Student assignments create meaningful dialogue
OC Communications Professor Marc Arellano issued an assignment to his class with a unique dynamic: to establish a real connection and engage in meaningful dialogue, online, with their classmates — most of whom they've never met in person.
The assignment was simple, classmates would pair off and interview each other on Zoom about something important in their lives. After the interview, the interviewer wrote a short story, focusing on the meaning that was established.
"A key project in the class is a coaching project where students coach each other to achieve a chosen goal that is important in their lives," explains Arellano. "Some students work on improving their health, some focus on organizational skills and some have worked on completing outside writing projects like a children's book or a novel."
The main focus of the course is to develop both hard and soft communication skills. Through the genres of blogging, proposals, oral communication and non-fiction writing students work on an overarching concept - how to communicate authentically.
"It's amazing to see how the class develops into a community of practice where empathy, trust and intimacy become the cornerstones of interpersonal communication," says Arellano.
With permission, three of these assignment stories are being shared with the OC employees. The stories are powerful and all of the students involved graciously agreed to share their work with the OC community.
The Department of Communications is interested in how meaning is made in a range of contexts, including advertising, television, film, popular culture, and the internet. Explore how communication is fundamentally related to the development of self and society and examine how the messages of the contemporary world influence perception of such issues as gender, race, class and community.
Tags: Communications, Arts University Studies, Inside OC
