Blue Sky Workshop: Teaching in the Graduate Classroom: Revise and Resubmit, Revisited

Session Submission Type: Meeting

Abstract

Although the learning goals of graduate classrooms in Communication certainly vary based on the goals of the institution, the graduate program, the instructor, and the content, in general, the graduate classroom is a place to teach students Communication content while simultaneously modeling best practices in Communication scholarship. These best practices emerge through critiques and conversations of existing scholarship during classroom lecture as well as via assignments which encourage students to practice these skills via high-quality literature reviews, empirically-rigorous research projects, publication-quality papers, media production projects, and more. In such assignments, faculty and students are often faced with a unique challenge. On the one hand, in an effort to provide an authentic foray into Communication, faculty may focus strongly on the production of high-quality assignments (e.g, via critical and directed feedback, multiple draft requirements, etc.). In doing so, however,this intense pressure may lead some graduate students to perceive faculty members as excessively harsh which can lead to frayed relationships, reduced efficacy, reduced self-confidence, and potentially higher dropout rates. In this workshop, we invite graduate students and faculty - via a participatory ‘fishbowl’ format - to discuss strategies that allow faculty to leverage their experiences with students’ expectations of their nascent careers.

Sub Unit

• Sponsored Sessions

Chair

• Nicholas David Bowman, West Virginia U

Participants

• Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, U of Amsterdam/ASCoR

• Kristine Nowak, U of Connecticut

• Srividya Ramasubramanian, Texas A&M U

• Amelia Couture, U of Michigan

• Kara Winkler, U of Connecticut