Major Purpose and Problem Defined
Courses in communication, especially introductory courses, are generally taught in a large classroom setting with lectures aligned to teach basic concepts to the students. These classroom settings are aligned such because there are several constraints, such as costs and budgets because of which lecture settings are best suited for introductory communication courses. However, these instructional settings then limit interaction and dialogue as well in teaching. This poses a number of problems despite the advocacy by a number of researchers that dialogue in communication courses is important. One such problem is that in a larger classroom, such as a lecture hall, dialogue is not possible on a larger scale. Secondly, dialogue and lectures do not clearly work together. The paper discusses through qualitative analysis, these elements on whether students are able to engage in dialogue and how well do they learn in such a setting.
Hypotheses and Research Questions
The research questions included:
- evaluation of communication behaviors that the instructor utilized for dialog
- the communication between students and teacher in the eyes of the students
Sample and Methods of Research Used
An evaluation of a summer course in communication in a public university was conducted in which fifty students were enrolled. The course offering across the sections was the same, including assignments, content, tests and the teaching methodologies. The professor teaching the course believes in dialogue based study and thus this sample is perfect to evaluate and answer the research questions. The first question was addressed through ethnography for 40 hours throughout the course. A 90 minute interview was conducted as well to complement the notes taken during observation. The next two questions were addressed through responses on questionnaires by the students. Inductive method using the Hymes SPEAKING methodology was utilized to evaluate the responses received.
Results and Conclusion
There were several elements of dialogue based study that were revealed. Openness, emergence, presence and mutuality are the key areas that were part of the dialogue based study. Along with that, the communication and dialogue between the teacher and students was considered open and approachable, friendly and personal allowing for better learning. Additionally, students considered that the key areas that helped them in learning were agency or togetherness and interaction allowing them to ask questions in class and not feel ridiculed.
Limitations of the Research
One of the key limitations was that the classroom setting was smaller and thus dialogue was easier in comparison to larger settings where 200 or more students may be present. However, an argument against this limitation is the use of technology and other methodologies to promote dialogue in larger settings as well such as utilizing discussion forums and web logs.
Opinion and Contribution of this Research
This research allows for understanding why and how dialogue can be and should be promoted to understand and learn communication aspects. However, one of the key concerns that this article indicates towards is that this primarily revolves around communication study rather than the actual context of communication. Moreover, the article primarily researched on an introductory communications class while communication in itself is a detailed and complex topic for which a simple dialogue based study may not be the right solution.
