Search Google Appliance

Communication Guidelines

Jack C. Straton, Ph.D.
University Studies
Portland State University
Portland, OR, 97207-0751

Background:
Student-centered learning requires teachers to provide students with opportunities to learn from and with each other, but most students come to class ill equipped to handle the responsibility of cleanly communicating with each other. This lesson provides one set of group-communication tools that helps students to become conscious molders of their own communication styles in relation to those of their peers. Since respectful listening and empathetic speaking create the possibility of deep communication, this lesson (or one like it) is envisioned as a useful precursor to any other Opening Dialogues.

Preparation:
This lesson plan is based on an article of mine, “Communicating in a Group” (Straton, 2005; available at http://web.pdx.edu/~straton/JSCL2-3Straton.pdf), that the students should read. The workshop approach that I describe here was developed primarily by my Popular Culture class Graduate Mentor, Dana Visse.

Implementation: 
Students are divided into groups of four to nine and all but one are handed the following directions.

In-Class Discussion Guide: “Communicating in a Group”

We are conducting this exercise without a lot of verbal instruction. Introduce yourselves to the group and begin a discussion on the assigned reading, “Communicating in a Group.”
You will be responsible for starting your own discussion about this reading.
Some potential topics to discuss:

  • How has communication in a group worked well in the past?
  • How and when was it a total failure?
  • Which particular points from the reading did you relate to?
  • Which communication nuggets do you find especially important?
  • Which nuggets did you not identify with or find as unimportant?
  • Pose a question to the group of your own design.


As you partake in the discussion, notice your own style as well as others.

One person in each group is surreptitiously given the following slightly modified set of directions. It is best to pick someone with a dominant personality for this. That person’s handout is identical to the others, but with the following insertion.
These groups then attempt to have a discussion, which is continually undermined by the saboteur. After about 20-30 minutes the teacher/facilitator stops the small groups and gathers the full class into a discussion of how this session went. The saboteurs are eventually unmasked—to much laughter—and it is now possible to have a meta-discussion on discussions that has fresh examples for its grist.

If the discussion doesn't naturally touch on the lesser-known but key topics, the facilitator should remind the students of those:

  • Communication Nugget #1: Interpersonal communication always occurs on at least two levels. . . . Whenever you are in a group that does not seem to be getting anywhere, there is probably unresolved conflict on the feeling level that is blocking progress on the content level.
  • Communication Nugget #7: When you don't understand someone's ideas, instead of simply dismissing them, try to imagine what it is he could be getting at. If some piece of what he said seems useful to you, acknowledge that and show how it fits into your scheme of things.
  • Communication Nugget #13: Your words describing your internal map are only approximations of that map (which is, in turn, an approximation of "reality").
  • Communication Nugget #23: Be open to hearing another person's indignant anger.

Citation:
"Communicating in a group," (Journal of Student Centered Learning, Volume 2, Number 3, 195-203, September 2005), which is available at http://web.pdx.edu/~straton/JSCL2-3Straton.pdf.