For example, I created a writing course for the Department of Physics to coincide with the reports students prepared for their lab assignments. I also created a course for Research Fellows to help them write and publish their undergraduate theses. In addition I have created a technical writing course for chemical engineering students to prepare them for workplace writing (see CHEN 301 syllabus) and a First-Year Seminar, one of the High-Impact Practices supported by the TAMU Office of the Provost. This course, A Brave New Virtual World UGST 181, required students to use a sophisticated, interactive technology, Second Life®, to learn about teamwork and communication as they also learned about meeting the expectations of university life. My most recent teaching experience includes designing and teaching the first “0-credit” course offered to graduate students at the Bush School: Writing for the Medal of Excellence and instructing participants in the Scowcroft Institute Army Fellowship Program on their major research projects.

Program Curricular Design

Working as a program coordinator for TAMU's Center for Teaching Excellence, I have assisted with re-designing several program curricula, including those in the Department of EcoSystem Science & Management and in the Masters of Land and Property Development (Architecture) at TAMU. Working with CTE directors in their re-design efforts, I was asked to help determine how program-level outcomes (PLOs) could be met in individual degree plans and to develop resources and conduct workshops to support faculty. One of the key components to advance PLOs was to determine how writing activities could be incorporated through a comprehensive writing project that spans the curricula. This "comprehensive writing project," aka, the integrative learning portfolio (ILP), could be used to to assess outcomes at both program and course levels. Currently, the MLPD program now uses the ILP in place of the professional paper as one of the key assessment instruments to determine if (how well) degree outcomes are met by their Master's level students. Students in the program use the MLPD portfolio template I created to reflect on how their coursework, projects, and work experience meet each of the MLPD program-learning outcomes. Please see Consulting for more information about my work with these programs.

International Curricular Design

I have also worked as a part-time consultant for Leadership Development International (LDi) where I helped assess the needs of our clients (teachers and administrators at international universities) to develop curricula and resource materials. I prepared and delivered a mixed-reality presentation for an LDi client: the Higher Colleges of Technology--Fujairah College in the United Arab Emirates. I co-delivered this presentation with 2 partners: one in Tyler, Texas and one in the UAE. For more information about this presentation, please see my blog post "Consulting with a UAE client leads to mixed-reality presentation." For more information about my work at LDi, please see Consulting.

In the spring of 2011 I was invited to join the TAMU chemical engineering international plant design team on their trip to the TAMU campus in Doha, Qatar to meet the team members with whom they would collaborate to produce their course capstone project. This collaboration would culminate in a solution to a complex plant design problem posed by their client: Fluor. The plant design requirements alone present numerous challenges that prepare the students for the kinds of problem-solving experiences they should expect in their workplaces as chemical engineers. Added to this already complex and difficult task is the international component--working with team members who live half-way across the world. My job was to help the student teams learn how they can use collaborative technologies to solve problems, organize their time and resources, and produce deliverables that document their work. Therefore, my role as a collaborative communication instructor required me to prepare several workshops, which included researching the course and expectation students, attending the fall plant design team presentations, meeting with various colleagues whose expertise on particular areas (from instruction and assessment to particular cultural issues), contacting administrative and technical support at the Qatar campus, and revising my materials based on the usability tests completed by a sample audience. My instruction centered on using virtual world technology to encourage team building, including problem-solving, and on using several collaboration technology tools to facilitate group discussion as well as to produce the documents and other deliverables required by the capstone course. These technologies will be used by participants who will work remotely from opposite ends of the globe to complete the design work as well as deliver report and formal presentation for the client. Workshop assessment included a questionnaire and a survey asking students to address how they would respond to a case whose stakeholders face similar communication challenges to their own. The post-workshop assessments will help us plan for future collaborative design teams.

To learn more, please see my online journal where I reflect on recent teaching and learning experiences. See “Rhetorical Musings” found at http://rhetoricalmusings.blogspot.com/.