Rebecca B. Worley

The Medium Is Not the Message.

http://tecfa.unige.ch/edu-comp/edu-ws94/contrib/peraya.fm.htm. Perley, J. (1999, March 19). Letter from Dr. James Perley [Online]. Available: http://www.aaup.org/ 3191et.html. Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1998). Electronic group dynamics [Online]. Available: http://www. csupomona.edu/∼sciman/html/library/internet/325w98/ elecGpDy.html. Teaching at an Internet distance: The pedagogy of online teaching and learning, the report of a 1998-1999 University of Illinois faculty seminar (1999). [Online]. Available: www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/tid/report/tid_report.htm. Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York: William Morrow.

Presentations and the PowerPoint Problem

IN THE ARTICLE preceding this column, Wim Blokzijl and Roos Naeff report their research on students’ responses to both lecture content and instructor when that instructor uses PowerPoint slides to present course material. Their students demonstrated some ambivalence toward the software. However, many writers on the subject of PowerPoint are less sanguine about its use and more critical of its misuse. The most recent salvo in the skirmish over presentation software comes from Edward Tufte (2003), guru of graphic design, who has recently published a monograph critiquing the “cognitive style” of PowerPoint. With its predesigned templates and auto-content features, Tufte charges, PowerPoint encourages a “foreshortening of evidence and thought,” and “a deeply hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content” (p. 4). Because that software is “entirely presenter-oriented, and not content-oriented, not audienceoriented,” Tufte charges that it leads users to “a preoccupation with format” rather than ideas, a phenomenon he terms PowerPoint “Phluff” (p. 4). And he reinforces the comment with a visual of the jarred marshmallow goo immediately to the right of his paragraph. Author Ian Parker (2001), writing for The New Yorker, is similarly concerned about the effect of PowerPoint on thinking. He charges that the software “edits ideas,” and that its template structure, with headings

Presentations and the Powerpoint Problem—Part II

EVEN A CASUAL SEARCH of the LexisNexis database for articles on PowerPoint returns hundreds of references. For every article that insists “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb” (Thompson, 2003), another just below it on the list encourages you to follow these “44 Tips and Tricks to Help Turbocharge your PowerPoint Presentation” (Finkelstein, 2003). And so the discussion continues. If we reached any consensus from our discussion in Part I, it was that the fault lies not with the software but with the user, or, as one article claims in that LexisNexis list, “Bullet Points May Be Dangerous, but Don’t Blame PowerPoint” (Simons, 2004). The authors in Part II of this Focus on Teaching column represent exactly that point of view. In their teaching of the oral presentation, they focus on the development of content, on the written report that forms the basis for the presentation, and on the proficiency of the presenter. PowerPoint software becomes merely the tool for demonstrating mastery of the other skills. In the first article, authors William Baker and Michael Thompson focus on the message more than the messenger in their teaching of the oral presentation. They encourage students to design a basic information structure with ample supporting stories, analyses, and examples, and then to design the presentation itself. Using campus videotaping facilities, they help students improve their delivery by using positive feedback from instructors and coaching from peers.

Blogs: Getting Started.

project experience. Whether you are a clueless newbie or an experienced Webster, blogging is a rapidly growing form of information exchange, one that we, as business communication instructors, cannot afford to ignore. As Andrew Sullivan, creator of the well known blog Daily Dish, suggested, blogging “harnesses the web’s real genius—its ability to empower anyone to do what only a few in the past could previously pull off . . . [it] actually harnesses rather than merely exploits the true democratic nature of the web. It’s a new medium finally finding a unique voice” (Siemens, 2002).

Reflections on Teaching Chinese MBAS in a Compressed-Time Course:

TEACHING ADVANCED STUDENTS, such as MBAs, in foreign environments and in compressed schedules presents additional challenges that are not present in home-country classes. To be successful, teachers must modify their home instructional strategies and tactics to match the backgrounds of the students and the teaching environment. There is a special challenge in teaching MBAs who have extensive work experience but inadequate language proficiency to take an active role in classroom discussion. The teacher therefore needs to find strategies and methods that enable the students to draw on their experience and integrate their knowledge with new theory input and that passes subject knowledge and experience over language and cultural barriers. This article describes how I modified my instructional strategies and methods in teaching experienced and fully employed MBA students in China. Over a 2-year period and through teaching five courses, I developed the methodology that I describe in this article. These modifications were based on compressed time scheduling, the linguistic capabilities of the students as well as my bilingual language proficiency, the cultural background of the students, and the availability of simultaneous translation capabilities. I discuss the adaptations I made and close with some observations and advice on how to make equivalent teaching assignments in foreign environments more effective and enjoyable.

In this issue: Distance Education, Part Three

in grants to electronically reeducate displaced Minnesota mine workers; and, most intriguing, a new Open University Survivor spin-off television program called Rough Science, which will track the trials and tribulations of five scientists, plopped on a desert island, as they reinvent &dquo;toothbrushes and other gadgets from found materials.&dquo; A distance education offering will accompany the program (Young, 2001). While ABCers are not doing anything as exciting as marooning their colleagues on far-flung islands, interest in distance education

Internships in Business Communication

on university internship programs. Although participants individually had presented papers and written articles on their internship programs, they had not come together as a group to discuss the subject. What emerged from the sessions were innovative ideas about program design, originating from both academia and industry ; about methods of establishing, monitoring, and evaluating internship placements; and about the role of technology in the management of experiential education courses. From a less practical and more theoretical viewpoint, the sessions also included rich discussion of communication, organizational, and managerial con-

From Consultancy to Classroom

ness communication courses should simulate as closely as possible the complexities of real-world writing and problem solving for students. However, finding or creating such realistic cases, roles, and sample documents can be problematic for teachers. The authors of the articles in this column have discovered that bringing their experience as consultants into the classroom is one solution. For the writing project described by Davis and Krapels, students themselves became consultants to a healthcare business, revising existing collection letters and creating new documents to meet the needs of both patients and insurance companies. In the process, they also prepared proposals, reports, data analyses, and oral presentations. Focusing specifically on audience analysis, collaborative writing, and model documents, Mabrito explores the differences between textbook theory and workplace reality and suggests ways to add that dimension to the classroom.

The Internet and the World Wide Web in the Business Communication Classroom

ALTHOUGH STATISTICAL RESEARCH on the number of Internet users has generated some debate, most agree that the information super highway, as it is popularly called, has experienced explosive growth since the early i99os. Tim Berners-Lee, the man who &dquo;wove the first few strands in what has grown into the World Wide Web&dquo; did not set out to create a &dquo;cultural phenomenon,&dquo; but only to devise an easy and efficient system for accessing documents he needed in his research at the CERN particle-physics lab in Geneva. He conceived of the Internet as a &dquo;communication tool that would enable small groups to work more efficiently in teams.&dquo;* That idea has come to fruition, as the articles in this issue illustrate. Applying new technology to traditional methods, Linda Driskill describes in the first article a detailed case study on wetlands in Oregon that she has mounted as a Web site for business communication courses. The case itself is complex and multi-faceted, offering seemingly limitless opportunities for adaptation to individual business communication courses. With video and audio as well as text, the site is a true multimedia resource. By all means, take a look.

Teaching Large Classes

getting any responsiveness out of 150 or 300 students in an auditorium, and spend 45 hours showing transparencies to the listless 60% who bother to show up from day to day.&dquo; Rather than concede to despair, the three authors in this issue’s column offer their personal experiences and practical advice to aid instructors faced with an auditorium of 100 faces. Sushil Oswal, University of Hartford, describes his experience of integrating writing and speaking assignments into a large, team-taught science course. Bertha Du-Babcock, City University of Hong Kong, adds an international twist, explaining the linguistic, cultural, and contextual adaptations necessary for teaching large section classes