+ The textbook is a resource:

We will summarize and discuss chapter material, but we will work harder to synthesize its content with other readings, group projects and individual assignments that students will be completing in the course.


+ The instructor as a resource and facilitator:

While the professor brings a certain amount of practical experience to the learning event, that experience is not nearly as important as the experience learners apply to their own discoveries; the professor will serve to facilitate the greatest depth and breadth of learning possible in the learners.


+ Experience of communication & reading about communication:

It is assumed in this course that there is a difference between practiced knowledge and discussed knowledge. Based on that assumption, these courses are designed to maximize both types of learning, the experiential and the analytical, theoretical and practiced.


+ Multidimensional view of self, learning, and instruction:

These courses are also designed to avoid a uni-dimensional approach to life. Rather, it embraces a multi-faceted, multidimensional approach. Communication will be examined from cognitive, affective, and volitional dimensions. Communication will also be examined from multiple theoretical perspectives, and will challenge the learner to arrive at a synthesis of theory which aligns with their world view, value set, and personal beliefs.


+ Performance oriented:

These courses are intentionally designed to maximize the amount of investment that learners put into the learning experience. This approach (called Active Learning) engages learners more effectively than typical passive modes, such as strict adherence to lecturing. Toward this end, Problem-Based Learning is utilized as an instructional method, incorporating case studies, group discussion, team-based projects, action research, as well as lecture/guest speaker and panel presentations. Projects are designed to allow the learner to apply course principles and theory to what they are doing. Be advised: It is not an easy aspiration when approached from a presumption of knowledge-absorption (i.e., learner sits and passively absorbs their "education"). These courses are intended to get the learner to ENACT communicative skills, and participate in solving common human interaction problems so that they will experience realistic interaction and the strategies we utilize for successful communication. This approach is oriented toward knowledge-application and performance. When it comes to using what you learn in these courses, perhaps in a future job or life situation, that which the learner has not embedded as a skill will probably not be available to them. Besides, theory is just that -- unless you know what to do with it.

Viewing your experience in this course as a job, a working environment with its requisite tasks, schedules, and personal responsibilities is less of a literary metaphor and more of a reality of living. Timeliness is required. Work is required. Quality of work is required for quality rewards. There are no free rides, free lunches or grades owed to a student simply because they are enrolled. There is no sympathy reserved for the one who begins the course knowing these facts and opts-out later with the poorly formed idea that they didn't get what they paid for.

When you interview for a job you may foot the bill for a new suit or outfit, a plane ticket to get to the job site, and funds for your meals, resumes, and hotel. This investment gets you in the door. If you choose to stay in this course, you are likewise "in the door." Staying here is up to you. Doing well is up to you. Not guaranteed to you.

This attitude is a helpful prerequisite for the course. It is helpful because the world will continue to operate by these principles whether a person decides to live by them or not. To those who prepare their attitudes sufficiently for success, and add effort to it (good work, best performance), are usually rewarded with that success. As a rule, people do not stumble onto goals; they achieve them systematically, and it begins from the core of their being (first as a value for that goal, then as an attitude toward achieving it).

Of Stamp Books and Stamps

A contrasting attitude among some students (and teachers) today is what I call the stamp book perspective. This view considers education in tangible terms -- it is what you get at the end when the president or chancellor hands you a diploma. Education, in this view, is what we hang on the wall, what we show to others with a class ring on our finger, what we put at the top of our resume, and the next thing we say at a party when introducing ourselves, "I went to the university of _____________." This sort of student views the process of getting their education in much the same way the middle class consumer uses a stampbook. The "Subway Sandwich" deli recently used this approach, where for every six subs you buy, and six stamps you collect on a card, you are rewarded with a free foot-long Subway sandwich. Gas stations (when they were service stations) used to be famous for giving customers a number of stamps for the number of gallons pumped. The object was to fill up as many stampbooks as possible in order to collect a prize. Once the stamp book was full, the customer turned it in and received a gift of some sort, such as a BBQ, a bike, or picnic basket.

Students subscribing to this view equate coursework with stamps, their transcript with the stampbook, and their diploma with the prize exchanged at the end. Part of the fallout of this blatantly economic view of education is that the student also views the process of getting that education as one of entitlement. That is, they have forfeited a certain amount of money, time, resources and effort to receive a good or excellent grade, and like any other consumer transaction, they then feel entitled to receive that for which they paid. It is education in economic terms, a view of the world as bartering transactions.

Where this worldview becomes a problem for those subscribing to it is somewhere in the discovery that the world does not operate exclusively by this one principle. Yes, economic rules work, and in the realm of money its principles are strong. Some even try the bartering method in interpersonal relationships: I'll do this for you, if you will do that for me. It sometimes takes people years to learn that true romance is not a commodity. Sadly, there are students who never learn that true education is not a commodity.

Problems

One problem arises where students conceptualize learning knowledge as the mere memorization of facts, concepts and generalizations. Fifty facts = 10 points = "B" grade = course "stamps" for my book. Education also involves internalizing values, adopting attitudes, acquiring mental skills, mastering physical skills and developing better habits. We can attempt to quantify learning by observing behavior, but much of what we call education occurs inside a person, and translates into the quality of thinking, reasoning, choosing and appreciating. There is truly a romantic element to education, and it better expressed as poetry and prose rather than point averages and pie charts.

Another problem arises where the attitude of entitlement becomes normalized between student and teacher, or between student and college. This attitude is evident in the working world, and it has made its way into academics. Someone has observed that "we've now got a managerial class that thinks the world owes them a Mercedes, and a working class that thinks the world owes them a pickup truck" (Richard Marcinko, 1996). One's preference for reality does not by itself change reality. When a student comes to the academic experience expecting that their fees, books and time will necessarily produce -- must absolutely result in -- good grades, only to discover that their effort was insufficient, or their aptitude in that field of study is insufficiently strong, or that they were ultimately unwilling to sacrifice for the discipline required to develop certain skills or habits, then the student can become discouraged.

This is a problem because no student should have to suffer a failure experience of this sort. If there is to be failure at all, let it be an honest one: I simply don't have strengths in the area of genetics, let me go explore my graphing and math capabilities and see what can be done there. The discouragement translates almost immediately into more learning and persistence to explore ways to achieve mastery. Instead, when the entitled student fails, it can translate into offense, resentment, even anger. And the results? The results usually are continued poor performance, even worse attitudes, and a lack of achievement.

"I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning." (Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming Human, 1961)

"No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship." (James Comer, Ph.D., Yale U.)

"Truth divorced from experience will always dwell in the realms of doubt." (Henry Krause)

"Practice does not make perfect; practice makes permanent." So practice the right things in the right way. (paraphrased from Major M. L. Carter, USMC)

"Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck leads the flock to fly and follow." (Chinese proverb)