CSCA with the Dimensionators: Drew's Experience

Last week our group had the opportunity to share our G.I.F.T with various communication studies professors at the Central States Communication Association conference. This year’s conference was held in Minneapolis, MN and was themed around elevating communication studies. This was my first conference and I honestly I was a bit nervous about attending. However, once we got to the conference my anxiety was gone I was able to thoroughly enjoy the whole experience. It was an exciting and interesting four days; filled with panels, presentations, networking, and a bit of bar crawling fun. While I’d love to share my entire experience, I’ve decided to highlight my favorite moments of the convention.

As previously mentioned a major portion of our trip  was attending various panels. Over the four days, I viewed 5 panels each of which was very interesting and insightful. However, there was one panel in particular that really peaked my interest and provided me with some great insight for my next 3D project. 

On Saturday I viewed a panel on how to teach and reach students with the use of the video-sharing site YouTube. In this panel 3 panelists shared their experiences of using this site in the classroom. Overall, I felt that the panel was very well organized and each presenter provided wonderful insight. What I found to be the most interesting was that all three presenters found that user generated content can be a very powerful tool in education. It allows students to use their creativity to convey a message or a meaning, rather than simply regurgitating information. This made me think of our own project. All three of us are creating our own individual models, and in the process of creating these models we’ve gotten more of an understanding on various communication concepts. It was interesting to me to see that another group utilized user generated content and I hope that this trend in teaching will continue to grow.

Along with the panels we attended, we were also able to attend a G.I.F.T session. During this session we listened to professors and graduate students share the activities they are using to better teaching. During this session there were 3 various presenters that really stood out to me and their ideas I hope to pass on to the instructors in my department.

The first G.I.F.T that I was rather impressed with was a classroom activity proposed by Stevie Stewart a Graduate Student from Ball State University. This graduate student has been incorporating the use of the social media site Twitter into his curriculum, by having students tweet about various televised speakers. His goal is to have students critiquing the public speaking abilities of others and in return reflect on their own skills. For this proposed assignment, he gives his students a list of questions and a class specific hashtag and then has his students answer the questions through tweets. Since Twitter has a character limit of only 140 charters per tweet, it provides the students with an interesting challenge of fully explaining their answers in a short and concise manner. Personally, I feel that is a great way to utilize a technology that student’s are comfortable and skilled with, and breathes in a new life to stale classroom procedures. It is also important that as communication scholars and professionals that we understand how this current generation of students is communicating with one another.

The second G.I.F.T that I found to be very intriguing was an activity proposed by Debbie Chasteen, of William Jewell College called “Alternatives to Self-Disclosure”. This activity was used in an interpersonal Communication course and was used to demonstrate the various means in which we avoid open self-disclosure in various unsettling situations. In her activity Chasteen divides her class into various teams of 2-5 students and each team is then given a scenario in which they will have to act out for the class. For this scenario the students are then tasked to brainstorm how they would respond in these situations. Students then categorize their responses as either examples of silence, equivocating, hinting, or lying. Once their responses are categorized they then are asked to write down the ethical implications of their actions and then give a performance of their responses to the class. Personally, this seemed like a very interactive and fun assignment. I find that I learn a lot more whenever I have opportunity to hear how my own peers handle themselves in various situations. It provides with a fair amount of insight into a situation and allows students to make better choices whenever I’m trying to communicate with others.

The final G.I.F.T I found to very interesting was a class assignment developed by Rose Helens-Hart a Doctoral Candidate of the University of Kansas. In her classroom activity Rose Helens-Hart utilizes an old Hawaiian tradition of “Talking Story” to introduce students into public speaking. As someone who isn’t the most confident public speaker, I genuinely feel that this activity is a great way to ease students into speaking in front of a crowd. Students are broken up into smaller groups and are given time to prepare and present a “story” of their lives to their peers. This story can be about anything, but must be centered around a central theme which the instructor provides to the class. After each student presents their story to their group members, the class then votes to find the best storytellers of the group. Students are then asked to critique these storytellers and learn how they can better their own speaking skills. What I love about this assignment is that it is a great ice breaker for students to get to know one another. I feel that it is a bit more involved than the standard improvised introductory speech that most classrooms push upon their students.

To everyone I met and to all who shared their experiences, I just want to say thank you. As I mentioned before this was my first conference and I am still surprised that I enjoyed it this much. It was exciting to see how the field of communications is changing and adapting, and meeting the individuals who are responsible for this change. I hope that our small project is able to bring inspiration to those who shared their work with us. On behalf of the other Dimensionators and myself I want to just thank you all for making this a wonderful and memorable experience.