Teaching Communication Skills Other Than Writing

The Communications-B course criteria requires:

[A]t least two opportunities for each student to be graded for presenting research findings, creative work, or other coursework, in modes other than writing common to the discipline as well as two or more opportunities to be graded for writing. Comm-B courses should also include activities that give students further opportunities to develop and receive feedback on their communication skills in writing and at least one other mode of communication in informal settings such as discussion or brainstorming.

Many Communications-B courses include an in-class presentation to showcase students’ research and to allow students to demonstrate communication skills through presenting their work; however, sharing work need not take the form of presentation. Comm-B instructors have used iterative in-class debates, scaffolded extemporaneous presentations, or structured in-class discussion to fulfill this Comm-B course criteria. In addition, many instructors invite students to develop multimodal or multimedia assignments. As long as the assignment you develop is appropriate to the discipline in which you are teaching, the possibilities are endless. This Sourcebook has numerous resources to support you to develop assignments that showcase skills in addition to writing.  This handout can help you consider the degree of formality and amount of time you want students to devote to such an assignment. Here are more resources:

This student-facing guide, from a Comm-B course in Biocore, prepares students to develop and present their research to the class.

Here’s a sample assignment from a Comm-B course in Library and Information Studies on Prepared and Extemporaneous Speech Assignments and another example, from Comm Arts 262 on Scaffolding Presentation Assignments. The section in this sourcebook on Teaching Communication Skills other than Writing, offers examples of mock trial assignments, in-class debates, models for assessing in-class participation, and much more. A wonderful resource to help you learn to design engaging and equitable in-class discussion is UW-Madison’s Discussion Project. You might consider enrolling in the semester before you teach your Comm-B course.

For multimodal assignments, visit the section in this sourcebook on Designing Multimodal Assignments which includes an assignment to develop radio stories from a course entitled Representing Self Through Media: A Personal Journey Through This American Life and an assignment on creating micro podcasts from an environmental studies course. Here’s a sample assignment from a Comm-B course: Infographic on Personal Multimodal Literacy Experiences.

For assistance in developing multimodal assignments,  UW-Madison’s Design Lab is a terrific resource that offers in-person consultations to help you develop digital and multimodal assignments. UW-Madison’s Instructional Design Collaborative (for instructors in the College of L&S) and the Center for Teaching Learning and Mentoring are also terrific resources for designing media-based assignments and assessments.