About the Seminar
To prepare for successful careers or next steps in their education, students must develop both deep knowledge of critical content in their majors, and the ability to communicate effectively, in discipline-specific ways, about that content. Fortunately, practice communicating about content—through writing, speaking, as well as visual modes—is one of the most impactful ways to develop deep content proficiency. But pressures of class size, curriculum, modality, and student expectations (among others) can pose real challenges!
In support of the Zicklin Undergraduate Curriculum Committee’s initiative to assure scaffolded communications-skills development for all BBA students, the Schwartz Communication Institute is organizing a Seminar designed to respond to these challenges. In addition to providing resources and hands-on time to develop new strategies, the Seminar will also afford participants unique opportunities to learn from one another, and from innovative examples drawn from our own colleagues here at Baruch. Together, we will explore strategies for:
- Integrating active learning activities within lectures
- Designing group work that is structured, meaningful, and equitable
- Balancing purposeful writing assignments with manageable demands on the instructor
- Using rubrics, comment banks, and peer review to ensure meaningful, efficient feedback
- Customizing communications activities for class size, from 20 to 200+
- Building an engaged classroom culture and achieving student buy-in for shorter, formative learning activities
The Seminar ran for the first time in Spring 2022 with 39 participants. 77% of participants responded to our anonymous engagement survey after the Seminar and of those, 87% said they “strongly agree” that they are likely to implement something they learned in the Seminar in an upcoming course.
The Seminar will run again this March and April (2024). Following the Seminar’s three sessions, faculty participants will be partnered with a Schwartz Communication Institute Fellow for further individualized co-thinking and support.
Resources
Seminar Slides
Low-stakes Writing and Speaking Activities for Large Courses
Examples of Low Stakes Assignments from Baruch Colleagues
Examples of Higher Stakes Assignments from Baruch Colleagues
A Selection of Shorter, Non-traditional, and Real-world Genre Assignments
Guidelines for Facilitating Meaningful Group Work
Rubric Packet
Peer Review, Self Assessment, and Comment Bank Packet
