Rationale and Objectives

This assignment is based on the assumptions that: (a) your study of organizational communication will be enhanced by teaching course concepts to others, and (b) your future organizational activities will likely include instructional training activities.

This assignment is designed as a means for you to:

1. receive practice selecting and using a variety of instructional strategies in the presentation of course materials (and participating in training activities as part of a presentation team).
2. evaluate your performance by preparing a written evaluation of your group’s presentation (and assessing your individual contribution to the overall group effort).

Assignment

You and fellow group members will be responsible for using a variety of instructional strategies/methods to facilitate a class session (at least 60 minutes). You will be assessed based on the overall quality of the class as well as your individual contributions.

Preparation of Instructional Session

Decide which concepts within your reading deserve attention in class. Find a short (news) article that you think complements the material and develop sufficient instructional activities to lead the class through those concepts. Your group presentation should include a mini-lectures interspersed with group activities and discussion, and review.

Class outline

1. Introduce your question of the day or learning objective.
2. Address learning objectives via modules in which students first receive content (e.g., a mini-lecture or video) and then an activity.
3. Conclude with a recap of main question and a end of class activity (outstanding questions, quiz, 3-minute paragraph, etc.)

Active learning

• Make use of significant active-learning exercises.
• Provide pauses in content via student-active breaks:
  1. Pair and compare
  2. Reflection/reaction paragraph
  3. Pair/group and discuss, etc. (Nilson 2010, pp. 118-120).
• Prompt High-order thinking
  1. Move beyond Bloom’s knowledge/remembering towards analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
  2. Review teaching moves (Nilson 2010, Exhibit 11.1 pp. 108-11)

Beware

• Technology frequently does not cooperate.
• If you prepare visuals – many of the best teachers don’t – keep it simple, short, and focused on content.
• Extraneous visual or audio elements hampers learning.

Handouts

• If you choose, you may hand out partial notes with content based questions.
• This means a general outline so students can focus on content and higher-order thinking within a frame/structure of the class.

Evaluation

Each student will receive an assessment based on the quality of the group presentation complemented by their individual contribution.

• As a group, you will be assessed via the criteria in the instructor evaluation form. This includes things such as selection of concepts, effectiveness of instructional techniques, overall organization, and balance of contribution.
• As an individual, you will be assessed based on your own evaluation of the group and your contribution to it.