English 150, 250, and 250H play a major role in ISUComm, the most carefully studied curricular initiative in Iowa State history. In the process of its formation, revision, and piloting, the curricular plan was reviewed and revised by college curriculum committees, communication scholars and teachers, Faculty Senate committees, university and college administrators, as well as by interested faculty and students. As a result, the ISUComm curricular plan reflects a sustained, comprehensive effort to design and develop an approach to communication instruction specifically suited to the academic needs and professional goals of Iowa State students.
Rationale
From the outset, the goal of ISUComm has been to prepare our students to communicate with confidence and expertise in a world transformed by dynamic changes in information technology. The ISUComm curricular plan dovetails with contemporary communication practices, helping students develop complex multimodal expertise through sustained study and practice.
Vision
ISUComm envisions a curriculum in which students can produce effective written, oral, visual, and electronic communication, in which they can analyze and critique it, and in which they develop a basic rhetorical vocabulary for discussing communication choices with reasonable precision. These goals do not depend on only one or two communication courses, but seek to infuse every ISU course with studied practice in applied rhetoric. It aspires to intellectual rigor, student-centered classrooms, and active learning. Its ultimate goal is to prepare our graduates to communicate with confidence and integrity in the varied contexts of their academic, professional, and civic lives.
“We face a new world when we teach. There is no news here, for it has ever been so. Despite what we have thought of ourselves or our students, they remake us as we remake them, in reciprocal relation: no student who is not a teacher, no teacher not a student, no morning not new, at least to someone.”
—Michael Joyce, Professor of English, Vassar College
Mission
ISUComm is implementing its vision in three ways. First, to address the changing nature of communication practice, ISUComm integrates instruction in written, oral, visual, and electronic (WOVE) communication and addresses a variety of academic, professional and civic discourse. Second, to prepare all students for the diversity of contemporary communication, ISUComm cultivates a full range of communication competencies, from critical reading practices to comprehensive research methods, from clear prose to effective oral presentation, from systematic analysis of textual, verbal, and visual media to development, design, and delivery of well-reasoned arguments. Third, to accommodate this broad and complex agenda, ISUComm provides two 3-credit communication courses, taught in the first and second years; then it builds on this foundation by promoting communication instruction in advanced courses, including courses in the major and in various Learning Communities.
Launch
After almost a decade of work by hundreds of teachers at Iowa State and participation by thousands of students, ISUComm officially launched its curricular program in Fall 2007. This date marked merely the beginning of a vision, not its completion. It will take much more time to spread the ISUComm vision across the broad curriculum at Iowa State and to continue revising and strengthening that vision based on systematic program assessment and ongoing analysis of student communication needs.
You are part of ISUComm’s developing history. If you consider yourself merely the teacher of a single composition course, then you miss the more significant role you play for the students in your class. Each student in your class is launching an undergraduate career for which communication skills will be key. Students must not only perform well in your course, but carry forward a conscious awareness of the basic rhetorical principles and communication modes that will make them ISUComm ambassadors.
ISUComm asks you to help students engage with their learning. Design concrete, measurable ways to move your students to higher levels of challenge and achievement. Create activities to let students make connections among knowledge learned previously, the skills they are using in ISUComm Foundation Courses, and the communication (written, oral, visual, and electronic) they might do in the future. Early in your course you might ask students to write out specific ways that they will take intellectual risks to extend and enrich their own learning.