So I gave the last class today and I am feeling some mixed emotions about the course this year and mainly my teaching of it. I had a discussion with the students as to how the course was organized and what choice of content was used.

I organized the course in 3 main components, the first being rhetoric and how society has viewed work and labor through the ages and how that relates to today’s globalized workplace. The students then had to write a paper in relation to these concepts and the readings in the course. I wrote an earlier post on this part of the course.  This was a very successful part of the course and the students all agreed during today’s discussion that it was an interesting way to have an over view of the course material to come, and to think about organizations, work and labor as a whole.

The second part of the course was the different theories in organizational communication. I stuck very much to the textbook and went over chapters and lead discussions on examples of the theory in real life situations as well as having the students reading articles and case studies. The students then wrote a 5 page paper applying one of the theories to a case study or an observation in their own organization. I am not fully satisfied with  the way in which I taught and organized this particular component to the course.

The students seemed to like the general way in which the course  went over each theory by itself and then tried to apply it through case studies and articles. But they felt there was way too much theory and that they were overwhelmed at the end. This was demonstrated in an almost 70% failure rate on the mid term quiz.

I would like to rethink this 2nd part of the course and try to make it more functional to the course and the students.

The third and last component was ‘People’; emotion, diversity and the individual in the workplace. I followed some of Caryn’s guidelines for this final part pf the course. The students were very interested and I had  some up-to-date research articles which really worked well, ( I have put them in the reading resources pages). I would have liked to delve more into this area and I think the class would have benefited. However there was not enough time and I am thinking of ways to introduce this component earlier in the semester. But in truth there is never enough time. I also think I should have had  a paper that related to this particular area of content. I had the students do an expanded version of the 2nd paper. but I think now it would have worked better to do another 5 page paper on the third and last content component of the course.

So, I now want to advocate for fewer theories and will seek input from the other Managerial Communication faculty to see which theories are considered to be fundamental to Organizational Communication and which can be left for “Further Reading.”  I also want to examine the quizzes and exams; how can they be easier for the students to learn form as well as standards from which to evaluate the course direction.

I liked teaching this course and I like many of the changes we implemented for this pilot semester. I really continue to advocate for the rhetoric component; I think it starts off the course with a much more conceptual look at the content and the subject matter and I believe it helps the student move into a more academic-critical thinking mode from the very beginning of the semester.

The students were generally very pleased with the course, and I received a round of applause when I told them that I was expecting to see all of them in 5-10 years inviting us -COM3068 faculty-to the companies or political campaigns they have created to give talks and seminars. You see, I am getting some future work for us all.