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Labor
Day marked the official end of summer for the PWR faculty,
who headed back to campus on September 7 to begin a four-day
institute on teaching PWR 2. While second-year students
were revving up for Sophomore College, our instructors also
got a taste of the sophomore experience, complete with homework.
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| Professor
Andrea Lunsford reviews the new PWR2 assignment sequence
at the Summer Institute, September 2004. More
Institute photos... |
Over
the course of two days, each instructor was asked to script,
design, rehearse, and deliver a three-minute multimedia
presentation similar to what we would ask our students to
produce in PWR 2. The purpose of this assignment was to
help instructors experience first-hand both the rewards
and challenges of putting together such projects. Little
did we know just how authentic this experience would be.
Fingers
flew furiously over laptop keyboards as each instructor
struggled to complete his or her project before the deadline.
Panic filled the halls of Wallenberg Hall amid rumors that
a timekeeper would ring a bell at the end our three minutes,
whether or not we were finished talking. Always offering
guidance and encouragement were Doree Allen, John Bilderbeck,
and Jennifer Heninngs of Stanford’s Oral Communications
Program, all of whom acted as our Oral Communications Tutors.
While
many of us became anxious about the technology we were trying
to implement, our OCTs reminded us that the most important
element of a presentation was a clear, engaging, accessible
argument. Of course, that was something we all understood
as teachers of writing and rhetoric, but it was easy to
lose sight of that lesson once we were put in the position
of students. more
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