Abstract:

In 2016, the MIT Office of Graduate Education commissioned the creation of a short (six weeks, two hours/week) online course on oral communication in order to teach graduate students how to better communicate their research. We created a collection of materials for the virtual online course – specifically six comics and six companion case study videos (available at gradx.mit.edu/comics). Each comic features a nugget of communication advice, and the accompanying video shows the nugget in use in a situation graduate students might find themselves in.

The intention was for other educators:
(1) to augment the collection by creating additional nuggets and for them
(2) to possibly create custom experiences around select nuggets suitable for their courses and students’ needs.

In this paper, we describe an example experience (“Gradcommx Live: a Communication Intensive”) that we built around these nuggets and have taught at MIT. Instead of being virtual and six weeks long like the original online course, the Intensive is in-person and concentrated -- six two-hour in-person sessions occurring within a two week period. We discuss the design of this Intensive including the objectives, the curriculum and the assignments; we note some differences between the online version and this live intensive version; and finally, we discuss certain issues like scalability and participant selection.

Keywords:

Oral communication, professional development, technical communication skills, comics.