Monthly Archives: October 2008

Half Way There…

The Mid Term Quiz is done. I seem to be much more relieved about this then my students. I guess it is all about from which side you look at things. I have now decided to go through with my original plan of teaching this year’s COM3068 in 3 sections. The first was the rhetoric of work, the second is the theoretical approaches to organizational communication. I am giving the students a 2nd paper assignment on this particular section.

For this paper assignment I am experimenting with having the students do some observations using the different theories to get information on aspects or issues in organizational life. An example would be if a student’s company has been giving out rewards to different employees or departments, the student would use Schein’s model of organizational culture to observe what sort of organizational culture this system of rewards creates.  The student could do interviews, observe company meetings about the topic, research past archives in the company and look at other researchers who wrote about similar reward systems.

I think that in many cases this will be interesting and feasible for most students but I do know there are going to be several students who either do not have access to an organizational environment that they can study or they have no idea of how to go about it. So I might also give the possibility of looking at an organization in the news and have the students use one of the theoretical approaches to analyze the event.

I still believe quite strongly that it is through writing these types of papers that the student will learn the content on a deeper level. However, I am still experimenting on how to make these types of assignments work well. Any feedback on this assignment is welcome…

Communication on the campaign trail!

I am finally getting back to a question that Caryn asked weeks ago. She was looking for some ideas and articles for the chapter on technology and the impact on the workplace. But I just realized that the use of Internet and all types of technology are at this very moment redefining the electoral process let alone the current election. And a political party or a political campaign is by definition an organization. The following two links are just simple but real life demonstrations of how the Obama campaign has really gone into the use of technology to reach out to stakeholders of the electorate rarely reached before.

TTY is a very old technology being used in a new way to contact an electorate that has rarely been taken into consideration. And the second is the use of an ipod function, perhaps the newest political campaign tool, just created a few months ago! And it is being used to target the newest of members of the electorate.

I think that we can not ignore the teaching tool that is right in front of us for this entire semester, especially when the political campaigns’ use of new and old technology and communication is fascinating and likely to influence the business world and the greater organizational world for years to come.

I am finishing by adding a link to a post on cac.ophony.org that talks about the same thing, it sort of inspired me towards this conclusion that organizational communication is right in sink with technology and the big political parties. I’ll keep looking for some articles and electronic happenings in the two campaign camps.