{"id":6325,"date":"2018-05-16T11:25:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T18:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/?p=6325"},"modified":"2018-05-18T09:43:16","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T16:43:16","slug":"communicating-across-the-curriculum-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/2018\/05\/16\/communicating-across-the-curriculum-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"Communicating Across the Curriculum Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CxCsi<\/span><\/p>\n

I have spent most of my week in Louisiana. My primary objective was to facilitate two workshops for Louisiana State University\u2019s Communication Across the Curriculum Summer Institute<\/a> (#CxCsi). However, I also was able to attend the event<\/a> as a participant. What a learning opportunity and a wonderful community…<\/span><\/p>\n

Workshops<\/span><\/h1>\n

My hosts<\/a> were interested in me sharing in two areas. First, they wanted me to talk about the ever elusive work-life balance. Finally, they asked me to share about educational technologies that support communication across the curriculum.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this post, I\u2019ll share some resources from my two workshops<\/a>. I will also give some glimpses into some of my take-aways from the CxC summer institute<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tips & Tricks<\/span><\/h2>\n

Balancing the work-life load as a teaching professor<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n

You can view my slides from the workshop and also the responses from participants during the session on my CxC Summer Institute workshop resources page<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On part of the experience I really appreciated was how transparent some people were about their struggles and successes. I asked participants how well they would rate their own work-life balance and received responses that almost approximated a bell curve.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

I encourage you to visit the section of the resources page for that session<\/a> to see the ideas that people had around how we can: capture the commitments we have made, plan for how to execute on those plans, surrender to those inevitable times when things won\u2019t go as we had planned, and how to unite with our partners in our lives when we need help.<\/span><\/p>\n

My favorite part of this session came as a response to the question: What advice do you have about uniting?<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier in the session, I had shared about a poet that Maha Bali had recommended on episode 200. She suggested that we read the poems of Najwa Zebian, who also regularly shares her wisdom on Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had a screenshot of her Twitter profile on the slide, including her words:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese mountains that you are carrying, you were only meant to climb.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the participant\u2019s response to the question: What advice do you have about uniting didn\u2019t miss a beat:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to admire from a distance.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Did I mention that this is a terrific group of people? As of the time of me composing this blog post, we are still trying to discern who the witty poet among us is…\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tech Tools for Teaching:<\/span><\/h2>\n

Communicating to Learn, Learning to Communicate<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n

One of the areas of emphasis in the institute is that there are activities we can have our students do that will help them learn through their communication efforts (communicating to learn) and there are activities we can have our students do to demonstrate their learning through their communication (learning to communicate).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Slide presented by CxCsi faculty to define the C2L L2C continuum<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the Tech Tools for Teaching session, I shared more tools that provide students with a means for demonstrating their learning, though many of them could be used on either end of the continuum.<\/span><\/p>\n

The participants' ideas for tools to help support students\u2019 learning in spoken, written, technological, and visual communication are included on the Tech Tools for Teaching section of the CxCsi resources page<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other CxCsi Fun<\/span><\/h3>\n

I really enjoyed the opportunities to engage with people one-on-one during the institute the most. The planning team for the event put forth such great effort in making our learning environment comfortable and welcoming.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few times a day, they did a raffle and gave away some of my favorite teaching and learning books and some that I wasn\u2019t familiar with before attending.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Books<\/span><\/p>\n

A few books I was excited would be getting in the hands of these faculty included:<\/span><\/p>\n