Major Assignments and Class Projects

From one perspective, communication across the curriculum has seemingly contradictory goals.  On the one hand, CAC assumes that each discipline has its own communicative conventions and standards, and it promises to improve students' communicative abilities in the discrete disciplines. On the other hand, CAC suggests that communication-writing and speaking-has a cross-disciplinary status, and it indicates that practice in one discipline will improve communication in another.

These two facets of CAC do not necessarily contradict each other. The contradiction is only apparent, for the two facets of CAC-one that values discrete disciplines and another that values a universal communicative ideal-belong to two different levels of communication.

The first level is that level of the disciplines.  Each discipline has its rules, conventions, standards, approaches; each discipline exists as a specific "culture" that follows specific modes of speaking and writing.

At the second level, the rhetorical level, all the disciplinary cultures share common features-particularly a concern for the speaker or writer's role and interaction with the audience, and treatment of the subject.  Though various rhetorical acts of the various disciplines will use different patterns, these diverse patterns will all emerge from the three aspects of all rhetorical acts.  When students learn to "juggle" these three aspects of communication in one discipline-and juggle them with a critical awareness of how they are juggling them-they will be able to communicate more effectively in other classes than if they did not have that practice.  In other words, while conventions may not be transferable across disciplines, the basic rhetorical principles, once learned, are transferable.  As they move into new disciplinary areas, students may not yet know what their conventions are, but they will understand the rhetorical principles (about audience, form, style, etc.) that will help them ask the right questions and thus keep them ready to learn.

In addition to rhetorical concerns, the disciplines share subject concerns.  A bachelor's education is, after all, designed to produce individual students who have training in particular fields but also a community that shares common knowledge and draws upon the individual members' expert knowledge. The university-as evidenced by the core curriculum-is an institution that draws its intellectual strength from the same apparent contradiction that CAC has.  

The words of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus may well explain this productive tension between discrete disciplines and a university community, between particular modes of communication and general communicative facility.

Humans "should speak with rational awareness and thereby hold on strongly to that which is shared in common-a city holds on to its law, and even more strongly.  For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law, which prevails as far as it wishes, suffices for all things, and yet is something more than they," Heraclitus explains.   One law comprises all human laws, Heraclitus asserts.  Nevertheless, each group of humans should never depreciate or sacrifice its particular laws.  "The people," he argues, "should fight for their law as for their city wall."  Because each distinct set of  laws belongs to the over-reaching Law, people must defend their standards; to fail to do so would mean diminishing that Law that governs all.

A successful CAC program will employ a philosophy similar to that of Heraclitus.  A successful CAC program will allow discrete disciplines and departments to erect their "city walls," as they are wont to do anyway.  A successful CAC program will encourage each discipline to "naturalize" students, training them in the ways of their "cultures."  However, a successful CAC program will also gather these disciplines together and encourage each discipline to recognize its inclusion in the greater community of a university and recognize the other modes of communication used across, or, as David Jolliffe prefers, throughout the curriculum.

Like those whom Heraclitus counsels, instructors who decide to associate their courses with the CAC curriculum should not sacrifice their modes of communication, the rhetorical standards that they and their disciplines use and prize.  They should fight for their city walls.  If you do decide to employ CAC principles, you will not have to abandon the course that you have regularly taught or its assignments.

Instructors who want to make their courses communication intensive without sacrificing course content, should, nonetheless, re-assess their course assignments (i.e., the prompts) in light of the goals of a CAC program.  The CAC program emphasizes the importance of teaching students how to communicate effectively rather than simply assigning (demanding) projects that require effective communication.   Consequently, you should consider designing assignments that guide students through their projects.

Erika Lindemann suggests that students often fail to meet instructors' expectations because the students do not sufficiently comprehend these expectations.  "How would you react if an administrator on whom your job depends insisted that you respond in writing to the following invitations?":

Ø       "My School"

Ø       Write a letter to one of your students' parents

Ø       Describe the top of your desk

Ø       Only ten percent of the students in our department fail their . . . courses

Ø       Assume that you're about to be fired. Defend yourself

"If your job really depended on completing these five assignments," Lindemann continues, "you'd have every right to be angry.  You've got very little to go on.  You've no idea what the criteria will be used to evaluate your responses, and each assignment raises so many questions you'd scarcely know where to begin" (A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers 191-192).   When instructors design communication projects, then, they should provide their students with a place to begin.

This "place" is the rhetorical situation-which involves the role of the communicator, the audience, and the subject.  When instructors present assignments they can provide students with situations for their writing; they should define the rhetorical context;  and they might consider changing the rhetorical context from the teacher-student-course material to a situation that students might encounter outside of the classroom.

Bean argues that providing well defined and interesting rhetorical situations will improve student communication:

. . . instructors can influence the thinking and writing processes of their students by varying such aspects of the assignment as the audience, the rhetorical context, the writer's assumed role, the purpose, or the format.  When planning assignments, therefore, teachers need to consider not only the learning goals they have set for their courses but also the thinking and writing processes that they want to invoke in their students as learners. (Engaging Ideas, 77)

In each assignment, you should try to include the following information:

Ø       A description of the rhetorical context that "sets the scene" for the students and provides them with a profile of their audience and its expectations

Ø       A task statement that (1) clearly and succinctly describes the completed project and the students' goals and (2) identifies a due date and submission guidelines; the task statement should be the essence of the assignment, which the students can easily recall as they develop the project

Ø       An explanation of the process or stages that the students should follow and a schedule with target dates

Ø       A list of the grading criteria that you will use to assess the students' work, to which students can refer when revising their projects

Ø       A brief pedagogical discussion that explains the assignment's purpose and value and relates the assignment to other work in the course

An effective assignment will likely improve students' communication projects because they will define a communicative situation to which the students can respond.

Even a perfect assignment will not work wonders, however.  Again, most of the responsibility for effective communication belongs to the students; and they will need to respond to well-designed assignments, which might require more work than an ill-designed one.  But if students do take the assignments seriously and place themselves in the situation that an assignment creates, they will likely produce better work than if they had a prompt that simply told them to write an essay or a report.  "The trouble with most school writing is that it is not genuine communication," Nancy Martin, et al.. "When adults write they are usually trying to tell someone something he doesn't already know; when children write in school they are usually writing for someone who, they are well aware, knows better than they do what they are trying to say and who . . . evaluate[s] their attempt to say it. . . .  [T]he teacher is seen as an assessor and not as someone interested in being communicated with" ("The Development of Writing Abilities" in Landmark Essays on Writing Across the Curriculum, ed. C. Bazerman and D. Russell [Davis, California: Hermagoras Press, 1994], 45).

Almost all, if not all, communication assignments can be easily transformed into assignments that create writing situations. Just make sure that your current assignments do more than ask students to respond to a task.  Change your current assignments so that they ask students to communicate. This small change can sometimes word wonders for a course, and as students have more practice responding to good assignments, their ability to communicate and think critically will develop appreciably and measurably.

The development of written and oral abilities-especially proficiency in writing-is partially a ludic activity: People learn to communicate effectively by playing with language and language conventions, exploring similarities and differences among modes of communicating, and, of course, synthesizing novel approaches whose novelty interestingly conveys information.  To encourage students to engage in this ludic aspect of communication, you might including some alternative assignments in your course work.  Alternative assignments are particularly beneficial in Core Curriculum courses.

The Core Curriculum at SIUC has the following aims:

Ø       To expose students to the universe of human knowledge and to provide perspective across disciplines in an academically challenging course of studies

Ø       To improve communication and numerical literacy

Ø       To develop students' critical and analytical abilities

Ø       To encourage intellectual maturity through interaction with instructors and peers

Ø       To enhance understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures and environments

Ø       To prepare students for ethical and responsible citizenship

Core courses provide a foundation for and unify the undergraduate degree.  Yet students often do not understand how a course in one area will benefit them in their majors, in their careers, in their lives.  As Christopher Thaiss explains, students often identify core courses with unessential work, choose them with little care or interest, and, consequently, resist them.   Since students often approach these courses with little interest, instructors could try to integrate these courses with the students' interests.  "If faculties genuinely believe in the usefulness of the general education requirements, then they need to find ways to (1) help students see the work as meaningful and (2) include definite choices that students can make within the course structure" (Christopher Thaiss, "WAC and General Education Courses," in Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs, ed. S. H. McLeod and M. Soven [Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1992], 88-89).

The communication projects that instructors assign in courses might be one place to display the value of a course and encourage students to make personal choices that involve them with course material.  Alternative assignments can greatly enthuse disinterested students.  When instructors change the modes of communication for some assignments in a core course, students will more likely be able to see how the material in a course will benefit them, they will more likely enthusiastically participate in class work, and they will more likely take knowledge from the course and apply it in their major areas.

Below are some examples of alternative assignments.  Many of these approaches to communication assignments would serve as effective steps toward producing a specific genre of communication for a discipline.  You could use these assignments as graded assignments that prepare students to write projects that display proficiency in a discipline's favored methods of communication. They could easily be adapted for David Jolliffe's Inquiry Contract and, therefore, do not have to replace your discipline-specific assignments.

Cross-Disciplinary or Intertextual Assignments.  One of the easiest ways to enthuse students about course projects, to promote their acquisition of information, and train them in the effective modes of communication is to allow them to treat subjects that are connected to their interests. Encourage students to connect class material with work that interests them the most and to treat the consequent hybrid topic in course projects.

For instance, if an astronomy student were taking a literature course, that student could be encouraged to combine the study of celestial bodies with literary analysis. The student might, for example, analyze the thematic role that constellations play in the drama of Shakespeare.  Some other examples are

Ø       a math student in a classical philosophy class explain the mathematical theories of the ancient Greek philosophers and their contemporary significance

Ø       a literature student taking a marketing class might use a favorite text to develop a marketing campaign for a certain product

This cross-disciplinary approach may also be extended to modes of presentation; students could be encouraged to present course material in a method that interests them or that they can effectively use. This approach to assignments is useful in courses in which instructors want the students to learn the material and render it useful and do not necessarily view discipline-specific communication as a priority.

For example, a student may have a difficult time writing a literary analysis of the Odyssey because he or she is unfamiliar with the conventions of literary criticism. Such a student could be asked to write a letter to the hypothetical producers of a cinematic Odyssey who plan to remove the Cyclops episode from the film because it is too gruesome.  The student could support or oppose this expurgation in a business letter in which he or she uses textual evidence to argue that the episode is not essential to Odysseus's story or is essential to his story.   A history student could write a similar letter in which he or she argues that setting a Shakespearean drama in a certain time-period is or is not effective.  Here are some other examples:

Ø    a public relations student in a history class develops a damage-control presentation for a historical error or a speech for a historical figure after an important event

Ø    a psychology student in a literature or history class writes a psychological profile of a character or historical figure

Newspaper Reports or Newsletters.  A dominant mode of communication in contemporary society is news reporting.  The late twentieth century is an information age in which news programs fill prime time television hours and newspapers, news magazines, and news webpages abound.  News reporting has even become a standard in business; businesses from single stores to international enterprises use the newsletter as a way to inform employees and attract customers. Consequently, news reporting's popularity as communicative mode has endured, if not grown.

This popularity of news reporting could be incorporated into a course.  As a way to prepare projects or to study for tests, students could write news reports or even class newsletters.  In their reports, they could take an issue in the class and present it as news, using the standard methods of newspaper reporting.

For example, in a Western Literary Tradition course, a student might write the following report when the class reads Dante:

CITY OF DIS, NETHER HELL-After nearly four years of construction at an estimated cost of 750 million souls, Corpadverticus, the new 10th circle of Hell, finally opened its doors Monday.

The Blockbuster Video sponsored circle, located in Nether Hell between the former eighth and ninth levels of Malebolge and Cocytus, is expected to greatly alleviate the overcrowding problems that have plagued the infernal underworld in recent years. The circle is the first added to Hell in its countless millennia history.

"A nightmarishly large glut of condemned spirits in recent years necessitated the expansion of Hell," inferno spokesperson Antedeus said. "The traditional nine tiered system had grown insufficient to accommodate the exponentially rising numbers of Hellbound."

Adding to the need for expansion, Antedeus said, was the fact that a majority of the new arrivals possessed souls far more evil than the original nine circles were equipped to handle. "Demographers, advertising executives, tobacco lobbyists, monopoly law experts retained by major corporations, and creators of office based sitcoms . . . represent a wave of spiritual decay and horror the likes of which Hell has never before seen," Antedeus said.

Despite the need for expansion, the plan faced considerable resistance, largely due to the considerable costs of insuring construction projects within the Kingdom Of Lies. Opposition also came from Hell purists concerned about the detrimental effect a tenth level would have on the intricate numerology of Hell's meticulously arranged allegorical structure. In 1994, however, funding was finally secured in a deal brokered between Blockbuster CEO Wayne Huizenga and Satan himself.

(Excerpted from The Onion [http://www.theonion.com/onion3408/tenthcircle.html])

The Inferno example represents a thematic expansion of Dante's story.  But the news reports could be written to convey "facts" and synthesize course material:

West Point, N.Y.-In a treasonous act that could have ended the fight for American independence, Benedict Arnold, the general in command of forts along the Hudson River, today deserted American forces.  Arnold, who likely had plans to betray the forts to the British, fled the West Point installation late this morning on the British ship the Vulture.

 

Two unrelated (and apparently chance) events seem to have saved the installations:

·         last night patrols in New York captured Arnold's messenger

·         this morning General George Washington, Commander in Chief of American forces, made a surprise visit to West Point

 

The arrest and the visit helped American forces narrowly escape the loss of the valuable military posts

 

In an afternoon press conference at West Point, the most valuable fort along the Hudson, General Washington related the events of the last 18 hours, urged Americans not to lose faith in their fight for freedom, and assured American forces that they are not in jeopardy. Washington claimed that American forces would not pursue the Vulture.

The newsletter would expand this mode of communication. Students could, for example write a newsletter for Plato's Academy.  The newsletter would particularly benefit students in courses in which students engage in a significant amount of labwork or fieldwork.  Students could design newsletters that explain recent experiments or investigations and relate them to course material.  Students could then collect these newsletters at the end of the semester and use them to study for tests.  The newsletter would especially help students synthesize course material and discover themes that link various aspects of a course.

Magazine Articles and Profiles. Magazine feature writing is an effective way to encourage students to see connections between course material and the world outside the classroom. When students write news features for popular magazines, they will be forced to make the material that they are discussing interesting to and useful for a contemporary general audience.  This assignment could be used in most classes:

Ø       A student in an anthropology class who is doing field work might write an article for the weekly news magazine

Ø       A student in a film class might write a eulogistic filmography of Stanley Kubrick's work for an entertainment magazine

Ø       A student in a fashion design might write an analysis of the return of the capri pant for a fashion magazine

Ø       A sociology student might write an analysis of the growth and passing of the neo-swing movement for lifestyle magazine

Ø       A student in an engineering course might write an analysis of new mountain bike frames for an outdoor magazine

This magazine article assignment is particularly useful for students who tend to adopt and abuse the jargon of a field.  Though the apprehension and use of a discipline's language is essential for successful communication-and playing with this language is important-students sometimes produce work obscured by technical language.  The magazine article aids students in developing clear prose because they are forced to write about their subjects so that readers who are educated but not experts in the  field can understand the information and find it useful.

If you decide to use the magazine feature in a class, you should have students conduct interviews.  The interviews will improve the assignment in four ways:

Ø       Students will strengthen their oral communication skills and learn an important research tool

Ø       Students will contact experts in the field with whom they might develop relationships

Ø       Students will have to synthesize large amounts of material that they gather from their sources and fairly represent the views of the people they interview and their own ideas

Ø       Students will develop the ability to integrate quotes and attribute material smoothly, since magazine articles generally avoid stilted, jerky quoting that students too well re-create in imitation of academic writing

Instead of a magazine article about a general topic, students could write a profile of some person in the field.  Each student could write a profile of a professional in a field, explore a facet of the subject's life, and relate this facet to course material.  This article would have the same benefits of the magazine article, but students could compose it early in the semester because the piece will focus on a person, rather than a topic, and students will not need expertise in the topic.  In fact, a profile early in the semester might help students discover topics for later projects because the people they interview will likely talk willingly and openly about their work, carefully explain information, and possibly suggest interesting topics worthy of research and manageable in a semester's time. 

Dialogues. Developing writers and speakers often have difficulties making arguments or adequately explaining material because they do not sufficiently examine their subjects.  In the process of developing communication projects, debates can be used to encourage students to assume multiple perspectives and use these perspectives to enrich their work-and the valuable process of refutation can be employed as a final communication project .

Ask the students to develop dialogues in which two parties who disagree discuss a topic.  Students in a criminal justice class might, for example, write dialogues in which the two characters discuss the use of video recordings in police interrogations.  Students could use fictional characters and cite material from a variety of sources, or they could use two real people and cite their work.

John Bean offers the following example for a political science class:

Write a short dialogue (two or three pages) between a neo-elitist power theorist and a pluralist. First, take the role of the neo-elitist (be an intellectual son or daughter of Ganson) and explain to this poor, unenlightened pluralist the meaning and importance of the concepts of predecision politics and the mobilization of bias. Respond to this radical fluff in the role of a Yalie pluralist. Continue the dialogue by alternating roles; be sure to respond in the role of one theorist to the arguments raised by the other. (Engaging Ideas 129)

Bean argues that dialogue projects give students a chance to explore material and discover ways of looking at a subject.  "The freedom from traditional thesis-governed form, as well as the necessity to role-play each of the opposing views in the conversation, often stimulates more complex thinking than traditional argumentative papers, in which students often try to reach closure to quickly." The dialogue might serve as the Exploration Project in David Jolliffe's Inquiry Contract.

To improve student's oral communication, you could actually have students develop their dialogues in teams, act the dialogues out, and record them.  The students then would submit a written copy of the dialogue and a video or audio tape of the dialogue.

Webpages.  Communication-related employment has significantly increased in recent years as a result of the Internet, and webpages are a popular form of communication that continue to grow in popularity.  But webpages are not only popular; they are powerful tools for learning.  Because webpages let writers incorporate images and connect a series of documents through "hot" words, writers in the electronic environment can avoid rigid, hierarchical texts that make it difficult to present a large body of information. To encourage students to develop useful communicative skills and to address complex issues in their work, instructors might allow students to design webpages for a course project.

If you decide to allow students to compose a webpage for a course project, you do not need to teach the student how to write HTML codes or use a webpage program.  Easy-to-follow guides abound on the Internet, and easy-to-use programs are available on university computers and on the Salukiware disk.

Presentations.  Both the academic and the business world require large amounts of public speaking-and presentations are a regular feature of any professional landscape.   Conference presentations, training sessions, proposals, and even simple weekly meetings require presentations.  And, in most environments today, such presentations are not a simple affair: to retain a contemporary audience's attention, speakers must not only speak well; they must also incorporate a variety of visual and textual aids.   Instructors could provide students with an opportunity to learn these skills by requiring them give oral presentations of course projects.

To facilitate these presentations and promote the effective use of presentation tools, you might consider scheduling presentations in a computer lab or acquiring a computer that has an overhead projector or a television connection.  Many students might enjoy using a computer presentation program, such as PowerPoint, and the incorporation of text and pictures with an oral presentation will encourage them to see the connections between writing and speaking.

Like the dialogue, this project could be used as an exploratory text. Students could give their presentations before they compose their final projects (like course papers) and incorporate people's questions, objections, and suggestions in their final work.  The presentation would provide students with opportunities to test their ideas on an audience.

Documentaries or News Reports.  Contemporary students belong to a visual culture in which cinema  and television are dominate modes of communication.  In recent years, interest in visual communication seems to have grown and developed.  The availability of home video cameras and the growth of the independent film industry have increased young adult interest in film.  Today, many young adults do not merely wish to "consume" films; they wish to make them.  And any class could tap this interest in film and allow students to create documentaries in which they investigate or explain course material.

The popularity of primetime news programs suggests that preparing a documentary or a new report would be useful.  Students could imitate formats used on 60 Minutes or 20/20 or longer documentary films.

This assignment would benefit students because they would need to combine oral and written communication skills.  A student who plans to create a successful documentary cannot simply let the camera roll.  He or she would need to develop a narration and integrate interviews and shots into a carefully orchestrated account that would appear in the finished project.  Like the magazine article, the documentary or news report would help students learn the important craft of integration.

Here are some examples of how the documentary assignment could be used:

Ø       students in a science lab (biology or chemistry) could create a documentary about their dissection of a specimen or the about a chemical reaction that they investigated;

Ø       students in an anthropology class could document their fieldwork;

Ø       students in a sociology class could create a documentary in which they examine a particular local culture; and

Ø       students in an environmental studies class could create a documentary that assesses the recreational use of a local lake.

This alternative assignment, like the others, does not have to replace a more standard assignment.  Rather, you can use it to enthuse students about their topics, encourage them to explore their topics, and to work with their ideas and modes of presentation before they draft their final copy of a major course project.