Browsing by Subject "Community of Practice"

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    Thinking Beyond the Service Course Model: Intentional Integration of Technical Communication Courses in a BME Undergraduate Curriculum
    (ASEE PEER, 2022-08-23) Stella, Julie; Higbee, Steven; Miller, Sharon; Technology and Leadership Communication, School of Engineering
    Contemporary engineers must be confident communicating technical and non-technical information to diverse audiences. Traditional curricula may rely on highly generalized communication courses, which are not targeted to the disciplinary content or communication needs of specific engineering fields. To better prepare engineering undergraduates, students may benefit from a curriculum that deconstructs boundaries between disciplinary content mastery and effective communication. Here we describe efforts to intentionally develop and pair technical communication courses with existing biomedical engineering (BME) laboratory courses. To achieve this, interdisciplinary faculty came together through a Community of Practice to design and implement a curriculum that maximizes the benefit of writing instruction through strategic timing and more field-specific relevance. Our work developed a strategically timed integrated curriculum wherein two one-credit technical communication courses replaced an existing 2-credit technical communication course requirement—in the new model, students take a one-credit technical communication course in their sophomore year and a one-credit technical communication course in their junior year. By integrating the courses earlier in the program, we highlight how BME sophomores are now able to apply writing skills immediately to classroom assignments and continually grow their communication skills over the course of the program. Additionally, the integrated curriculum limited the genres of writing to those commonly found in the BME field (industry and academia), with an emphasis on writing as both a process and a product. We will share the changes made within both the engineering and technical communication courses. Briefly, students completed culminating overlapping assignments that were drafted and polished in the TCM class then submitted for a technical grade to the BME course instructor. Throughout, our approach focused on building student-student, student-instructor, and instructor-instructor relationships. Classroom communities and student-student relationships were grown and nurtured through technical peer review, collaborative writing, and team membership (e.g., roles, relationships, management, leadership). In the faculty Community of Practice, key strategies included: 1) integrated, ongoing, and consistent assessment of written and oral communication student deliverables, and 2) a shared content-related vocabulary provided continuity and connections among technical skills and communication to augment the student experience. Here we describe efforts to intentionally develop and pair technical communication courses with existing biomedical engineering (BME) laboratory courses. To achieve this, interdisciplinary faculty came together through a Community of Practice to design and implement a curriculum that maximizes the benefit of writing instruction through strategic timing and more field-specific relevance.
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    With a Little Help from our Friends: Teaching Collectives as Lifelines in Troublesome Times
    (Indiana University, 2021-04-09) Jettpace, Lynn; Miller, Leslie; Frank, Mary Ann; Clemons, Michelle Lynn; Goldfarb, Nancy; Kelley School of Business - Indianapolis
    Emergencies have a way of changing the orientation of faculty from academic projects to surviving the unknown and coping with change. Many faculty members, because they frequently work independently, often lack support structures through which they can engage in mutual aid during times of crisis. The authors recently discovered that having a community of colleagues with whom to share ideas has made them more resilient to changing circumstances. While the Civility Community of Practice at IUPUI has been meeting since 2014 as an interdisciplinary research collective, it transitioned to a weekly online teaching and support seminar in response to the university’s unexpected move to online course delivery on account of the pandemic. This reflective essay will examine the transformative possibilities of a teaching collective in the face of crisis. From the onset of the crisis, each of the authors had personal and teaching challenges that the group’s Zoom meetings resolved. The weekly meetings involved sharing teaching tips but also basic survival strategies, tips they never imagined discussing with professional colleagues. In addition to discussing the elements that make a successful learning community, this essay will include reflections by each of the five community members about how the Zoom meetings helped them adapt to and navigate their personal and professional lives during the pandemic. In these individual reflections, the authors will discuss how moving their courses online challenged their teaching practices, motivated their experimentation with Zoom, and transformed their online classroom to impact the student learning experience.