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By the End

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By the end of my Interpersonal Communication course (COM110) a student should be interpersonally compotent. Duh.  Clearly, survival in a social world depends greatly upon the extent of interpersonal competence, and its requisite communication skills, that a person can demonstrate across a wide variety of situations and episodes. Interpersonal competence is when a student knows and demonstrates the appropriate and effective management of interaction among people ( NCA Interpersonal Outcomes ). For a student to be appropriate they must be able to demonstrate standards of propriety and legitimacy in certain contexts such as 1) friendships, 2) romantic relationship, 3) family, 4) work and 5) organizational.  For a student to be effective is for them to show they can obtain valued outcomes relative to the constraints of the context they are in. They should be able to assess themselves (their self) and other interpersonal skills in the context of conversation. Their skills should be d
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Death of Expertise?

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I am thinking about the flipped classroom. Last week a teacher asked me to reflect on the challenges I encountered with flipping my classes. Challenges? We sat in a group with other teachers charged with trying new teaching methods.  I answered the teacher's question.  I said, although I flip parts of my course, I don't flip all of it.  I found the flipped classroom fun, but flipping all of it was like erasing my expertise from the class as a content professional. I spent a lot of time becoming an expert in Interpersonal Communication, and Performance, so turning over the class to discussions with students, peer-to-peer teaching, team activities rather than lectures, felt like the death of expertise.  Tom Nichols' book, The Death of Expertise: the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters, reminds me of our need for balance in education and how the digital revolution (social media, and the internet) have helped to foster a cult of ignorance.  That doe
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Location: Phoenix, United States
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Escape Room

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I was challenged to create an Escape Room activity with my flipped classroom in my Interpersonal Communication course (COM110). What a challenge! I did not know where to begin. I found a few web-resources, and I thought I would share them with you, dear reader.  I imagined a group of students locked in the classroom, where the only exit was a key, hiding in the answers of various puzzles. It sounds like the start of a horror movie, but for my students it could be a fun activity over the chapter. I looked at a few Escape Rooms for a general sense of the design. The rooms aren’t just conveyor belts of puzzles. They’re also stories, with plots and characters, either portrayed by recorded voices and movies or by live actors. As this is my first Escape Room, I wouldn’t be hiring any actors. Save that for next time. First, the creators of the first Escape Room recommend starting with a story and characters. I decided to create a story from the components of the textbook for the Interperso
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Location: Phoenix, United States
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Doing the Chat

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Flipping a course can be one of the easiest pedagogical methods I use to make my courses unique. This .method maybe why many of my students stay in the class. My low drop rate might be connected to the scaffold of smaller flipped activities I build into each module. At home the students watch short videos and answer questions about what they identify in the video with the theory or the concept. Or they do the chapter reading and watch a PowerPoint lecture, then come to class prepared to discuss key questions posed in the lecture.  One of my favorite flipped techniques is Chat Stations. The activity reminds me of kindergarten with Stations, and the timer, and rotating from station to station.  For the Chat Stations on Perception 101 I set up six stations with grouped tables, and sets of discussion questions for each. One station concerns self-disclosure, another is presentation of self on social media,  another is a gender introduction table, and another is masks and face, and so
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Spread A Little Sunshine

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   Research on the brain has shown that emotion plays a key role in learning, but how can we as educators apply that research in our day-to-day interactions with students? Are we using emotions to help students learn? What are some teaching strategies that take advantage of what we know about the brain? When I was a kid I was not rich. Nope. I grew up in Western Nebraska for some time, in a trailer park.  We didn't have a lot of stuff.  I had my favorite shirt, my favorite shoes, and yes, my favorite bow-tie. I didn't need much. I didn't bore easily. Grandma gave me crayons.  The story I was told was we were so poor Mom couldn't afford paper. I didn't care. I colored on all of the trailers in the park. Was I the first graffiti artist in McCook? Just some crayons, and some encouragement, praise, and I was happy coloring on walls. The encouragement struck a match of joy in my soul. Some forty years later, I wonder, did the praise, gratitude, and joy help
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Training Hides Training

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  In a poem, one line may hide another line, as  at a crossing, one train may hide another train.  That is, if you are waiting to cross t he tracks, wait to do it for one moment at l east after the first train is gone. And the same is true when you read. Wait until you have read the next line— Then it is safe to go on reading. So always standing in front of something the other As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas. One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide.  In love, one reproach may hide  another, One small complaint may hide a great one. One idea may hide another . This is true  in the laboratory as One invention may hide another invention, One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows. One waits at the train tracks until the trains pass, These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses.  One teacher, one doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass. Y
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PBL--

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 The Stanford University Newsletter explained several aspects of PBL that require specific skill sets that go beyond subject matter expertise. In regards to that info: Identify which of these skill sets are your strengths.   Identify which of these skill sets you feel are your weaknesses. Consider how you can improve in your weaker areas. Building a Culture in a Classroom: For one who studies culture I know that there are four components necessary for culture to coalesse: the same language, a symbol, rites and rituals (structure), and norms of behavior. These come together over time, and the students need to develop these together, not just forced upon them by the teacher. I offer a structure to keep the 75 mins the same from class to class, and the norms of behavior are spelled out in the syllabus (attendance, time, polite, etc.). Language is a new struggle. If the students do not speak English proficiently then they have a high communication apprehension (CA) and a rel
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