Mark's+notes

ComS 5 Notes Design changes needed: more time and more direct instruction on the nature of group interaction before starting the groups on their problems/projects. So, I need to find more time--at least a day--for that. This came out during the group presentations today (11/17/2010).

As I consider the "projects" approach, I get excited about the possibility of really significant projects to draw students into critical thinking, research, and presentation. For example, the students are not buying the textbook--too expensive they complain. So, I'm considering having students read, say, Goffman's, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life from Google Scholar; then, compare Goffman's theory about unmediated, face to face presentation with emerging use of social mediate as location of presentation of self. It would engage their interest more, I think, and be a bigger, more significant task than what they often have to do.

Move the speech anxiety activity to the front of the course and expand the treatment. Students are required to speak making brief informative speeches. The Personal Report of Speech Anxiety will provide a good project through which to get students thinking about PS, about how they can intervene in their own development, and __research__. All facilitate more valuable presentations during the course and the final project.

Develop projects around the contexts of communication we treat wherein students collect various forms of qualitative and quantitative data;e.g. video recordings of interpersonal interactions; group activities in classes; do interviews with campus experts, etc.

I find Gagne's model below to be a nice set of prompts for thinking about the re-organization of my course and revision of assignments.

Threshold Concepts and Course Design
 * Threshold concept: ** “A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress” (Meyer & Land, 2003, p. 4). Further, “a threshold concept can of itself inherently represent what Perkins (1999) refers to as //troublesome knowledge// – knowledge that is ‘alien’, or counter-intuitive or even intellectually absurd at face value.” (p.2).
 * Four Characteristics ** of a threshold concept:
 * Transformative: ** Student apprehension of threshold concepts may also create a “shift in perspective [which] may lead to a transformation of personal identity, a reconstruction of subjectivity” as well as cognitive shifts of schemas or behavioral/skill changes.


 * Irreversible: ** Probably won’t be forgotten.


 * Integrative **: “that is, it exposes the previously hidden interrelatedness of something” (p. 4).


 * Bounded: ** “in that any conceptual space will have terminal frontiers, bordering with thresholds into new conceptual areas” (p.5).


 * Troublesome: **knowledge that is ‘alien’, or counter-intuitive or even intellectually absurd at face value.” (p.2).

Meyer, J. & Land, R. (2003). T//hreshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practicing within the disciplines.// Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project, Higher and Community Education, School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Paterson’s Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh URL: []

The URL here has interesting materials relative to disciplines you may want to examine.

ComS 100B Notes

ComS 222 Notes My new design of breaking the major presentation events up across the semester seems to work well. It provides a bit more reflection time; punctuation with the Review of literature, mid-term/paper proposal and the analysis of media provides context and space and less weariness with presentations.