The Graduate School
GRS
390P - Exploring Multicultural Communication:
Communicating Across Disciplinary Cultures in SecondLife
Fall, 2007; Thursday, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m., ETC 2.102, Unique #67745
Consent of instructor required
Dr. Leslie Jarmon LJarmon@mail.utexas.edu, 232-3617
Open to all graduate students and of special interest to graduate students in: Engineering, Natural Sciences, Liberal Arts, Architecture, Public Affairs, Communication, Business, Education, School of Information, Fine Arts, Pharmacy, Nursing, Social Work, and All Interdisciplinary Units.
According to the Directors of the National Laboratories, the greatest challenge facing research efforts in the U.S. is the inability of people on research teams to communicate effectively with one another. Critical to one's success during and after graduate school in a world of ever-increasing complexity and challenge is the ability to communicate effectively between different disciplines and cultures and with multiple audiences in a variety of circumstances. Effective communication requires developing skillful mental flexibility and a deep understanding of diverse audiences with underlying expectations and worldviews.
As a complement to in-class activities, SecondLife (SL) provides a virtual simulation wherein students will be able to apply, test, fail, repeat, adapt, and improve their demonstrated use of communication strategies, individually and in teams, in ways that are beyond the reach of our physical classroom (over 85 universities and colleges are in SL, as well as libraries, museums, etc.). In order to complete course assignments and projects, students will take frequent SL “field trips,” engage other communities in SL, and interact extensively with educational and non-academic participants via SL.
Adaptation and Flexibility: Skills in Engaging Other Perspectives. Students will explore and analyze systematically meta-perspectives on different ways humans generate new knowledge in the face of on-going change, disciplinary conflicts, and even risk. With demands for interdisciplinary research and virtual research teams increasing, students will discover and practice greater flexibility of outlook and will enhance their ability as scientists and scholars to work and learn across disciplines more effectively. The goal here is not to discover a single unifying answer, but rather to understand and apply the notion of "communication adaptability" itself. What constitutes successful flexibility? How is it acquired? What are the characteristics of researchers who embody it? Is there a "flexibility profile"? Can it be taught in a systematic way? Developing greater flexibility of outlook and the ability to shift perspectives gives our students a competitive advantage and complements our more traditional and necessarily narrow disciplinary focus. As Helen Fox has asked (1994, 136): "Are you ready to imagine knowledge differently?"
The ways we are trained to think, talk, read, and write about knowledge are rhetorical behaviors that affect the kinds of knowledge we construct. "Ways of thinking" about how knowledge emerges will enhance students' "ways of thinking" about their own disciplines. Interdisciplinary and intercultural interactions, and academic and professional interactions all stimulate news ways of thinking about knowledge and new ways of conducting inquiry itself. Practicing effective communication means applying our new understanding of multiple cultures, communities of practice, societies, scientific disciplines, and the material artifacts of each of these, including technology and virtual space in particular.
Instructor Consent is Required: Prior to receiving permission to register, students will (1) have an individual interview, (2) agree to meet pre-class SL requirements, (3) set up their SL account, and (4) complete the SL Orientation tutorials online in SL. (5) Finally, access will be provided to UT-Austin’s Island in SecondLife.
KEY ASSIGNMENTS:
Discussions led by Expert Guest Faculty will contribute to the interdisciplinary and multicultural design of the course. In addition to an interdisciplinary group project in Second Life, course activities include daily readings and preparation for critical class discussions, short essay responses (“fragments”) to the readings, a series of short assignments, active class participation, and the final auto-ethnography project.
TEXTS
1. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity by Etienne Wagner.
2. GRS 390P Course Packet available at the University Co-op Bookstore.