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These kinds of activities can help students more fully integrate course content, far beyond what they would be able to do by just listening to a lecture. The point is that you get to decide how to weave communication within and around your content so that it supports the material, instead of detracting from it.

      It is worth remembering that using communication in the classroom can be about both developing students’ abilities to communicate orally and developing students’ abilities to understand course content. Part of the answer to the in-class time crunch is that in order to be successful, the oral activity should clearly help students learn the course material. In Chapter 3 we will discuss this particular goal in more detail. For now though, consider oral communication as integrative, rather than additional. Oral communication assignments and activities should not simply be add-ons, created to meet an abstract requirement. Course content must be fully integrated into the requirements for the activity.

      Time, Time, Time . . . Out of Class . . .

      This sounds like a great idea if I didn’t already have three syllabi to prepare, an evaluation report to write, a faculty retreat to go to, and—oh yeah—that is only before the semester starts. Then there’s the undergraduate committee, the scholarship committee, the publications committee—I actually think I’ve also agreed to be on a committee on committees! And then—keeping up with email questions from students, excuses about missing homework—sick grandparents, dying pets, technology problems . . . ah! Like I said—great idea. I just don’t have any extra time during my day to think about this or make this happen. I already work long hours after I leave the office—there’s just not enough time.

      Sound familiar? One of the primary challenges faculty face when considering the possibility of adding communication activities to their course(s) is time. Regardless of the type of institution you are in, there are likely to be a number of requests, requirements, and commitments eating up your daily time slots. Not that these are necessarily negative activities—in fact, many of them are extremely important and are simply part of what we, as faculty, signed up for. But oftentimes the daily activities that we engage in leave very little time for us to focus our attention on initiatives such as communication across the curriculum. And if we are asked (or required) to engage in such initiatives, we find the time—but do so at times regretfully, at times unwillingly, and at times even spitefully.

      If we could add more hours to the day or relieve you of some of your duties so that you could focus on communication across the curriculum, we would (and we would probably become rich in the process!). Time is an issue—an important one. Many of you have particular professional, personal, or administrative commitments that make such an initiative challenging. We understand that these constraints might be overwhelming. Our goal with this framework is to make your time spent on your course more efficient. The strategic framework does not necessitate you to completely revamp your course. It is flexible and rests on you making choices that fit within your disciplinary context and help you achieve your instructional emphases. Your choices might, in fact, support the teaching tasks you are already spending time on in your course preparation. If this is the case, you might be able to jump right in—try a small activity tomorrow in class or next week in lab that makes sense given what you are already doing. Just doing something small might lead to significant changes in student engagement. In other cases, the strategic framework might spark new thinking about your courses, students, and goals. This thinking could lead you to making some changes on larger assignments. This integration does take time, but we believe it is time well spent if you are able to better achieve your goals.

      Me? But . . . I’m Not Perfect

      “Easy for you to say. You teach communication. You are probably pretty good at this communication thing. If I’m grading my students on their communication abilities, don’t I have to be perfect? How can I help my students when I don’t think I am an expert in communication? Won’t they start judging me? Communication specialists are much better prepared to deal with these kinds of things. I’m not the expert!”

      Very few faculty members are professional communicators. In fact, many faculty members did not receive any training in communication, and if they did, it was probably informal and provided by a close mentor or colleague. Your training focused primarily on your content area—which is exactly where it was supposed to be focused. So it is definitely a valid concern when you think about opening your students up to a new experience in which you have had little, if any, formal training. When one of the authors considered asking her students to engage in a web-based portfolio assignment, she felt similar angst. She is not a web designer. How could she grade them if she was not an expert? Shouldn’t they expect their teacher to be an expert in this? Similarly with communication, you might be concerned about your own level of expertise with particular communication skills or competencies. Even if you do not worry about your own communication abilities, perhaps you worry about providing sufficient feedback on communication—given you want your focus to be on the content.

      Similar to many athletic, musical, and technical skills, communication (both written and oral) is an ongoing activity that should be considered developmental. If every music teacher had to be of Beethoven’s stature, we would be short of music teachers. If every basketball coach was required to be as consistent as Michael Jordan, we would have a limited pool of people from which to choose a team. As a teacher of your content area, you do not have to be an expert communicator in order to engage in this process. You have to be willing and open to learn. Your primary responsibility is to teach and master your content area. That is why you are in the position you are in at your institution. You are a member of a discipline that has judged you competent to handle those particular content areas. The good news is that it is this content competence that opens the possibility for you to focus on communication in your courses. The strategic framework of this book allows you to take advantage of your disciplinary goals and competence and to use that competence to better understand and implement oral communication activities. As previously stated, as a member of your discipline, you are steeped in communication norms, activities, and values every day. The framework in this book asks you to bring those to the table—and with support (if possible), you will build more and more expertise. For example, using the framework of this book, a pre-med teacher can focus on the goal of teaching students how much self-disclosure might make a patient-physician interaction fruitful for both parties. A communication expert can give this faculty member the language of “self-disclosure,” or illuminate the different kinds of self-disclosure, but the teacher steeped in the experiences and values of the pre-med context can best illustrate how self-disclosure is enacted for successful communication. So, why you? Because you have the disciplinary expertise to make oral communication meaningful and useful to your students.

      Send Them to a Communication Class

      “Why do I have to do this? Why can’t I just send my students to communication? They have a public speaking course . . . this really isn’t my job. What are they doing over there anyway? If they were doing their job, I wouldn’t have to deal with students who did not know how to communicate.”

      In many universities there are communication courses that fulfill general education requirements. Similar to freshman composition courses, which often introduce students to writing competencies, processes, and genres; general education oral communication courses are important courses for students to take—as they typically introduce students to the vocabulary of oral communication. Sometimes these courses focus squarely on public speaking. At other times, they provide a hybrid view of public speaking, small-group, interpersonal, and organizational communication. Other courses are more focused on business communication. Yet, what these courses do not do is help students understand the particular, situated communication expectations for your discipline. They might teach students how to construct a logical persuasive argument, but they do not and cannot teach them the kinds of evidence that professionals in your discipline value. They cannot teach students the types of communication events that are important to your discipline because there are too many disciplines and content areas with varied communication events—there simply would not be time. You know your discipline. You are the expert in what it means to communicate competently and coherently for your audiences, in your professional situations, and in your classroom. If all you want for your students is to have them gain a basic vocabulary about communication, or increase their

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