Calling-in the family: Dialogic performances of family conflict

ABSTRACT

Courses: Introduction to Communication, Introduction to Interpersonal Communication, Family Communication, Small Group Communication, Communication and Listening

Objectives: By this end of this activity, students will be able to identify and practice supportive and defensive communication; understand a dialogic approach to conflict; and reflexively imagine and perform dialogic interpersonal conflict communication as constitutive and transformative.     

Using Students' Prior Knowledge to Teach Social Penetration Theory

Courses: Introduction to Human Communication, Communication Theory, Relational Communication, Interpersonal Communication

Objective: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the premises of social penetration theory based on prior knowledge as a starting point     

How it's Done: Using Hitch as a Guide to Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Courses: Communication Theory, Interpersonal Communication, Introduction to Human Communication

Objective: Students will apply Uncertainty Reduction Theory to initial relationship development in the film Hitch     

Personal Narrative Performance in the Classroom: A Teaching Tool

Objectives: To have students identify and explain concepts of communication, self-disclosure and empowerment, and promote engagement of self and others through performing narratives of real-life experiences.

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Advanced Interpersonal Communication, Cross Cultural Communication, Communication and Performance     

Proverb Activity: Understanding How Perception and Gender Stereotypes are Formed

Objectives: Students will understand perception and apply step-by-step skills in a personally relevant way by rethinking taken-for-granted proverbs related to gender stereotypes

Courses: Gender and Communication, Intercultural Communication, Interpersonal Communication     

Gender,Games, and Toys: Role Communication and Socialization through Play

Courses: Introduction to Communication, Gender and Communication, Rhetoric and Criticism, Intercultural Communication, Organizational Communication

Objectives: Students will develop a basic understanding of how femininity and masculinity are distinct, constructed, and culturally enforced. Students will investigate how gender roles are reinforced by children's games and toys.     

Teaching Health Communication through Found Poems Created from Patients’ Stories

Objective: To help students understand patients’ perspectives on health care and the importance of communication in practitioner–patient interactions

Courses: Health Communication, Practitioner–Patient Communication, Communication and Aging     

Clothes Make the Person? Performing Gender Through Fashion

Objectives: Students will: (1) think critically about how they perform gender through clothing choices and (2) recognize how different cultures define masculinity and femininity

Courses: Communication Theory, Gender and Communication, Popular Communication, Rhetorical Theory, Visual Rhetoric     

Metaphorically Examining Organizational Communication: A Student's Perspective

Courses: Organizational Communication (assignment can be adapted easily for other theory courses, such as Interpersonal Communication, Rhetorical Theory, Communication Theory, or Persuasion)

Objectives: Students who successfully complete this assignment will be able to analyze critically and describe creatively an organizational concept or theory.     

Picture This: Exploring Nonverbal Communication Through Self-Portraiture

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Nonverbal Communication, Basic Course, Business and Professional Speaking, Group Communication, Organizational Communication

Objectives: Students will understand the relationship between nonverbal behaviors and perception formation in the communication process. Students will synthesize communication information while working in varying contexts ranging from individual to class settings.     

Using The King of Queens to Illustrate the Implications of Attribution Formation in Interpersonal Relationships

Objective: To illustrate the implications of attribution formation in interpersonal relationships

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Communication Theory

Time required: Approximately 30 minutes

Materials needed: An episode of The King of Queens     

Disability as a Form of Diversity: Lessons from Murderball

Objective: To improve students’ perceptions of, and capacity to interact with, persons with physical disabilities

Courses: Intercultural Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Introduction to Human Condition     

Why “Video Killed the Radio Star”: Teaching “The Medium is the Message”

Courses: Introduction to Communication, Persuasion, Communication Theory

Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of Marshall McLuhan's aphorism “The Medium is the Message”     

Was that logical? Demonstrating decision-making constraints in the contemporary workplace environment

Courses: Organizational Communication, Small Group Communication, Organizational Decision-making, and Communication Technology.

Objective: The objectives of this activity are twofold: (1) to engage students in the practice of small-group decision making bounded by temporal, situational, and cognitive constraints; and (2) to demonstrate how these constraints influence the success of small-group decision making by facilitating logical, illogical, or analogical reasoning.     

Communications For Developing Nations

Charlotte Dietrich, Der Rundfunk in Afrika An fang der Siebziger Jahre: Strukturen and Daten (Broadcasting in Africa in the Early Seventies: Structures and Data) (Department of Mass Communication, University of Salzburg, Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria---$5.00, paper, plus cost of shipping)

Communication Policy and Planning for Development: A Selected Annotated Bibliography by Syed A. Rahim (285 pp., October 1976, price not given, paper)

An Overview of Communication Research in Asia: Status, Problems and Needs by Gloria D. Feliciano (20 pp., June 1973, on request, paper)

Mass Media Use and the “Revolution of Rising Frustrations:” A Reconsideration of the Theory by Robert C. Hornik (27 pp., July 1974, on request, paper)

Communication and Development in China (Communication Monograph No. 1), by Godwin Chu, et al. (116 pp., September 1976, price not given, paper)

Communication in the Pacific, edited by Daniel Lerner and Jim Richstad (96 pp., June 1976, price not given paper)

The Use of Radio in Adult Literacy Education, by Richard C. Burke (116 pp., £1.50 or about $2.40, paper)

Programmed Instruction for Literacy Workers, by Sivasailam Thiagarajan (136 pp., £1.95 or about $3.12, paper)

Mass Communication in Malaysia, compiled by Lim Huck Tee and V.V. Sarachandran (91 pp., 1975, 12 Singapore dollars outside Asia)

Mass Communication in India, compiled at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (216 pp., 1976, 18 Singapore dollars outside Asia)     

General Communications

Brent D. Ruben, ed. Communication Yearbook 2 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books (Rutgers), 1978---$24.95)

Eric A. Havelock and Jackson P. Hershbell, eds. Communication Arts in the Ancient World (New York: Hastings House, J978---$12.50)

Kit Laybourne and Pauline Cianciolo's Doing the Media (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978---$6.95, paper, with both library and trade hardbacks also available)

Periodicals: just begun under the (temporary) auspices of the Institute of Communication Research (122B Armory, University of Illinois, Champaign, Ill. 61820)

Warren K. Agee, Phillip H. Ault, and Edwin Emery's Introduction to Mass Communications (New York: Harper & Row, 1979---$7.95, paper)

Godwin C. Chu and Brent Cassan, Modern Communication Technology in a Changing Society: A Bibliography (1977, 162 pp., $1.50)

Syed A. Rahim, et al. Planning Methods, Models, and Organization: A Review Study for Communication Policy Making and Planning (1978, 260 pp., $3.00):     

Teaching Organizational Culture

Objective: To identify and differentiate among three communication perspectives in organizational culture research

Courses: Organizational Communication, Communication in the Workplace, Organizational Culture and Change     

Illuminating everyday performances of privilege and oppression

ABSTRACT

Courses: Intercultural Communication, Interracial Communication, Gender and Communication, Introduction to Communication Course (within a unit on culture), and any courses encouraging critical analyses of power.

Objectives: This activity will: illuminate the ways in which everyday performances of privilege and resulting oppressions connect with symbolic, individual, and institutional ideologies and actions; identify the ways in which individuals who are marginalized and oppressed may internalize and/or resist dominant ideologies and actions through such performances of privilege; recognize how individual biographies play into our everyday communication and performances with/of power; encourage intersectional analyses of identity, context, and performances of/with power; and develop communication tools for disrupting and speaking back to oppressive performances of privilege.     

Teaching the Dynamics of Framing Competitions

Courses: Political Communication, Communication Theory, Public Opinion

Objective: To make students aware of and understand the processes involved in public framing competitions.     

“Listening is an act of love”: Learning listening through StoryCorps

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Basic Survey Course, Group Communication, Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication, Listening, Family Communication, Interviewing, Business and Professional Communication.

Objectives: After completing this single class activity, students will be able to: (a) define listening; (b) identify listening as a top skill employers desire; (c) explain how listening may be perceived as an act of love; and (d) critically assess ways in which their listening behaviors may be improved.