Posts Tagged Informal communication

Peer critique HW + guidance

This peer critique assignment guides readers through the entire peer critique process: requesting specific feedback from peers, providing feedback to peers–including a summary comment and supporting constructive and positive comments, including the received critique with the revised paper, and a rubric that will be used to grade the peer critique. From Mia Minnes’ Undergraduate Seminar in Logic at M.I.T.

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Active Listening Story

Fisher, Kopelman, and Schneider report on their study in which they found that preconditioning people to a particular point of view can prevent them from understanding others’ points of view. This story is used to emphasize that listening is not trivial–to hear what another is saying it can be helpful to listen “actively,” by checking that you understand.

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Feedback Discussion

Context: This lesson plan is from a weekly communication recitation that accompanies M.I.T.’s Real Analysis. This recitation is the last of the term. The first term it was offered this feedback discussion was combined with the recitation on advanced LaTeX topics, but the feedback was so useful that an entire recitation is now devoted to feedback discussion. Authors: This recitation was suggested by Susan Ruff based on the end-of-term feedback sessions held by M.I.T.’s Dennis Freeman. Objectives: To receive feedback from students on the effectiveness of the recitations. Recitation: The recitation instructors lead a class discussion of how the term

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Teamwork workshop

Context: This workshop from MIT’s Project Laboratory in Mathematics prepares students to collaborate in teams of three to research mathematics, write papers, and give presentations. The purpose of this workshop is to give students tools they can use to help their teams function productively. The most important part of the workshop is the discussion that follows the team activity. Authors: This workshop was developed primarily by Susan Ruff; the activity (not reported here) is from Google, via Robin Shostack Student preparation: Before the workshop, students watch the video Overcoming Unconscious Bias from the Global Communication Center at Carnegie Mellon University. This

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Professional Communication

Context: This lesson plan is from a weekly communication recitation that accompanies M.I.T.’s Real Analysis. This week students learn about uniform convergence (Rudin pp. 150-154). Authors: This recitation was developed by Susan Ruff. The software engineering research is joint with Michael Carter, the case study is by Les Perelman, and the Active Listening story is by Fisher, Kopelman, and Schneider. Communication objectives: Communicate professionally Recitation: This recitation has three parts, a summary of research into the professional communication skills needed by software engineers, an explanation of one of those skills (active listening), and a case study from industry of (un)professional

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Informal communication

This page is primarily about supporting or teaching informal communication, such as team communication, collaborating with colleagues, and the myriad forms of professional interpersonal communication. See also the page about informal peer critique. For information about using informal communication to teach math, see this page about communicating to learn. Supporting Teamwork You can help teams to function productively by giving students the means for thinking and talking about teamwork. A lecture is unlikely to be appreciated, but there are other ways to support teamwork. Lesson plan for a teamwork workshop from M.I.T.’s Project Lab in Mathematics. “Complex Instruction: Raising Achievement

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