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What are past projects in SOTL at UW--River Falls?
Project #1, 2004-2005
Project #2, 2004-2005
Project #3, 2004-2005
Project #1, 2003-2004
Learning to Interview for Journalism
by Dr. Sandy Ellis, Journalism
This study examines a variety of techniques used to teach college students enrolled in news writing classes about interviewing technique. I collected data in our introductory media writing course over three semesters with the most recent data collection occurring in early October. The objective is to determine which methods are more effective when it comes to teaching students the vital journalistic skill of interviewing.
There were three sections of the course each semester. All three groups
received the same handout of interview tips and discussed it during
lab. The first group participated in a common technique for learning
about interviewing; they practiced interviewing one another during the
lab followed by discussion about the process.
The second group was assigned to role-playing scenarios and the students
observed one another conducting interviews with an actor brought in
specifically for the role-paying exercise. Each interview was followed
by group discussion.
The third group was divided into 2-person teams. Each team was assigned
to interview a specific person on campus (who was contacted in advance
and agreed to participate in the interview) during the lab period. Each
team planned their questions, conducted an interview (audio-taped) and
returned to the lab. The class listened to the tapes, heard the teams
comment on their interviews and, as a group, discussed the experience.
Following the exposure to the interviewing process the students were
assigned to do a newspaper feature story. It required them to gather
information and interview people they didn’t know before writing
the story. After turning in the assignment, they completed the post-test.
The students completed a voluntary pre-test prior to the exposure to
interviewing techniques and information and a post-test after they have
conducted interviews for a class assignments. The same questionnaire
was used for the pre and post-test. It consisted of demographic information
and 10 questions that required the students to check one of five answers
ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The questions were
designed to indicate their comfort level and confidence in their ability
to interview, along with the extent of their knowledge about interviewing.
There were two additional questions on the post-test: Which of the teaching
techniques used to prepare you for interviewing (interviewing tips handout,
textbook, lecture, role-playing during lab) were helpful and
What would you recommend we include in the future
when teaching students to interview?
While I have not had an opportunity to analyze the data on their comfort
level and confidence in their ability to interview, I have read all
the student responses to the open-ended questions about the teaching
techniques and the degree of helpfulness. Many students urged more role-playing
and practical experience in interviewing. A number were adamant about
the necessity of hands-on preparation before they interviewed sources
for their newspaper feature story. There appears to be strong support
for more interactive learning as opposed to the traditional lecture,
textbook and handout system often used in the past.
Proposal
for the Project
in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
at UW-River Falls
Spring, 2003
“Audience” in Business Communication:
Understanding the Role of Audience
as a Generative Concept and as a Critical Tool
in Student Communication Practices in English 266, “Business Writing”
David Beard
Assistant Professor, Department of English
UW-River Falls
Summary of the Project
Effective business communication in any genre and in any medium requires
sensitivity to the needs of audience. That sensitivity requires a larger
leap than the platitudes of business communication pedagogy presently
allow: “the you-attitude” is only the first step toward
becoming an effective business writer.
Students enter into a business communication course with
pre-established notions of audience. These definitions come from experience
in other courses (from public speaking courses; also from journalism,
mass media, advertising, composition and marketing communication courses).
None of these definitions are adequate to the complexities of audience
in business writing; students must relearn a more sophisticated concept
of audience to become successful business communicators.
This project sets out to investigate what students already
know about audience as they begin the semester in English 266, Business
Writing. As the project progresses, I will ascertain how well new ways
of envisioning audience are assimilated as students progress through
English 266. At the end of the project, I will assess the ability of
students to use “audience” as a productive tool (useful
for the generation of text) and as a critical tool (useful for the analysis
of business communication).
The end results of this project will be:
(1) an oral presentation about “audience”
in business communication suitable for presentation
--at the next annual joint meeting of the Wisconsin Council of Teachers
of English / Wisconsin Communication Association (in Appleton in 2004)
and
-- to next year’s SOTL Reading Group;
(2) with luck, a publishable article about audience in business communication;
(3) with luck, the beginnings of a course proposal for academic year
2004-2005 or 2005-2006 which explores audience as a critical and generative
tool for business and technical communication, journalism and mass media,
literature and theatre; marketing, advertising and art.
And, of course, in addition to these outcomes so essential to the Scholarship in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, I will also generate a better learning experience for my students as a result of the research and reflection made possible under this grant.
Audience is a Concept Key to Business Communication
Business communication is often taught in the way that
knitting is taught: as a series of repetitive exercises, designed to
create reflexes in the student. Instead of developing knots in yarn,
the exercises in business communication courses develop reflexes in
a set of genres of business writing. Students learn to construct memos,
letters and reports by formula and by wrote.
Certainly, this pedagogy-by-wrote has its uses: students feel immediate
achievement, as they grasp the various genres and receive a foundation
for most everyday business writing. This pedagogy can be successful.
But an approach centered on genres is not as effective as an approach
which is rhetorically informed.
Rhetorically informed pedagogy for the teaching of business communication
begins not with a repetitive learning of genres, but instead by fostering
sensitivity to audience. At its most hackneyed, this sensitivity to
audience is reducible to the business writing cliché, the “you-attitude.”
This cliché encapsulates advice to write memos, letters and reports
with an eye toward meeting the needs of the reader – putting the
reader’s needs first. Clearly, this approach has many virtues,
too – the “you-attitude” has staying power and is
responsible for many successful beginning business writers. However,
it does not go far enough to help produce a rhetorically sensitive business
communicator.
These standard approaches to the teaching of business communication
are inadequate, in my opinion, because they do not account for the full
complexity of business communication, and (more importantly, for the
purposes of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) because they do
not account for the complexity of student assimilation of the notion
of audience in business communication. Students cannot take on “the
you-attitude” without a firm sense of the “you” involved
– the audience of business writing. As I will demonstrate below,
teaching students about the audience of business writing is more complex
than these approaches allow.
This project in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning enables me
to investigate the complexities of teaching the “you” in
“the you—attitude.” This project lets me explore the
teaching of audience as a generative and as a critical tool as part
of the teaching of business communication.
Audience: A Primer
Audience is a complicated concept; many different schools of thought
have developed complicated vocabularies for the discussion of audience.
Numerous fields claim audience as a concern: the mass media areas of
film, theater, radio, television and journalism; areas related to speech
communication and oral contexts, such as oral interpretation and debate;
and disciplines that apply theories from these domains, such as law,
politics, psychology, and advertising. . . . Audience and its related
construct, the reader, are also important in the fields of rhetoric
and composition, literary theory, and education and reading. (Porter,
“Audience” in The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition
[New York: Garland Publishing, 1996] 43)
To the extent that students enrolled in English 266 have learned some
of those vocabularies, they may interfere with the assimilation of concepts
of audience essential to success as rhetorically sensitive business
communicators. Here, let me survey a few key ideas behind audience,
derived from many disciplines. These key terms will be part of my exploration
in this project in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
-- Audience as Physically Present: In oral communications courses,
the audience is commonly described in terms of their physical presence.
For example, speakers are encouraged to arrive at speaking engagements
early to assess whether their vision of the audience matches the physical
realities of the audience.
-- Audience as Consumer, Demographically Constructed: Coursework
in marketing communications and in mass media will lead students to
understand audience in terms of large-scale demographic features (age,
gender, income), like the audience of a television show.
Neither of these common conceptions of audience is relevant
to most forms of business communication.
The model of oral communication fails to account for the persistence
of and circulation of documents, as they move from one reader to another
in a workplace. Students have an incredibly difficult time imagining
what in business writing is commonly called the “secondary audience”
– the audience who reads the document after its has been read
and approved by the primary audience. There is no analogy in oral communication
for this secondary audience, and so students who have internalized this
model for audience are less successful than students who have not internalized
this model
The model of audience used in mass media fails to address the
specificity of audiences in the workplace: demographic data like age
and race may matter less in a workplace than job title or designated
responsibilities within the institution. Students who conduct an “audience
analysis” based on these models find them unhelpful for guiding
writing.
Other, more nuanced definitions of audience are available and are summarized
in the first appendix. Some of these more nuanced definitions of audience
will come into play in this SOTL project; some will not, though they
may come into play in the course in “Audience” that I would
propose.
The Steps to the SOTL Project
This project is completed in four phases. An additional phase moves beyond this SOTL project to potential new course development.
Phase One: Outlining Present Practices
In the first phase (June 2003), the current course (English 266, as
it is presently taught) is scrutinized. The course, as it is taught
now, is taught within a broadly liberal arts perspective. It takes as
its core the development of the student in the identity of a professional.
As such, it asks students to engage the following tasks (among others)
-- Identify a professional association in their field
-- Identify career paths and career resources in that field
-- Represent themselves as members of that field through construction
of a job application package
-- Conduct a project (typically a feasibility study) in that field;
conduct research in that field; write project-related business correspondence
in that field; draft the feasibility study
-- Research the code of ethics of a professional association in that
field; assess whether that code of ethics appropriately addresses their
future communication behaviors in that field
Each of these steps is designed to allow the student to explore membership
in a professional community, both from a very practical perspective,
as they learn communication practices in that field and from a humanistic
perspective (as they explore who they are and what values they hold
as members of that community).
This approach creates a high level of student investment
in the course.
-- Students see the relevance of course assignments to their professional
goals.
-- Students enjoy the opportunity to explore their new identity not
as students but as professionals.
This approach is successful, and I have no intention to abandon it.
However, it does not give adequate space for student growth in the rhetorical
sensitivity outlined above. This SOTL project is designed to help me
create that opportunity in the course.
Phase Two: Researching Audience and Redesigning
English 266
July, 2003 will be spent researching audience as a critical concept
in rhetorical, media and literary studies with an eye toward revising
English 266. A substantial portion of the materials budget assigned
to this project will be spent collecting materials about audience (books,
articles, etc.).
Beginning in August, I will begin redesigning English 266 to account
for greater sensitivity to audience. That redesign may include some
or all of the following steps:
Integrate an oral presentation into the course. Such
integration would serve four purposes:
o Integrating an oral presentation into English 266 will make manifest
the limitations of a primarily oral model for audience for written business
communication.
o Integrating an oral presentation into English 266 will make visible
the problem of secondary audience caused by the persistence and circulation
of documents in the workplace.
o Integrating an oral presentation into English 266 will make manifest
my professional commitment to Communication across the Curriculum (CAC),
which demands that all courses address written, oral and visual communication.
I am committed to this movement and committed to the belief that this
integration works to student benefit.
o Integrating an oral presentation into English 266 will give me an
opportunity to draw upon my own expertise in Speech-Communication and
to build connections between English 266 and the Organizational and
Professional Communication Major offered by SCTA (in which English 266
can count as an elective).
Integrate more effective audience analysis worksheets
into each writing assignment. At present, I do assign brief audience
analysis worksheets for major assignments. However, these worksheets
are superficial and do not account for the rich meanings of audience
necessary for effective business communication. My research this summer
should help me redesign effective audience analysis worksheets, appropriate
to the most current thought in audience studies.
ß I will attempt to design these worksheets to be distributed
to students and submitted by students electronically. These worksheets
will constitute much of my “data collection” for this SOTL
project, and electronic submission will make the process of collation
and analysis of data much easier. I have familiarity with text analysis
software (having used “NUDIST,” software which allows for
the coding of text and statistical analysis of such coded answers);
should that approach be appropriate for analysis of the data in collected,
I am prepared to conduct such analysis of electronically submitted texts.
Integrate audience as a critical tool, in addition
to its existing role as a generative tool. Presently, I use audience
analysis as a prewriting tool, for directing research and drafting and
as a revision tool, for preparing final copies of the text for submission
to me. I would like to introduce it within the course as a critical
tool – a tool for critically reading sample business reports,
correspondence and professional publications. This course revision requires
two steps:
-- Effective selection of a range to texts appropriate to the diversity
of majors enrolled in English 266 (to maintain the sense of relevance
which is so appealing to students).
-- Effective design of activities using “audience” as a
critical tool for analysis of these texts.
Develop course materials (an addition to the course
website; an addition to the course e-reserves) which make these ideas
about audience manifest to the students.
Phase Three: Implementation
The implementation stage for this project is threefold.
1. Apply for Human Subjects approval. Because I intend to publish the
results of this project, I will seek approval from the appropriate Human
Subjects committee to collect data from the 2003-2004 sections of English
266.
2. Teach the course as redesigned for four sections over the year (two
in each of Fall and Spring semesters).
3. Collate the information collected on student performance, preferably
electronically (as noted above). I hope, especially, to assess whether
an understanding of audience as used to generate and revise text can
translate into an understanding of audience as a key for textual analysis.
Phase Four: Publication and Peer Review
The results of this SOTL project will be submitted for peer review in
at minimum three forums:
o If invited to do so, I will present preliminary results to the next
year’s SOTL reading group, in Spring 2003.
o Based on preliminary results, in December 2003, I will propose a presentation
to the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English Language Arts / Wisconsin
Communication Association joint annual conference (held in Spring 2004)
on Audience as a Critical and Generative Tool. (Undoubtedly, I will
come up with a catchier title.)
o I will revise the course portfolio to document the best of the revised
practices, for integration in the SOTL project’s plans for peer
review.
o With luck, I will generate a paper which draws on the rich participation
of scholars in Communication Studies in SOTL, to discuss audience as
generative and critical tool in business communication courses. I count
myself lucky that fellow members of the National Communication Association
have made SOTL a priority; my article will enter an existing conversation
on SOTL in my field.
Moving Beyond: New Course Development
I am attracted to audience analysis as a focal point for course revision
not only because it will improve student performance as business communicators.
I am drawn to it because it represents an interdisciplinary hinge, tying
together work from many fields. That makes it particularly useful in
a course like English 266, which attracts students from CAFES, CBE and
CAS – an interdisciplinary student body.
I would like to imagine that the very interdisciplinarity of “Audience”
makes it an attractive option for new course development at UWRF. This
new course could serve a broad population, across the University, in
much the way that English 266 does, but with very different educational
goals.
If this SOTL project is successful, and if “Audience” proves
itself as a useful hinge for reconceiving English 266, I would propose
a full three-credit course in “Audience” at UWRF, designated
(ideally) as a Topics course in three Departments [English 289/489;
SCTA 2XX/4XX; MarComm 2XX/4XX]. The approach to “audience”
in such a course would be distinct from the discussion of “audience”
in English 266 for two reasons:
o Such a course would allow deeper discussion of the varieties of “audience”
discussed in Appendix One, including those not immediately relevant
to business communication. Much research on audience in mass media,
for example, is not immediately relevant to business communication as
taught in English 266, but would be essential to a course on Audience.
o Such a course would allow discussion of a greater variety of texts,
including advertising, political discourse, scientific and technical
discourse and literature (in addition to business communication).
I believe that this course could fill several needs in a variety of
programs at UWRF.
o The interdisciplinary Minor in Professional Writing needs a solid
course on Audience, as a framework (or synthetic experience) for the
work conducted in other courses in the Minor.
o The Marketing Communication Major needs advanced electives; I believe
that a course in Audience would enhance the Major’ strength as
a program uniting the liberal arts tradition with practical skills for
today’s workplace. Audience is a concept that has both immediate
practical utility and yet offers opportunity for humanistic reflection.
An active attention to the varieties of audience listed in Appendix
One will create more sophisticated marketing professional with a more
flexible communication repertoire.
o Audience is a central topic of reflection in several strands of research
in Speech Communication: rhetoric, business communication and mass media.
As such, a course which took audience as its central topic would fit
nicely as an elective in three tracks of SCTA curricula at UWRF: the
Organizational & Business Communication track, the Speech-Communication
(General) track and the Media track.
o The major tracks in English could benefit from a course which takes
concepts central to literary studies (specifically, the emphasis on
the work of the reader or audience in the processes of interpretation
at the heart of reader-response theory) and ties them to broader rhetorical
concepts. Audience is the hinge that ties broader issues of literary
history and theory with rhetorical theory and practice.
Clearly, the Department of English has made an informal commitment to
the centrality of audience even to creative writing, in supporting the
publication of The Literary Magazine Review (itself, in the end, a kind
of audience analysis of literary publications).
Clearly, acceptance of this SOTL project is not a green light to new
course development. The administrative hurdles between the beginning
of this SOTL project and the design and approval of a new course are
many. However, I end this proposal with this discussion because I want
to illustrate that a rethinking of audience need not end with an improvement
to one course, taught by one instructor. It can lead to a positive contribution
to a variety of programs, across the university.
Conclusion
In this proposal, I hope that I have described a project which is able
to be completed within the SOTL timeframe and within the SOTL budget.
Further, I hope that I have described a project which both serves the
goals of the SOTL project at UWRF (including participation in next year’s
group and its goals for peer review) and serves the goals of the University
(bringing visibility to UWRF by producing texts for peer review at a
state conference and in a peer-reviewed publication). Finally, I hope
that I have demonstrated that my SOTL proposal can have a positive impact
not only on the targeted course (English 266), but may (with work, cooperation
from colleagues and luck) have positive benefits for a variety of programs.
Appendix One: How Do We Define an Audience?
There are many ways to define an audience; this appendix surveys several
of them and connects them to business communication.
∑ Audiences Are Physically Present: In oral communications courses,
the audience is commonly described in terms of their physical presence.
For example, speakers are encouraged to arrive at speaking engagements
early to assess whether their vision of the audience matches the physical
realities of the audience. This understanding of audience is essential
to business communication as taught in courses like SCTA 116; it is
less central to English 266.
∑ Audiences Are Consumers, Demographically Defined: Coursework
in marketing communications and in mass media will lead students to
understand audience in terms of large-scale demographic features (age,
gender, income), like the audience of a television show. This understanding
of audience is helpful for projects involved in business communication
to the public (the production of annual reports, for example), though
it is ultimately less useful for interoffice communication.
∑ Audiences Are Users of Text: Documents in business communication
are sometimes closer to a menu or manual than to an essay; business
communicators benefit from envisioning audiences as “users”
(and drawing from work in the field of technology which studies “usability”).
The context in which this perspective was developed was new media communication;
it is equally appropriate as a metaphor for print business communication.
∑ Audiences Take a Variety of Passive and Active Roles in Responding
to a Text: Classical rhetoric, as defined by Aristotle, sets out three
types of audience for a text: the passive spectator, the active judge
(who must evaluate arguments made in a text) and the interlocutor (who
actively engages the communicator in a dialogic relationship). Assessing
the level of active response implied in a text will help guide students
in a course in business communication.
∑ Audiences Are Constructed by Text: Certain models of rhetorical
and media studies emphasize the power of texts to construct audiences:
to tell audiences who they are and what their values are.
o In rhetorical studies, this claim is manifest in Edwin Black’s
notion that the ideology of an audience will be manifest in the language
of a text.
o In literary studies, this idea is roughly translatable as “the
“audience invoked” or “implied reader.” Walter
Ong, for example, discusses the reader type that a written text assumes,
which provides a role (and a set of values and an identity) that real
readers can accept or reject.
This notion of audience is less useful to students as a generative tool
for writing than as a critical tool for reading and analyzing sample
texts in business communication.
∑ Audiences Are Makers of Meaning: Both scholars of media studies
and of literary studies have developed theories of audience which place
the audience at the center of the meaning-making process.
o In literary studies, this turn is called “reader-response,”
and has resulted in studies of how students interpret literature.
o In media studies, this approach results (for example) in studies of
audiences of media texts and of the ways that they appropriate those
texts for their own creative production.
The basic insight of reader-response theory is always valuable to writing
instruction. The turn taken by media studies (in studying the work of
audiences in appropriating mass media texts) is not immediately relevant
to business communication, except to note that public documents are
sometimes subject to satire in much the way that fan fiction satirizes
mass media texts (for examples, see AdBusters.com). But this type of
activity is outside the realm of business communication as taught in
English 266.
∑ Audiences Develop and Change through the Text: Scholars of rhetoric
(especially Chain Perelman) have placed great emphasis on the ability
of language to effect change in an audience: to alter their beliefs
and move them to action. The process of persuasion, after all, means
recognizing that an audience is not unchanged as a discourse progresses.
This insight is essential for students in business communication, because
much business communication involves changing the predisposition of
the reader to action and calling them to act – enacting precisely
this kind of change.
∑ Audience as Absent: Rhetorical critic Philip Wander argued that
determining the audiences absent in a body of texts could be as important
as determining the audiences invoked. The perspectives not addressed,
the values not appealed to – these are grounds for critical analysis
of texts. Clearly, this is a perspective of value to students of business
communication, as they analyze the texts of a corporation or workplace.
Production of this web site is made possible by a grant in SOTL provided by OPID (the Office of Professional and Instructional Development) and by matching funds provided by the Office of the Provost at UW-RF
Created by James Bryant MacTavish / Updated on Friday, December 17, 2004 6:01 PM
