15 The Service Project

Part of one’s ethical obligation to their community, involves impacting the greater good in some way. For this course, to enact our obligation to each other, we created a service project that brings together CM2000, Studies in Communication and Media, students (usually students new to the CMS major take this course) and CM4905, Senior Seminar, students. In this collaboration, students from both courses meet during Lab sessions and work on topics such as:

Ethics and Decision Making

Job Interviewing Skills

Portfolio Development

We imagine these collaborations will continue and evolve.

This is a general description of some of these labs:

The Service to CM2000 Project

Lab 1 and Lab 2 General Descriptions (these descriptions will change each semester)

Note: To prepare collaborations between CM2000 students and CM4905 students, we will have several combined classes to discuss the trajectory of the collaborations.

Purpose: As CMS seniors taking senior seminar, you will be demonstrating your responsibility to the program and our community as a CMS major by developing two labs for new CMS students, both transfer students and first year students. We also have a third activity elated to showcasing your portfolios. Remembering back to your own experiences in CM2000 Studies in Communication and Media, you have a unique perspective about that course and about how the new students might feel about their experiences in the program and in college in general. Engaging in this project, you demonstrate your ethical obligation to the Other—giving back to your program and the community, as well as demonstrating your own development and commitment to learning, serving, and working together. Below are descriptions (just the basics) of the Labs we envision. It is up to you and your team mates to use your creativity, knowledge of ethics and in particular communication ethics, and your past experiences to develop lab that you believe will serve the new students in our major in a unique and favorable way.

Each Lab should:

• demonstrate elements of communication ethics
• teach something
• be recorded (if possible)
• have some kind of ethical application

Each student in CM4905 should:

• participate in developing and delivering both labs
• reflect on their participation in this project through an ethical lens/perspective
• be proactive and prepared when meeting with your team
• embody dialogic ethics in all of your collaborative engagement

Example: Lab 1 Communication Ethics in an Age of Disinhibition

There is a good amount of autonomy in developing this lab. But there are also some requirements that are necessary to bring this lab to fruition. This lab focuses on integrating disinhibition theory with communication/dialogic ethics. It is tied to a Lab in CM2000, where the students will prepare a personal code of ethics. This is what you will do in this lab:

• review disinhibition theory
• distinguish communication ethics, in particular, dialogic ethics, from other ethical theories
• create an interactive activity teaching about disinhibition and communication/dialogic ethics (some activity examples)
  • using framework of a thought experiment
  • interactive structures, such as focus groups, surveys, or polls
  • gamified activity (ex.: Kahoot, Jeopardy, etc.)
• teach about personal codes of ethics (provide framework examples of a PCoE) because this is the outcome they will need to produce for CM2000 after your lab
• this lab should be contained in a single, 50-minute activity that leaves room for discussion

It should be noted that you will work in teams. You will be responsible for collaborating and creating the lab; you must also be present for the lab delivery.

Example: Lab 2 Preparing for Work Life: The Mock Interview

This lab prepares students early to think about doing an internship (and later, getting a job!).  CM2000 students will should develop a list of places where they want to do an internship and write a cover letter for a selected internship. The culminating activity is to engage in a mock interview. As lab facilitators, and since you will have finished the first two parts of your Career Launch project, you are charged with developing a lab that will be a mock interview with one or more CM2000 students.

For you, this lab requires more reflection than lab 1. Since you are teaching what you have learned earlier in the semester in the Career Launch Project, you will prepare to engage mock interviewing as the INTERVIWER. You will develop at least three questions, and be provided one question from the CM2000 student. Each mock interview should be recorded and shared with the student. For ease of access, the CM2000 student should execute the recording. We will discuss interview questions in our class and you will have time as a class to work in your teams. Each team will conduct a mock interview with several CM2000 students. This depends on enrollment in your specific semester.

After completion of the Mock Interviews, you will write a personal reflection about your experience teaching this lab and engaging in the Mock Interview process as an interviewer. What surprised you? What is something new that you learned about the process and about yourself? How has this experience prepared you to be a future interviewee? Your individual reflection is due the following class meeting after the lab is delivered. Additionally, as the interviewer(s), you must also provide advice and comments on the interviewee behavior based upon your observations.