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 3.

Communication department assists faculty across disciplines to integrate speaking skills

Speaking Across the Curriculum (SAC) is a national movement that has become quite popular in the last 10 to 15 years,” according to Pete Simonson, Communication. Pitt has adopted a discipline-specific SAC model in which each department determines what types of speaking competencies it would like its majors to develop. Ideally this would occur with practice and instruction spread over several classes.

Photo Courtesy of Speaking Lab

Engineering student Daryl E. Peek II polishes his presentation skills in the Speaking Laboratory.

“Every major will incorporate speaking skills in some way,” according to Simonson, a member of an ad hoc committee established by CAS Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies Patty Beeson to assist departments to integrate skills across the curriculum. Simonson elaborates: “Basic instruction as well as practice opportunities in spoken communication may take different forms depending on the discipline. For example, it could be a research presentation, class discussion, one-on-one or smaller group work, debate, or oral examination. Each department is coming up with ways it might implement SAC within its own major.”

Web-based resources
Graduate students are working with Simonson in a practicum on Theory and Practice of Speaking Across the Curriculum to develop Web-based resources with practical ideas to help faculty in other disciplines incorporate various types of oral communication into their classes. A basic Web site should be in place by early May. “We hope this will eventually become a national model for Web-based SAC resources,” Simonson said. Over the summer graduate students will be available to consult with individual faculty members who would like to incorporate oral communication/speaking assignments into their classes. Two members of the Communication faculty will take part in the Provost’s Summer Instructional Development Institute workshop on May 9, Speaking and Writing Across the Curriculum. Finally, the department is considering other long-term ways to help facilitate speaking in the various disciplines, including developing pilot programs with individual departments interested in developing oral components of their majors. Beeson and members of the department have been conferring with consultants, including a nationally known expert on the SAC movement, who shared various models that can be used to incorporate speaking into the disciplines.

New Speaking Laboratory
Trudy Bayer, a Communication Department faculty member, is director of the new Speaking Laboratory, located on the 11th floor of the Cathedral. She is familiar with the range of problems that can confront people in public speaking. According to Bayer, the purpose of the lab is to provide support and individual tutoring on any kind of speaking project at any stage of its development. Students may come to the lab for individual work on a presentation for a class, and faculty can come for individual instruction on improving their public speaking and presentation skills. For example, students or faculty may want to learn how to organize their thoughts more clearly, how to learn to use language more vividly, or how to translate a technical idea into lay person’s terms. Otherwise, they simply might want general feedback. The lab is set up as a conference room, and cameras are available for taping a presentation to review.

Bayer has begun the process of interdepartmental networking and collaboration to try to make the University community aware of the lab and its work. In addition to numerous individuals, several schools at the University have used the speaking lab resources. For example, Bayer helped participants in an entrepreneurial program to develop presentation skills that connect inventions with real services and products. Also, she developed a program with School of Engineering mentors to develop their public speaking skills so they could pass them along to students, who are required to make formal presentations on research projects.

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