The Group Project: Addressing a Problem

Among directors of Oral Communication programs, the group project is a subject of discussion and debate. Many programs have some version of it similar to our own: the students collaborate on some topic and create a collaborative presentation about it. Some call this useless: we do not have time to develop an effective group project, so we shouldn't try; and public speaking is a difficult enough skill to teach in one semester! Some lament the weakness of the group project as an assignment, arguing that students too often delegate chunks of the project to one another and leave it at that. 

Part of my responsibility this semester is to see to it that this project becomes a useful and valuable centerpiece to the Oral Communication Program. Along the way, since I am operating at a slightly faster schedule than other subjects, I will share some resources I am creating and discuss how they could be modified for non-experimental sections of the course. I will start with a small, mini-assignment I had students complete for class to kick off the assignment: the Problem in Communication essay.

Adopting a Problem-Based Approach to the Project

One qualm I have about the group project as it is currently set up is that it focuses on the presentation of rote information. By its very nature, students are basically dissecting an issue and teaching us about it. This does not engage them on a strong intellectual level (they're basically just finding and figuring out how to convey information) and it does not lead to particularly engaging presentations.

More importantly, it does not create a spirit of collaboration among group members. This "find research, teach research" approach, I speculate, leads to the problem of students just delegating and spitting out information. 

So, I am trying to reshape the project into something that is problem-based. I want students to think about a problem in communication that relates to their interests, personal lives, or careers. I assigned this on an individual level before students even knew they would have to do a group project. It's a low-stakes, basic essay; it is simply a goad to get students thinking about a practical application of the concepts we're learning. 

Problem in Communication Essay Problem in Communication: Essay (5 points – due 1/30) “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” – Cool Hand Luke Think about all of the problems in communication that impact us on a daily basis. They are social, political, interpersonal, cultural, and economic: Politics is in a state of gridlock as Republicans and Democrats fail to compromise. Ecologists struggle to have their messages of environmental catastrophe heard and understood. Corporations attempt to improve their public images after failed products. The rich and the poor continue to inhabit different worlds and lack shared understanding. Public figures try to generate attention for new movies and music. Due to technology, people are finding it harder to interact with one another interpersonally. Different societies continue to fail to understand one another. For this essay—which follows a traditional, five-paragraph structure, like back in high school (those were the days, eh?)—you will tackle a problem in communication. The problem you choose needs to: 1)      Be specific. The list I gave you above is not a set of example topics—they’re there to spur your thinking. Don’t talk about corporations in general—talk about how BP is coping with rebuilding its public image after the Gulf oil spill. 2)      Be current. This needs to be something going on in the world right now. You have to cite at least one news article and discuss it in detail. You can find news articles at http://www.google.com/news/ 3)      Be relevant. You need to pick a topic that you care about—something that you have some interest in or expertise about, and can argue for well. 4)      Deal with communication. That should be obvious, given the title of the assignment… but you’d be surprised. Don’t concentrate on the fact that BP is losing money; concentrate on their abysmal public reputation. The paper should be two pages in 12-pt Times New Roman font (about 800-900 words).

From the Essay to the Project

My students diagnosed some fascinating challenges:

• The challenges of being deaf or hard-of-hearing and interacting with people who are not
• Ineffective communication among players on the rugby team before and during plays
• Poor public discourse during the gun control debate following the Newtown shootings
• The difficulties within the Catholic Church in adapting their message to a new public

And so on. I found that the topics students generated on their own were stronger than anything I could have given them--in part because the topics were issues that mattered to them, personally. 

On the day they turned in their essays, I put them in groups and they each explained their essay topic and arguments to their classmates. I then gave their groups their first mission: to come to a consensus about which of the problems in communication they would all like to collectively try to tackle and solve.

Now, the group project has a different orientation: students will present a lesson that has two central purposes. The first is to explain, using research, the elements of the problem that they argued for; the second is to advocate for solutions (adapted to the problem they generated). I am excited about the topics my students have chosen and look forward to seeing how the projects unfold with these more substantive geneses.

But I'm Putting them in Groups Soon and Don't Have Time...

I know, I know, that's why I have an experimental section. This assignment could have been a trainwreck and I wanted to try it out before you did. Thankfully, it turned out to be pretty cool! 

If you agree that a problem-orientation is a better approach than just having students teach the audience about something, I encourage you to adapt accordingly (just without this individual essay assignment). 

If you (as the instructor) care about their careers, or civic engagement, or whatever else--urge student groups to choose one issue in that realm that matters to their group members and set up their topic accordingly. You can borrow from my guidelines here, and just have them come up with their group's "problem" together. Otherwise, the project doesn't have to change much at all. They should still have an interactive "lesson" (rather than a strict presentation), it should still be the same length, and so forth.

Let me know if you try something like this out! I'm curious to see how others innovate this semester. A few other instructors are piloting other variations of this assignment, and I'll be collecting information on how things go for them!

Michael