Linda,
Another approach that I have used in upper year courses (but not introductory workplace communication courses) is to give students the option of conducting "field research" (that is, essentially empirical/social scientific type research) of the communication practices that occur in different workplaces (or, in another course, academic disciplines). In other words, the students' work is mdoeled on the kind of research conducted by (some) scholars in the field. Although I find these kinds of projects work pretty well in advanced courses, I have decided against trying them in my introductory courses because I just find that it's too much for all of us to handle at that stage. At this level, I prefer to focus on rhetorical principles and practices of workplace communication rather than on research methods for studying workplace communication. Additionally, one of the difficulties with projects involving "field work" is that, at least at my university, each project is supposed to be approved by the Ethics Committee. This process is time consuming and requires the preparation of a detailed proposal so in the context of a 1 semester course it isn't terribly practical.
I guess for me the issue is what are my main teaching objectives in each course? Am I mainly trying to teach students how to think rhetorically about and then engage as effectively as possible in either simulated or real workplace forms of communication, or am I mainly trying to teach them about academic research on workplace communication - e.g., theoretical perspectives and research methods? While these two objectives are of course not mutually exclusive, for pragmatic reasons I tend not to try to pursue both explicitly in a single course.
I hope these comments are relevant to your question!
Philippa
Philippa Spoel
Department of English
Laurentian University
Sudbury, Ontario
Canada P3E 2C6
tel: 705-675-1151
fax: 705-675-4870
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>>> Graham Smart <[log in to unmask]> 05/02/02 06:33PM >>>
Linda,
I think this approach is quite widespread, in the U.S. at any rate. Here
at Purdue, for example, in our professional/business/technical writing
courses, it's common practice for instructors to have teams of students
take on communication-related projects for "real-world" client
organizations in the community. The team will negotiate the work to be
done with a contact person in the organization, carry out the necessary
research (onsite observations, interviews, document analysis, etc.) and
analysis, and then produce a recommendation report to be delivered to
the client.
The client organizations can be community groups, nonprofit
organizations, campus administrative units, or business firms. And the
projects that teams take on can include a wide range of tasks, anything
from, for example, designing/redesigning a website for the client
organization, to producing various types of documentation, to solving
systemic communication problems among employees, to producing a proposal
for government funding.
The results can be very good. If all goes reasonably well, the team
members will have had the experience of accomplishing a professional
piece of work for an outside-of-school client/audience.
Hope this is helpful.
Graham
Linda Schofield wrote:
>
> Do you (or does anyone you know) use field work exercises in your business
> communication courses?
>
> I have recently completed a pilot analytical report-writing course at
> Ryerson University that centred around a single question about written
> communication in the workplace. As part of my ongoing research I am
> trying to determine to what extent field work is used to teach business
> communication by instructors at post-secondary institutions in North
> America. That is, do instructors have their students conduct qualitative
> or quantitative primary research, such as interviewing, experiments and
> surveying? If so, how does this research fit into the
> course structure, and what are the perceived benefits of using this
> approach? Do respond as well (giving reasons) if you have stopped using, or
> have deliberately chosen not to use field work.
>
> You can reply to me at my academic address ([log in to unmask]).
> I look forward to your responses.
>
> Cheers,
> Linda
>
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