Tag: Activities

  • Teaching Public Speaking Skills for Our Remote Age With MindTap Bongo Present Activities

    Teaching Public Speaking Skills for Our Remote Age With MindTap Bongo Present Activities

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    I remember that fateful day clearly, back in March 2020, when we were first told “Go home. We’re going remote.” On the way out the door, one of my colleagues said, “This changes everything.”  At the time, I thought they were overreacting. My focus was on health and safety. Naively, I thought the COVID-19 pandemic would pass quickly, and we would soon return to normal.

    Rarely have I been so wrong about so many things.

    As a communication professor for more than thirty years, I assumed public speaking meant speaking in-person, in public. At the beginning of remote learning, I instructed students to present speeches on Zoom in much the same way I had when our classroom was live, in-person. However, after several semesters of trial and error, I finally appreciated the truth of my colleague’s statement. Everything had changed. While many of the skills required for effective public speaking remotely were the same as public speaking in person, teaching additional skills was necessary.

    Public speaking skills: critical for career success

    Happily, I discovered learning these remote public speaking skills would not only support students’ academic success but would also support their long-term workplace success. According to research in Cengage’s Career Readiness eBook, 98.5% of employers think communication skills are very important. Additionally, LinkedIn ranked communication as No. 1 on their 2024 list of overall most in-demand skills. Ultimately, this is a skill that will only benefit students in the long run. So, how can students hone this skill?

    When it comes to public speaking in any environment, practice is always key. Experts often suggest students give practice presentations, paying close attention to things like their body language, tone of voice and breath control. Practicing in front of others can also be tremendously helpful when preparing.

    The challenge of incorporating peer feedback skills in remote teaching

    Providing constructive feedback is an essential skill for remote public speaking. Teaching my students how to provide constructive feedback had always been an integral part of my in-person public speaking curriculum.

    First, I would offer a lesson with guidelines on how to offer constructive feedback. Then, students would be responsible for completing a speech critique form of another student’s presentation. And finally, students would reflect on ways they could improve their performance based on the feedback they received. Research suggests this type of peer review process helps students to develop lifelong skills in assessing and providing feedback to others, while simultaneously equipping them with skills to self-assess and improve their own speeches.

    When I had a full class of face-to-face students, integrating these types of peer review experiences into my public speaking curriculum was relatively easy. However, I quickly learned that the remote learning environment presented a new set of peer review challenges. Just recording speeches to a viewing platform wasn’t enough to replicate the learning opportunities of the in-person experience. Ideally, students needed to be able to record their speeches for asynchronous viewing by the instructor and the assigned students, who would then offer written constructive feedback for the presenter and other peer reviewers to consider. These requirements seemed like a tall order but, amazingly, MindTap, Cengage’s online learning platform, provided me with exactly what I needed.

    Using MindTap to teach remote public speaking skills

    Prior to my public speaking courses shifting to remote learning, I had already been using online MindTap activities to supplement the print versions of my textbooks. After the pandemic, I began to rely more heavily on MindTap activities. I found using MindTap filled in some of what was lost from my students’ in-person experience, keeping them more engaged. Additionally, using the MindTap Bongo Present activities, which are available with many of the Communication Studies eBooks, solved a number of practical dilemmas including how to systematically evaluate their performance.

    Present Bongo activities, found in the MindTap learning path, help students become more comfortable with the act of speaking to a camera while being recorded to a screen through a variety of topic-specific, impromptu-style, low-stakes public speaking opportunities.

    Present activities can also be used as an effective delivery and evaluation system for more formal public speaking presentations, such as pre-planned informative or persuasive speeches. When students record their speech, in addition to receiving feedback and a grade from me, they can also receive feedback from other class members, either by a rubric-based peer review or live, real-time comments.

    Having the option to assign three or more reviewers for each speech provides additional benefits, for both the reviewer and the speaker. As reviewers, students get to see a wider range of work, and as speakers, they get more feedback on their presentations. If multiple reviewers make the same suggestion, a speaker may be more likely to take that suggestion to heart.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The pathway to public speaking success in a remote setting includes setting aside time to rehearse and record presentations and asking colleagues for constructive feedback. In much the same way, MindTap Bongo activities provide students the opportunity to practice their speaking skills, learn from the review/feedback process  and, ultimately, to succeed in our remote age.

    Written by Sheryll Reichwein, MA, Adjunct Professor of Communication at Cape Cod Community College

    Interested in exploring how MindTap Bongo Activities can help your students develop remote public speaking skills effectively?

    The post Teaching Public Speaking Skills for Our Remote Age With MindTap Bongo Present Activities appeared first on The Cengage Blog.

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  • Education Department Publishes Guidance Letter Deeming Race-Conscious Programs, Activities and Practices Illegal

    Education Department Publishes Guidance Letter Deeming Race-Conscious Programs, Activities and Practices Illegal

    by CUPA-HR | February 18, 2025

    On February 14, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published a “Dear Colleague” letter “to clarify and reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools … that receive federal financial assistance” from the department. The letter specifically states that “Federal law … prohibits covered entities from using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life” (emphasis added).

    The department warns that “institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding,” and cites the government’s authority to do so under “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and other relevant authorities.”

    The letter reiterates institutions’ existing legal requirements under federal antidiscrimination laws and is intended to provide clarity to institutions of their nondiscrimination obligations. However, in addition to pointing to existing federal antidiscrimination laws, OCR expands upon the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) — which banned the use of race-conscious admissions practices at institutions of higher education — to apply more broadly to programs and practices at institutions. Specifically, OCR states that the court’s decision and applicable federal law prohibits covered entities “from using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

    OCR provides a few examples of practices that would be illegal under federal antidiscrimination law. One example, which was prohibited in the text of the SFFA decision, is using “students’ personal essays, writing samples, participation in extracurriculars, or other cues” as a means to determine a student’s race to grant preferences to that individual. Additionally, the letter states that using proxies like the one just described is illegal on the systematic level, stating that it is unlawful for institutions to eliminate standardized testing to “achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity.” In both examples, OCR appears focused on the motive for the action rather than the action itself. Thus, an institution can choose to use or not use standardized tests or focus on certain criteria in applications as long it is not doing so for an impermissible reason.

    The letter also says that other programs violate antidiscrimination laws in less direct ways. Specifically, the letter states that “DEI programs … frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not” and that “such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes.” They assert that these programs ultimately deny students the ability to fully participate in “the life of a school.”

    The letter states that the Department of Education will begin to assess institutional compliance with antidiscrimination law and regulations no later than 14 days after of the date of publication of the letter. In the letter, OCR advises schools to:

    • Ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law.
    • Cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends.
    • Cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race.

    Possible Implications for Higher Education HR Professionals

    As noted above, the letter specifies using race in hiring, promotion and compensation decisions is prohibited under federal law, though the Department of Education does not provide examples of hiring and compensation practices that could be violations of such laws. While the primary federal laws prohibiting discrimination in employment are Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and similar equal employment opportunity laws enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Title VI can apply to employment decisions. It is unclear how the department intends to enforce this letter with respect to hiring, promotion and compensation practices and whether the Department of Labor or the EEOC will provide further guidance. CUPA-HR intends to seek clarification from the Education Department and the other agencies.

    CUPA-HR is assessing the impact that this enforcement letter will have on institutions and will keep members apprised of further developments related to the Trump administration’s DEI orders.



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