Narrative Overview: Teaching
Since joining the Fredonia faculty in 2016, I have developed and taught courses and engaged in other teaching activities that improve student learning outcomes (e.g., academic advising and guiding undergraduate research). My academic training and experiences as a manager of a successful MN state senate campaign and legislative assistant prepare me to be an effective researcher and educator. Aside from being a dedicated teacher, I am a scholar whose continuous learning informs my teaching. Content found under the "Teaching" heading overviews how my teaching enhances student learning, is scholarly, and is effective. Clicking on the "Teaching" heading above will enable you to see a drop-down menu that lists courses taught & curricula developed, assessments & evidence of student learning, and student development & advising. The drop-down menu also has an option for you to also view my goals for future teaching & learning.
Teaching Developments. Through their feedback, office hour visits, classroom discussions, and emails, I have learned how I can best support student learning. For instance, I recognize that students appreciate the opportunity to offer feedback throughout the semester and participate in open discussion about the progression of a course. Given this, I frequently seek anonymous feedback from students at the mid-term and then make changes to the course as needed. For instance, students in my Communication Theory course wrote on the mid-semester evaluations that they wanted to post fewer blog entries but have the entries they did post be longer; therefore, I rearranged the course schedule so they had fewer blog assessments. Students in Rhetoric & Criticism shared that they were struggling to see the connection between Plato's Gorgias and today. After our conversation, I modified the PowerPoint I use to discuss Plato's Gorgias so that it incorporates contemporary examples that break down complex topics.
Students' Learning. As a professor at a liberal arts college, I remain committed to high standards, individual learning, and transforming students’ lives. I achieve this by serving as an academic advisor, overseeing undergraduate research projects, and adhering to a student-centered teaching model. My approach to teaching and learning reflects my belief that educators should give students the tools they need to be successful citizens and active participants in society. I obtain this goal by creating curricula that cultivate students’ understanding of communication theory and enhances their abilities to reflect upon the power of human symbolic activity. For instance, I use hands-on applications and new technologies to connect course concepts to our daily lives. Specifically, in Persuasion, I use case studies that stimulate in-depth discussion and challenge students’ assumptions about their established values, attitudes, and beliefs. In Rhetoric and Criticism, I incorporate cultural materials like photographs, music videos, and artwork that encourage students to ask questions about the nature and functions of rhetorical communication. Consequently, students learn how to construct and justify reasonable arguments about how rhetoric affects an audience’s outlooks, judgments, and behaviors. Additionally, in all my courses, I provide opportunities for practicing their collaboration skills so that students learn how to accept others’ perspectives, listen to feedback, and respect diverse approaches to completing work.
Attend to and Measure Student Learning . My students and I work together to sharpen their research, analysis, and argumentation skills, and one way I achieve this is through incorporating and breaking down theoretical perspectives. We recently had a lively conversation about Plato’s view of absolute Truth and the Sophists’ belief in relative truth. As I fielded their questions and comments, one student told the class, “My brain hurts, but I think that I understand the difference between Truth and truth.” During a lesson on deconstructing rhetorical artifacts, a student disclosed that she was learning how to read and interpret academic writing because of the course. Their statements affirm my belief that I am helping students gain higher-order thinking skills. I utilize summative assessment tools, such as designing final projects, presentations, and examinations, that ask students to apply theories or concepts to real life situations and ask learners to integrate ideas and their experiences into their projects. As evidence of this, throughout Political Communication, for instance, students learn how to use images that tap into an audience’s collective consciousness to persuade and create political speeches that incorporate appropriate stylistic tones. My favorite assessment measure is learning how students use their new knowledge at their jobs, throughout their interpersonal relationships, and during acts of service, because doing so ensures that students leave the classroom knowing how to be effective communicators. For instance, students in Persuasion shape their presence in the professional world by building a LinkedIn profile that uses content learned in the class. The hope is that by building a profile, garnering connections, and joining groups, students learn how to build a persuasive networking tool that enables them to improve their knowledge and access to industry experts and secure future job offers based on their LinkedIn profile presence.
Connecting Communication Concepts/Research to Other Disciplines. My understanding of different methodologies and theoretical approaches enables me to tie diverse perspectives into courses. For instance, students from the different communication sub-disciplines and majors comprise my Persuasion course. As we examine commercials, websites, and advertisements, I use my background in quantitative methods, media theory, and message effects to help students comprehend theories of persuasion. Regardless of the class, I use cooperative learning activities that ask students to use their background knowledge and skills to connect course readings, analyze messages, think critically, and write clearly while achieving group goals. In all my courses, I create assessments that require students to apply theories and concepts to their lives. Consequently, students see how theories, including Elaboration Likelihood Model, Rhetorical Situation, ideographs, and Narrative Paradigm Theory, appear in a variety of contexts. I also require that students conduct research using the Reed library databases as they complete written and oral communication assessments. In these ways, students demonstrate an ability to integrate conventional classroom learning with the pragmatic, hands-on aspects of a project. They also demonstrate an ability to juxtapose scholarship with praxis. Moreover, my teaching is also scholarly in that as the field of communication changes so too have my courses.
Reflection on Teaching:
Example of Experiential Learning
Since joining the Fredonia faculty, my teaching has developed and changed. I attribute the adjustments to a variety of reasons including my interactions with students and colleagues over the last 6 years, my own learning, modifications in the field of communication, and changes to Fredonia’s student demographic. The courses I teach are theory-focused so I continue searching for ways to help students connect theories and knowledge learned in our classroom to real-world situations. When reflecting on my teaching, I realized that the greatest change I have made has been the incorporation of experiential learning. When I arrived at Fredonia, I noticed that students learned best through hands-on experiences. Students also shared during office hours visits and informal conversations that they enjoyed and appreciated this type of learning opportunity. Through incorporating experiential learning, I found that students gained self-confidence and leadership abilities, a richer understanding of course material, and insight into their own skills, interests, and values. In what follows, I provide an example of how I extend learning beyond the classroom through experiential learning.
An experiential learning assessment provides the foundation for a course that I teach: COMM342: Presidential Campaign Communication (formally listed as COMM359: Special Topics). Early on, I learned that students at Fredonia learn best through hands-on learning. Using Kolb’s (1984) Experiential Learning Theory as a guide, I designed the voter mobilization project such that learning occurred through active, hands-on methods (e.g. activities and projects) rather than through passive learning strategies (e.g. listening to a lecture). The voter mobilization project was an experiential learning exercise in which students took initiative, made decisions, and became intellectually engaged with political communication material. Participation in experiential opportunities has been linked to students’ development of a range of transferable skills (Griffin et al., 2010). For example, the voter mobilization project appears to have helped students hone their abilities to establish their credibility with SUNY Fredonia students and, as one student put it, “provide people with all the facts and letting them make an informed decision.”
Additionally, teamwork is an integral part of workplace success, yet, 36% of managers found that new college graduates lacked interpersonal and teamwork skills (PayScale, 2016). With the goal of developing this particular soft skill, I designed assignments, such as the one featured below, such that a team’s success was dependent upon team members exerting similar levels of effort. In sum, as they made connections between research and real-life involvements, students’ experiences became focal points of learning. A student maintained, “By examining past political data and research conducted on student voting patterns, we created a plan that had both success and failures from which we learned.” Thus, the voter mobilization project emphasized experience as a means for testing the ideas students learned about in the research.
An experiential learning assessment provides the foundation for a course that I teach: COMM342: Presidential Campaign Communication (formally listed as COMM359: Special Topics). Early on, I learned that students at Fredonia learn best through hands-on learning. Using Kolb’s (1984) Experiential Learning Theory as a guide, I designed the voter mobilization project such that learning occurred through active, hands-on methods (e.g. activities and projects) rather than through passive learning strategies (e.g. listening to a lecture). The voter mobilization project was an experiential learning exercise in which students took initiative, made decisions, and became intellectually engaged with political communication material. Participation in experiential opportunities has been linked to students’ development of a range of transferable skills (Griffin et al., 2010). For example, the voter mobilization project appears to have helped students hone their abilities to establish their credibility with SUNY Fredonia students and, as one student put it, “provide people with all the facts and letting them make an informed decision.”
Additionally, teamwork is an integral part of workplace success, yet, 36% of managers found that new college graduates lacked interpersonal and teamwork skills (PayScale, 2016). With the goal of developing this particular soft skill, I designed assignments, such as the one featured below, such that a team’s success was dependent upon team members exerting similar levels of effort. In sum, as they made connections between research and real-life involvements, students’ experiences became focal points of learning. A student maintained, “By examining past political data and research conducted on student voting patterns, we created a plan that had both success and failures from which we learned.” Thus, the voter mobilization project emphasized experience as a means for testing the ideas students learned about in the research.
Presidential Campaign Communication
Voter Mobilization Project
Fall 2016 & Fall 2021
In Fall 2016 I taught a special topics course that looked at presidential campaign communication. The course was a successful learning experience for the students so I made it into a course that I regularly teach (COMM342: Presidential Campaign Communication). In the course, students worked as part of a team to create and executed on-campus voter mobilization campaigns. In addition to designing and distributing print promotional materials, they disseminated their messages through campus media outlets and digital technologies. Click on the bottom left button to hear a group's radio ad that was aired on campus radio stations. Then, click on the second button below to see a group's social media page that featured a video they produced. The group showed the video when they visited classes and attended student group meetings.
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Downloading the two files below will enable you to see mobilization updates that students shared with the class. They identified their group's challenges, successes, and future actions.
In the fall of 2020, the class was moved from in-person to remote. I had to adapt the experiential learning experience to a virtual format. Students still engaged in peer-to-peer learning but it happened through digital media. We met regularly as a virtual class to discuss campaign strategies and hear updates from teams. Click on the button below to read the assignment guidelines from the Fall 2020 class.
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The voter mobilization campaign project is an example of a classroom experience that is informed by my research. I have always had an interest in students being civically engaged and remain up-to-date on "educating in democracy" research. The voter mobilization campaign assignment was a successful experiential learning opportunity that I wanted to share with the larger academic community so I turned the experience into a manuscript that was recently published. Other educators who want to incorporate a voter mobilization campaign into a course will benefit from learning my take on "best practices" for assigning a voter mobilization project.
References
Griffin, J. E. Jr., Lorenz, G. F., Mitchell, D. (2010). A study of outcomes-oriented student reflection during internship: The integrated, coordinated, and reflection based model of
learning and experiential education. University Office Publications, 2. http://reforma.fen.uchile.cl/Papers/The%20integrated,%20coordinated,%20and%20reflection%20based%20model%20of%20learning%20and%20experiential%20education%20-%20Griffin%20Jr,%20Lorenz,%20Mitchell.pdf
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice-Hall.
PayScale. (2016). 2016 workforce-skills preparedness report. https://www.payscale.com/data- packages/job-skills
Griffin, J. E. Jr., Lorenz, G. F., Mitchell, D. (2010). A study of outcomes-oriented student reflection during internship: The integrated, coordinated, and reflection based model of
learning and experiential education. University Office Publications, 2. http://reforma.fen.uchile.cl/Papers/The%20integrated,%20coordinated,%20and%20reflection%20based%20model%20of%20learning%20and%20experiential%20education%20-%20Griffin%20Jr,%20Lorenz,%20Mitchell.pdf
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice-Hall.
PayScale. (2016). 2016 workforce-skills preparedness report. https://www.payscale.com/data- packages/job-skills
Last updated October 1, 2021