Greetings From St. Louis - Friday's Sessions

Before I jump into Friday, one thing I didn't reflect much on in Thursday's entry was Second Life. Several communication scholars (several at NIU!) are starting to research communication within virtual worlds like Second Life. At Kirkwood, we have created our own island and have started to look into the educational uses, but what I realized from the SL session I attended was that we haven't even scratched the surface. I thought with my knowledge of SL and involvement with the Kirkwood SL group, I would at least be able to put in my 2 cents, but what I had to say was basic information compared to what these scholars were studying. However, we are just looking into how we can use it for education and to help Kirkwood students, not so much the communication dynamics of virtual worlds....one discussion that Andrea and I had that I thought would be an interesting study is exmaining scripts and social norms within second life...if they mimic real life or not.

Ok, on to Friday. Here's my thoughts:

1. I attended the early morning session on getting published. It made me happy that I'm at a community college and so I only have to public if I want to publish. There are so many rules and politics that go with publishing, and so many schools have specific expectations for their professors to reach tenure. I don't think I would do well with the pressure, and especially not the rejection...but I didn't attend graduate school to research, I attended to teach and/or find a job in education thats supported student learning. I enjoy the process of research, but I would rather do it for myself or present it than worry about it having to get published in a time frame.

2. The next session was on ancillary materials, but really got into a discussion on textbooks and textbook prices, etc...it was really interesting. One of the things that my colleagues and I have discussed is that many basic course texts are designed for traditional students at 4 year colleges. When your students are nontraditional and diverse like our students, these texts do not fulfill their needs. I like to challenge my students with theory and application, but this only works if they are willing to read the textbook to see the explanations and practical aspects...they go hand in hand. Students are not likely to read the textbooks, so they are not getting out of the classes what they need to get out of the classes...some because the text is just too hard to understand or is written cheesy. I want/need a straightforward text that does focus on theory, application, and practice but is concise and easy to understand.

This panel also returned to the digital divide discussion and the use of the ancillary materials. Is it worth getting students to purchase these items, when likely (see previous post), they won't use them? Another interesting idea, if an instructor only requires half of the book, the students will feel like they didn't get their monies worth. We discussed that digital natives like material in "chunks" instead of all at once. My solution: Open source texts like Flat World Knowledge. These books are free online, but students can pay to download chapters or any ancillary materials they want themselves. I take some issue with these books, because they are online so there are distractions, and also that if they aren't using these materials when they are free, I certianly can't believe they will pay to download them. However, students can download individual chapters, flash cards, etc...so they take what they need. If they don't want to pay for any of it, they don't have to, but they still have access to the texts. Sengage is starting to respond in creating something similar, but they still will be more expensive than open source ebooks. As of now, there aren't any open source texts that fit our basic course, but sites such as Flat World are growing.

3. I attended a panel on integrating the community in a public speaking course. While many of the suggestions were focused on rhetoric so I didn't necessarily understand all of the ideas, I did take a couple of ideas from it and realized that I actually do some of this in my course. First, for my group project, I have my students choose an issue involving Kirkwood students and have them create an informative presentation. This semester, one group gave a phenomenal presentation about Study Abroad, and specifically, opportunities at Kirkwood. I was thinking that I wished I could have students perform this presentation outside the classroom, because it was really informative. They could even just create a poster session to showcase their work...its something I want to look into because I think, what's the use of tackling these relevant issues if they aren't shared with the campus community? The other idea in the session that I liked is to make students choose a local controversial issue for their persuasive speech. CR probably has plenty, like the local option sales tax and flood recovery. Great and well researched speeches could be presented to local groups and maybe students could actually make a difference.

4. The last session I attended today was Jacki's panel discussion about being a feminist professor...what example do we set for our students. I grew up in a household where my dad was dominant and I never really took women's study courses, so I have never really been exposed to this domain. I took a feminist rhetoric class examining female speakers and I actually did some feminist rhetorical criticism work on Noami Wolf and body image, but that was really the extent of it, so its not really something I think of on a daily basis, especially when I am teaching. The discussion was highly focused on inclusive language, which I really stress in my course, but hate discussing because I hate the debates that come out of it. I think create more focus on inclusive language and doing more activities would be helpful for my students to look at their own biases and try to overcome them. Activities such as women are (fill in the blank) men are (fill in the blank), and then we can open it up for discussion.

What's been great about the conference experience has been that even when we aren't in panels or sessions, the conversations continue. I have had some great conversations that have helped me to reflect on what I am doing in the classroom and perhaps what I should be doing in the classroom.