhaps professional, possibly personal. Some students will take the course because it is required. Different requirements point to different subsystems in the university, and to different stakeholders. General education requirements typically represent skills and knowledge associated with the Bachelor’s degree, and thus with a goal of producing an educated person, which exists in a loop with public and alumni investments in the university.² In many cases, the basic course meets a requirement for a professional school (for example, Business, Health Sciences or Engineering). These stakeholders exert pressure on the course indirectly, through their connection to the accreditation systems for professional schools, which require the communication skills training that the basic course fulfills.

A tension arises at just this point. What kind of communication is happening? What kind of communication is being taught? The classroom and the rest of life are not really continuous, but we need to tell ourselves a story about how they are connected, and so public speaking courses inhabit the space of “mutt genres.”³ While communication is presumably always in a context (with audience, purpose, etc.) we nonetheless try to teach it in a somewhat decontextualized way, fudging together genres that are general, though we imagine they are preparation for a variety of circumstances. The interests of professional schools can push against this generality (“Teach our students to be skilled specifically in a health/ engineering/ business context”) though these are obviously pretty different contexts to put onto one course. How strongly these feedback loops influence either enrollment (after all, a dissatisfied business school could offer their own speaking course) or pedagogy depends on both the relationship of the school to its accreditor and to the local course.

An example might be ABET’s “EC2000” (Engineering Criteria 2000), the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology’s attempt to reform engineering education for the 21st century. EC2000 asked for engineering schools to feature communication skills instruction, defined in terms of outcomes, at every level of the curriculum. These skills were defined in terms of their relationship to presumably central engineering activities, such as project work and group work (employers found engineers’ communication skills among the “least adequate”).⁴ The needed change could involve an extra communication course specifically for engineers, or changes to the introductory course, or internal changes to the engineering course, possibly not informed by communication research or pedagogy.⁵ At different universities EC2000 was implemented in different ways, depending on the local ecology, including governance mechanisms, personal relationships among faculty, perceived needs of students, resources available, etc.

Students also form a feedback loop to the course depending on their preparation and academic profile. Sometimes they see an important reason for taking the course, and arrive in class with motivation, sometimes they do not. Some may have had a high school course, or experience in forensics, which prepares them well for the course; others may have no experiences, or a stunted K-12 experience that leave them ill-prepared and unmotivated.

Instructors

Instructors matter to the ecosystem of the course in several ways. Since class sizes for public speaking are necessarily smaller than average courses at most schools, a large number of instructors are required. The course may support a graduate program, since teaching assistants can be funded to teach the sections. Without a graduate program, faculty, instructors, or adjuncts/contingent faculty must do the teaching. Some faculty perceive themselves as having “graduated” out of teaching the introductory course, since they taught it as graduate students themselves, so an element of perceived status as professionals may pull faculty away from the course, and of course they are typically much more expensive than TAs or contingent faculty.

Each type of faculty will have different needs in preparing to teach the course successfully. Faculty typically have academic freedom, and can teach the course as they like; this freedom is most apparent at smaller programs with few sections. At larger programs, graduate TAs and contingent faculty will fill instructional needs, and the program may have more structure (to which faculty may have to adapt). TAs present the challenge of being both new to teaching and new to public speaking, while contingent faculty may be new to neither. The amount and level of training needs will depend on the framing of the course and the pedagogy. Sometimes there is a course director, who may function somewhere between a manager and quality assurance expert, keeping the systems of the course aligned. Sometimes there is no central coordinator, and little more than inertia to keep the course going on without changing or evolving.

The role of technology, the number and type of speeches, the inclusion of other types of assignments, the relationship of the course to the learning management system and the textbook, and the overall pedagogy will influence how much structure the training will need to maintain. In some cases, course directors can count on TAs and contingent faculty who all have roughly the same education and orientation to the course; this seems especially true at schools with graduate programs. At smaller schools, in particular junior colleges and technical schools, the course director may have to deal with an assortment of backgrounds and orientations, from theater to media to business. Different disciplinary starting points can produce very different courses. An ex-intercollegiate debater or coach may privilege research and argument,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Understanding the ecology of the public speaking course
• 2. Beyond basic: developing our work in and through the introductory communication course
• 3. The gap between rhetorical education and civic discourse
• 4. The case for core competencies in introductory communication courses
• 5. An unsettled bookcase: a critical paradigmatic approach to connect theory and pedagogy
• 6. Socially constructing learning space: communication theory and pedagogy for social justice
• 7. Team-based learning for the basic communication course: a transformative pedagogical approach
• 8. Practices of response in public speaking: the transformation of revision techniques into oral feedback
• 9. It’s not the same thing: considering a path forward for teaching public speaking online
• 10. The value of literature in introducing performance studies
• Epilogue: a manifesto for teaching public speaking
• Index