Welcome to the Communication-Intensive Teaching Hub!
This is a space for like-minded college teachers to explore, learn, and share practical instructional strategies that simultaneously advance students’ disciplinary content learning and communication skills. It’s a learning community created for faculty by faculty from across the disciplines, and it’s filled with resources, research, tips, tools, and ideas on Communication-Intensive (C-I) pedagogy.
If you’ve found your people here, then go ahead and dig in!
If you’re unsure if this is right for you or why C-I pedagogy is so critical for today’s college classrooms, please allow us to onboard you…
Why focus on multiple forms of communication?
We live in a world that necessitates communication in multiple forms on a daily basis within personal, professional, and civic spheres. Communication is something we all do; it is part of what it means to be human.
Written, visual, oral, and technological communication are vehicles for both consuming and sharing knowledge, yet we seldom interact with these modes in isolation. As a rich tool for advancing learning and a critical learning outcome in itself, multimodal communication deserves the attention of those of us who teach at the college level irrespective of our field or discipline.
Long ago, we acknowledged the importance of writing skills in college teaching and learning. In today’s multimedia world, writing is just as relevant—and perhaps even more so—as are other forms of communication.
What good is knowledge if we can’t effectively articulate what we know?
As teachers, we want our students to not only know their stuff but also be able to effectively communicate it to others.
Whether we’re teaching in social science, STEM, the arts, or humanities, our students need content knowledge along with the transferrable skills that enable them to articulate that knowledge beyond the classroom. This holds true across all levels of courses, and across all types of higher education institutions.
Learn more about the what and why of C-I from faculty who are employing it…
Should we really be teaching communication if it’s not our field of expertise?
Scholars of communication and its related fields are much needed and we greatly respect their expertise. It is because communication competencies are so vital that all students—not just communication majors—need to be continuously cultivating their ability to communicate.
It is unrealistic to expect all students of all majors to take a substantive number of English, Technical Writing, Speech, and Visual Communication courses. However, it is practical, efficient, and highly effective to embed communication skills development within just about any course.
As an expert in your field who has found your way into the ranks of college teaching, you’re no doubt an effective communicator regardless of which discipline you are teaching in. Ergo, you can implement C-I methods within your classroom without having a communication degree.
Learn more about how faculty across the disciplines are teaching C-I...
Key Elements That Make a Course Communication-Intensive
Emphasis on multiple communication modes appropriate for the discipline
Intentional integration of discipline-specific communication activities
Instruction and iterative feedback on communication skills relevant to the discipline