Category Archives: This blog

3068 Brain Storming

Hello Everyone:

I hope this post finds you all well and surviving the semster!

This is a long overdue blog about a recent brainstorming conversation Suzanne, Linda, and I had about 3068. My hope is to share some of my recollections of our conversation and then, Suzanne and Linda please chime in . . .

Bob and Jana, we met in March to continue discussions about the philosophy and goals of 3068 as well as just to ‘compare notes’ and share ideas. Although we haven’t been able to meet again lately, we hope to continue this dialogue.

Part of our conversation was a discussion of the various backgrounds we all bring to our teaching of 3068.

Our backgrounds span the fields of organizational communication (coming from the communication studies discipline), management communication (coming more from management studies), and business communication (a combination of communication studies, management, and english, and others). And, because of this, we all come at the class in ways that are both similar and different.

One way we came to this realization was through a comparison of teaching materials. For example, I use the Miller book, partly because it is written by an organizational communication studies scholar and reflects what i know. Suzanne has used other books in the past, but has been experimenting with Miller as well. Linda’s background and expertise draws her to Argenti’s text, particularly its case study focus and inclusion of crisis communication (one of her specialties).

We have also compared TOCs – there is a great deal of topical overlap between these texts; there are also differences with respect to the theoretical ideas being presented and history of ‘the field’ (as they vary) being presented. We all see strengths in both of these resources.

Yet we also talked about the need to reduce overlap between 3068 and, for example, 3102 as well as the pre-req management classes that are a part of the program. We also talked about the need to continue to develop a course that fully brought together a focus on *communication* with respect to management and organizing. What makes this class different, unique, and/or special in relation to other classes which may also talk about issues of leadership, conflict, etc. in the workplace?

I am putting up (as soon as I send this) a ‘working’ draft of a course philosophy emerging out of these conversations. The goal of this philosophy is for us to come together on some broad goals we want to accomplish in 3068, understanding that we may (probably will) get to these goals differently. Yet they give us some place to start. Please get on to the blog and comment, edit, revise, etc. I’m just putting up a first draft with the expectation that we’ll all add our thoughts in the coming weeks.

We all decided to share ideas via this blog, although we recognize that time is scarce these days. Linda noted that her case study approach is ’emergent’ by nature but there may be ways for her to help teach Suzanne and I more about doing case studies in the classroom.

I think this is the jist of what I remember from our conversation. Suzanne and Linda, please add in your thoughts. Although time is scare to meet, our hope is that this blog will allow us to interact and continue to share ideas on 3068.

Have a super weekend.

Caryn

Welcome Back

So I hear that Jana is back with us and that Linda Lopez and Bob Myers have joined The COM3068 blog. I thought I would take a moment to welcome both Jana back to work and Bob and Linda to the blog and reiterate a few points about the blog and how it might function as a point of reference and discussion about the Managerial Communication course, COM3068.

At this point there are 6 of us connected to this blog. Caryn, Linda, myself, Kevin Wolf (Instructional Technologist), Jana and Bob.  All of us can post, edit and upload documents or other media to this blog. I invite anyone to post their thoughts and reflections on the COM3068 course or just about theories and concepts related to managerial communication in general, or even on teaching and learning.

At this point in time the blog is closed and can only be seen by the six of us. Though I would like to open it to the larger Baruch community I will keep it closed until the general consensus is ready to have it open for others to visit and in return for us to have Feeds and information from other faculty blogs here at Baruch. One issue was that there might be sensitive material or even exams and quizzes that students might be able to see if the blog were no longer password protected. However, for future reference we can password protect various elements or reference pages of the blog and have the rest of the blog open.  This is all for further discussion.

For the moment I want to draw your attention to the right hand upper corner on the blog where it is marked pages. Each one of the Pages are evolving reference spaces where we can go to retrieve information and documents to help teach or research various elements of the COM3068 course. Anyone of us can add to those Pages and or create a new page. All one needs to do is go to Site Admin all the way on the bottom right of the blog home page and click on it. Then put in your password, the one you used when you signed on as  a member of this blog. You will then have the possibility to click on Write a Post or Page. The rest is basically like writing a word document, to add an image or a document there is a small Add Media button on top of the text box. Click on this and jut follow the directions. If anyone has any problems just give me a call.

That’s about all I have to say for now, I am hoping that this is more of an open discussion blog and that it is not me and my direction alone that will guide the use of this blog as a reference for the development of the COM3068 course. Because if it is….We’re in big trouble…:)