U N I V E R S I T Y  O F  P I T T S B U R G H

 Volume VIII, Number 1

September 2002

Bellet Teaching Awards
Gareis’ students connect theory to real world

In teaching one of the oldest fields, John Gareis, Communication, focuses on both the theoretical and the practical, helping students to observe and draw connections from the larger world around them. He wants “undergraduates to see and become familiar with theories of communication, as well as have practical experience.” This allows students to “recognize and understand just how communication can help us in the real world.”

By developing their analytical and observational skills and by providing real-world experiences, Gareis believes he can help students understand and appreciate the significant roles of rhetoric, communication, and media in their lives. As he notes, “ I like students to create case studies and then go back and analyze them according to the theories we’ve talked about in class. I also give students a great deal of fieldwork, furnishing opportunities to interact with people. In my Organizational Communication classes, for example, students go out and observe the ways different organizations do things, the ways different organizations construct power. By doing this, students can learn to make observations on their own.”
Gareis places great importance on his students’ independently learning to see the links between the academic community and the world around them. He states, “Often what happens in education is that people see separateness; in my classes I pull ideas from media, television, film, science—a lot of different areas. I want students to see that education is holistic, interconnected. It all comes down to accumulation, connections, histories, rather than what happens in isolation.”

For Gareis, one of the most enjoyable aspects of teaching is seeing students make these important associations. He says, “I really like whenever students start making connections for themselves between what they observe and what we talk about in class. A student once emailed me to tell me that she had made an observation that explained something we’d talked about in class—she had started to make the connections. Conversely, students often ask, ‘Is the final cumulative?’ I always answer, ‘No more than life is cumulative.’ Only when they start making the connections, will students be taken beyond preparation for the next exam—they will have learned things that are applicable to real life.”

A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh

Center for Instructional Development & Distance Education
1996-2004 © University of Pittsburgh, CIDDE. All Rights Reserved.
Editor: Carol DeArment, Production: Joyce Walsh
Questions or comments, please contact CIDDE Webmaster, 04/08/2004