Designing a speech course for teacher education students

Designing a Speech Course for Teacher Education Students

The objective of this work is to examine redesign of the current teacher education program at the University of North Dakota. There is interest in developing a speech communication course that would pertain specifically to teacher education students. The goal of this research is to review current literature in this subject area and specifically the current strategies in teaching generic speech communications 101 and then to tailor it specifically towards the teacher education student. This work will list the strategies, methods and skills required to become a more effective teacher.

EFFECTIVE SPEECH COMMUNICATIONS

Effective speech communications are critically necessary in the teaching initiative and this is noted in the work of Joan Middendorf, Director of the Teaching Resources Center and Alan Kalish, Associated Director, Teaching Resources Center, at Indiana University who state that "Instructors and students often have the same mental image of how a college class works: The professor talks (lectures); the students usually listen and occasionally write something in their notes. " (2007) However, according to Middendorf and Kalish, as "teaching consultants visiting a great many classes" they state that what they have found the actuality to be appears somewhat differently. It is noted in Middendorf and Kalish's work that: "Not infrequently, we observe students having lapses of attention. And we've found it's not enough to tell faculty with whom we are working about the problem. They're often aware of it already. One explanation for the lapses in students' attention is that the 'information transfer' model of the traditional lecture does not match what current cognitive science research tells us of how humans learn." (2007) Research has shown that information must be reduced into "meaningful chunks [of information] that we call categories..." As the human brain "does not record information like a videocassette recorder." (Middendorf and Kalish, 2007)

Middendorf and Kalish relate that: "Learning consists of fitting this reduced information into already existing categories, or, sometimes, of forming new ones. Categorization determines how a concept is acquired, how it is retrieved from memory, and how it is put to work in abstracting or generating inferences." (2007) Research shows that the attention spans of students are approximately 15 to 20 minutes and "that university classes are scheduled for around 50 or 75 minutes" making it a requirement that "instructors do something to control their student's attention." (Middendorf and Kalish, 2007) Some of the activities suggested are adoption of a "varied approach...and deliberately and consistently interspersed their lectures with illustrative models or experiments,...short problem solving sessions, or some other form of deliberate break...usually commanded a better attention span from the class, and these deliberate variation had the effect of postponing or eliminating the occurrence of an attention break." (Johnstone and Percival, 1976; p.50; as cited in Middendorf and Kalish, 2007) Middendorf and Kalish state by "planning exactly when to insert an activity, you can make sure your students pay the most attention..." (2007)

The following methods are suggested:

1) Student Generated Questions: Write a Question the simplest of these techniques: instead of saying, "Are there any questions?," ask each student to write down one to three questions they have about the material just covered in class. Then ask several (volunteers at first) what their questions are and answer them (or get other students to answer them). Writing their questions down gives them all a chance to work out what they really do not know and seeing the questions in writing helps them feel authorized to ask them.

2) Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning: Show students a set of generic question stems (see samples below). Each student writes down questions about the material just covered in class. They need not be able to answer their own questions; the purpose is to generate discussion.

3) Press Conference: Alone or in pairs, students generate press-conference style questions to ask you or a panel of students who had been assigned to prepare on the topic.

4) Exam Questions: Alone, or in pairs, or groups of three, students write an exam question about material just covered in class. (They should follow the format of your actual exam - essay, multiple-choice, etc.) After a brief time for discussion, you select at least four groups to report their questions to the whole class. Write these on the board and ask other students to critique them (give specific criteria). You can collect all of the questions in writing; use the best ones on the exam!

6) Send a Problem: Each team member writes a review question on a card and her teammates try to answer it, writing their consensus on the back. The cards are then passed to the other teams for their answers.

7) Student-Developed Cases: Alone or in small groups, ask students to develop a case (a fictional situation which presents a problem) based on the theory of the current topic. This can be done in class, as homework, or both. The class should then discuss several of the cases.

8) Minute Papers: At the end of a class or a section of material, ask your students to write for a minute or three. Questions such as "What was the most important point of today's class?" Or "What question do you still have about this material?" give you important feedback about the students' comprehension and a useful starting point for the next class.

9) Think (or Write) - Pair - Share: Pose a question which requires analysis, evaluation, or synthesis. Each student thinks or writes on this question for one minute, then turns to the person next to him to compare ideas. Then the pairs share their ideas with some larger group (pairs of pairs, section of the class, or whole group).

10) Paired Discussions: In three or four minutes, have students discuss something with the person next to them: summarize class so far; react to theory, concepts, or information being presented; relate today's material to past learning; etc. Make your question as specific as you can

11) Practice Exam Question or Homework Problem: Give the students a sample exam question or homework problem for practice. Either works quite well with more quantitative problems. Ask several students at random to report their answers to the class. Giving the students a chance to practice the type of questions they might see on homework assignments or examinations will give them more confidence when they have to work them alone.

12) Finding Illustrative Quotations: Alone or in small groups, ask students to reread the text for the day to find quotations to support a specific position. You can have all groups look for support for the same position or several different ones.

13) Concrete Images: To help students to make specific references to the text, go around the room and ask each one to state a concrete image/scene/event/moment that stands out to them. List them on the board. Follow up by having them find themes or patterns, missing points, etc. Then discussion can move to analysis with a common collection of facts.

14) Brainstorming: Help students to see what they know by recording all of their ideas, recollections, etc. On the board. Ask students to call out any ideas they have. Write the ideas down first without analyzing them, then move to critical discussion.

15) Buzz Groups: Give one or two prepared questions to groups of three to five students. Each group records its discussion and reports to the whole class. Then help the class synthesize the groups' answers.

16) Roundtable: A brainstorming technique in which students take turns writing on a single pad of paper, saying their ideas aloud as they write. Each tries to add to what has already been said.

17) Truth Statements: Ask several small groups to decide on three things they know to be true about some particular issue. This is useful when introducing a new topic which students think they know a great deal, but their assumptions about it need to be examined. (18) Picture Making: Choose (perhaps with help from class) several principles or questions which could be illustrated. Groups of four or five students each illustrate one on the board or on large chart paper. Each group explains its picture to the class, followed by discussion.

19) Kisses and Crackers: To overcome the flagging of attention, when you notice energy and attention diminishing, pass out crackers and Hershey's kisses. The professor who taught us this technique tells us that research in "accelerated learning" shows that eating about once per hour actually promotes learning. Not only does the food wake students up, the mere act of passing the bags around changes the activity and refocuses attention. He says that this also helps students feel good about his class and him and to overcome science anxiety.

20) Structured Controversy: Class members (or groups) to take different positions on an issue (you can assign positions), discussing, researching, and sharing their findings with the class.

21) Reaction Sheet: After presenting a controversial topic, pass around several sheets to collect written reactions to these three questions: "What ideas do you question," "What ideas are new to you," and "What ideas really hit home?" Follow up with discussion. Variations are to ask each student to write their own sheet or to have small groups do so. (22) Value Lines: Students line up according to how strongly they agree or disagree with a proposition or how strongly they value something. This gives a visual reading of the continuum of feelings in the group. Next, sort students into heterogeneous groups for discussion by grouping one from either end with two from the middle. Ask students to listen to differing viewpoints in their groups and to fairly paraphrase opposing positions.

23) Forced Debate: Ask all students who agree with a proposition to sit on one side of the room and all opposed on the other side. Hanging signs describing the propositions helps. It is important that they physically take a position and that the opposing sides face each other. After they have sorted themselves out, switch the signs and force them to argue for the position with which they disagree.

24) Role Playing: Ask several students to take on the roles of participants in the situations being studied, characters from a novel, historical figures, representatives of political or theoretical positions, science foundation grant evaluators, etc. To reduce the students' fear, you might allow them some choice as to how involved they get, asking for volunteers for major roles and allowing some roles to be played by groups of students. You might also give them some time to prepare: a few days outside of class to research their roles, 15 minutes to confer in small groups, or five minutes to refresh their memories. Also, the definition of the roles and their goals must be clear and concrete.

25) Student Self-Evaluation: Have the students write a brief evaluation of their learning. After an essay (or project) have them answer the following: Now that you have finished your essay [or project], please answer the following questions. There are no right or wrong answers; I am interested in your analysis of your experience writing this essay [or doing this project]. 1. What problems did you face during the writing of this essay? 2. What solutions did you find for those problems? 3. What do you think are the strengths of this essay [project]? 4. What alternative plans for this essay [project] did you consider? Why did you reject them? 5. Imagine you had more time to write this essay [work on this project]. What would you do if you were to continue working on it?

26) Slides, overheads, pictures; Video clips; Music or sound: Use a brief selection of a medium to provide a shared example or experience as a basis for discussion or analysis. Follow these guidelines for active viewing or listening

27) Pre-viewing or listening: Introduce the video/film/sound by providing an overview of its content, a rationale of how it relates to the current topic being studied, and a reason students need to know about it. Direct student attention to specific aspects of the presentation by asking them questions to answer following the presentation.

28) Viewing or listening: You do not need to show all of a video or film, nor to play an entire song; just the relevant parts, for best use of class time and greatest impact. It may also be useful to stop the presentation at appropriate points for discussion or clarification.

29) Post-viewing or listening: Follow-up a video or film with an activity that allows students to respond to or extend ideas presented. Discussions, short writing assignments, or application exercises, for example, will reinforce the concepts and increase learning from classroom audio-visuals. (Middendorf and Kalish, 2007)

II. TEN THINGS a TEACHER CAN DO

The work of Bridget Smyser relates that there are 'ten things a teacher can do to spice up a lecture' as follows: (1) Start the lecture with a demonstration that students will be asked to explain in writing at the end of the class; (2) Stop the lecture after 15 minutes and give the students a problem to work on in pairs; (3) Bring in a physical prop to hand around; (4) Stop the lecture in the middle to ask questions. If the students don't have any, ask them questions that test understanding; (5) Do an activity that involves the students physically. One example is to give every student a paper clip and have them bend it until it breaks. This illustrates fatigue loading in a very concrete way; (6) Have students turn in 'minute papers' at the end of class stating one thing they learned and one unanswered question. Then READ the responses and act on them; (7) Give a short quiz in the middle of lecture, and go over the answers immediately afterward; (8) Get out from behind the podium! Walk around as much as possible, and interact with as many students as possible; (9) Use computer simulations, video clips, pictures, graphs - anything that appeals to the visual mode of learning. Remember, a picture is worth 1000 words!; (10) Have everyone stand and stretch in the middle of lecture. At least it wakes them up! (Smyser, 2006)

III. TEACHING and LEARNING in COMMUNICATION STUDIES

The work of Sherwyn Morreale entitled: "The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Communication Studies and Communication Scholarship in the Process of Teaching and Learning" states that "the communication discipline enjoys distinct advantages when engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Because communication is central to teaching, communication scholars have longstanding interesting both in teaching their own field and in the role of communication in instruction more generally. Despite these advantages, the nature of communication itself can present challenges to scholarly examination, and as in other disciplines, the study of teaching and learning in communication is often relegated to second-tier status and not sufficiently rewarded." (2001) it is noted in the work of Huber (1999) that "although many disciplines work with a traditional set of teaching practices, they have not yet developed a critical discourse with which to study these practices." (Morreale, 2001) Morreale states: "Perhaps because communication processes are so central to teaching, the discourse of communication scholars has historically included discussion of the basic communication concepts to teaching and learning." (2001) Morreale relates that Staton-Spicer and Wulff (1984) in a "comprehensive review and synthesis of research...identified over 186 empirical studies published from 1874 to 1982 in communication journals. Those empirical studies, plus the many that have been produced since 1982, reflect a strong tradition of scholarly discourse about both communication education and curricula and instructional communication issues as they apply to multiple disciplines." (2001) Morreale additionally relates: "Scholarly discourse about teaching and learning in the discipline continues today in popular publications like Communication Education, the Basic Communication Course Annual, and the Communication Teacher. These publications address such topics as teaching the basic communication course, teaching interpersonal and small group communication, reducing communication apprehension, public speaking and methods of providing criticism of student speeches, and teaching organizational, health, and political communication." (2001) According to Morreale: "Instructional communication continues to expand its focus and impact. With increasing globalization and diversity both in and outside of college classrooms, for example, a rich strand of scholarship and discourse has emerged that examines the intercultural dynamics of classroom interaction. In addition, as the possibilities for using technology in teaching and learning have grown, we have begun to investigate how technologies are radically redefining the quality of educational interaction across disciplines, for both good and ill. Beyond research, many scholars in the discipline have led campus efforts to broaden the impact of what we know about instructional communication. Besides the large number of communication faculty who have formal roles in faculty development throughout academia, many regularly serve as teaching consultants participating in communication across -- the curriculum initiatives on their campuses and presenting workshops on communication instruction to their colleagues and teaching assistants from various disciplines. The tradition of discourse about teaching and learning has led communication scholars to suggest that, 'the improvement of speaking and listening skills is both a concern of the total educational community and an area in which the communication discipline is uniquely qualified to make important contributions'."(2001)

It is additionally stated by Morreale: "...we treat communication as a complex, transactional process. We see teaching and learning as shared construction of meaning with students as active participants in contexts defined by multiple goals. At a minimum, communication defines the identities of the participants (teacher and students), their relationships (and their particular instrumental goals (e.g., information sharing, social support, persuasion), to name a few. The success of efforts to learn always depends on the identities and relationships of the participants." (2001) Communication is, according to Morreale (2001): "...directly relevant to the newly minted and critical form of the scholarship of teaching with its focus on learning. Linking large bodies of our "basic" research to the scholarship of teaching and learning is not difficult to accomplish conceptually. The nature of our research on communication practice provides a clear connection between this discipline's primary area of study and the scholarship of teaching and learning." In relation to the 'nature of communication' Morreale states that communication that is considered "effective and appropriate communication is always driven by the context in which one is communicating; and context is a broad concept taking in many variables such as culture, time, relationship of communicators, power relationships, place, and the function or purpose for communicating. Because we under this contextuality and the role it plays, we also recognize that it makes the study of communication more difficult. "(2001)

Morreale relates that since communication is: "...such a defining feature of our humanity, it is sometimes more difficult to isolate, examine, and teach. Communication skill is intellectual, but it also has a strong biological component. People do not communicate by individually scanning through cognitive code systems, but rather by engaging in intricately coordinated real-time performances with others. This coordination often takes place unconsciously, so isolating exactly what to study and what to ignore can be a challenge. and, because communication behavior is habitual and only partially conscious, instructional efforts to make it explicit and break it down into its component parts are often counterproductive. Like the famous centipede who - when asked to explain how it walked - became immobilized, teachers and students, when asked to examine their classroom communication behaviors, can get worse before they get better. Furthermore, communication behavior is never neutral. No curriculum or pedagogy can avoid the ideological implications of the ways communication can be used and abused to perpetuate, challenge, or renegotiate power relationships in cultural and social life. In a diverse, pluralistic, and global society, it is essential that we recognize and begin to address such implications more fully." (2001)