Last month, I claimed that all of the Texas A&M University undergraduate learning outcomes could be supported by teaching oral and written communication (see that blog). In this installment, I will tackle how written and oral communication skills help students “Practice personal and social responsibility.” As defined in the outcome on the Undergraduate Studies website, this outcome involves personal and academic integrity, the ability to apply rational decision-making to ethical issues and to recognize the consequences of one’s actions. It also assumes students will actively embrace civic responsibility.
There are many ways that faculty can encourage students to be personally and socially responsible. No matter how they accomplish this, having students reflect on these experiences and convey their thoughts about them to others will deepen their engagement and their learning. Service learning is one obvious way to foster civic engagement. Service learning requires that students participate in a real-life situation in which they serve the community at large, whether that be at the university, in their town, their state, or at a charitable organization. Some service learning models encourage students to keep journals or blogs to reflect on their experiences; others ask students to write as a part of the experience, producing, for example, a report, a brochure, marketing materials, and so on.
One example of a course that uses writing and service learning is taught by Janet Parish in Mays Business School. This class teaches students to market services in addition to goods. The senior and junior marketing majors taking the class work with a client (in fact, this spring they will work with the University Writing Center’s West Campus Library site) to conduct an audit of how a service is marketed. Then they make recommendations, in writing and through two oral presentations, so that the organization can improve. During the course of the audit, they interact with the client multiple times, giving them practice in professional face-to-face communication. Students doing this kind of work not only gain hands-on experience and learn to accommodate their communication to a real audience, they also give back. For example, the students who help market writing center services more effectively are helping their fellow Aggies and their university. They are providing a service we could not afford to purchase, and their ideas will improve our ability to reach students.
Another way students can use writing to take on civic responsibility is to get their voices heard in a public forum. They have the perfect opportunity at Texas A&M to become well-informed citizens. By sharing well-researched and well-argued views, they learn how to responsibly impact our civic and political life. This is illustrated by a class taught by Jae-Young Ko at our Galveston campus in the department of Marine Sciences. Students write two letters to the editor, usually the Houston Chronicle or the Galveston Daily. Their letters often get published. In fact, this past November (Sunday, November 27, 2011), all of the letters-to-editor in the Daily were from this class. The writers all weighed in on political issues affecting the Galveston environment: Eric Miller (wetlands protection), Ryan Gay (beach development and erosion), Isaac Robles (advocating state funding to deal with erosion response and enforcing strict building codes for beach development), Kristofer Low (assigning risk to beach home owners and the problem of unsightly ways to prevent erosion), and Megan Winchester (the need for a resiliency plan in the wake of natural disasters and for communicating it to the public). So far this semester, 14 students (out of 27) have seen their work published and have shared their views. Their professor commented to me “they are more interested in being engaged citizen for public issues through newspaper readings and writings.” Not only did they express their views, but they did so intelligently and clearly.
If you want some ideas for involving students in service learning, check out the Teaching and Learning portal, from the Center for Teaching Excellence. I hope you’ll assign some writing to go along with that service.