Soft skills (active listening, attention to detail, avoiding technology-based distractions, etc.) are a growing need in today's workforce. Yet, finding the time, methods, and space within marketing classes can be a challenge. Faced with the task of teaching students not only how to function in their daily roles once in the workforce, the authors…

Many scholars have noted the critical skills needed for leaders in the face of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). These skills include self-awareness, listening, communication, adaptability, critical thinking, and collaboration. Students who are able to develop these skills would be better equipped to lead in settings where…

Courses: Organizational Communication, Advanced Organizational Communication, Organizing Work, Management/Organizational History. Objectives: This activity will help students to understand major shifts in the organization of work and creatively represent changing work structures and practices. An optional follow-up assignment is included. A…

Consumer insights are all around us. Yet it can be difficult for students to examine everyday consumption practices and see how this understanding has application. Using the simple premise of a favorite family recipe, students learn how insight can be hidden in plain sight. Beginning with conducting an in-depth interview, the assignment gives…

Courses: Public Speaking, Storytelling, Performance Ethnography, Oral Interpretation, Language and Communication. Objectives: The aims of this class exercise are: (1) To engage in a collaborative creative process of developing a story/topic from a simple idea to deepening the relationship with the audience through vivid and evocative language; (2)…

Communicators are involved in persuasion every day. For students to be effective in their persuasive attempts, they need experiential practice in creating and evaluating persuasive messages that utilize persuasive strategies. Persuasive strategies can help speakers to influence their audiences to accept proposed ideas and the possible…

In this article, the author describes a creative way to demystify contemporary art for students. TASK is artist Oliver Herring's creation, where participants actively interpret instructions found on little pieces of paper--what he calls "tasks." An art classroom has all the key ingredients for a TASK event: (1) people; (2) materials; (3) space;…

This article offers information that will allow music educators to incorporate North Indian classical vocal music into a multicultural music education curriculum. Obstacles to teaching North Indian classical vocal music are acknowledged, including lack of familiarity with the cultural/structural elements and challenges in teaching ear training and…

"Enlivening Secondary History" is the ideal handbook for busy history teachers who want to do something different in their classrooms, but have little time to plan and organise their lessons. Featuring tried-and-tested practical ideas complete with relevant exemplars and step-by-step advice, this best-selling book is a compendium of creative…

The changes in technology that have affected mail delivery are a dynamic way to encourage students to think critically and make meaningful connections across historical eras. In the classroom, personal communication through the mail can become the "thematic glue" used across historical units to highlight the changes in everyday life caused by…

This article describes a series of public space projects based on the contemporary practice of interventionist artists who seek to creatively transform spaces and disrupt the ritual of the everyday. Two of the four public space projects were planned for school spaces: (1) a mock marathon during class transitions ("Monthly Meeting Marathon"); and…

The critical examination of language and the deconstruction of truth claims play an important role in how we build with diversity in our classrooms. We, as social work educators involved with playful postmodernism, recognize the significance of improvisation and playfulness in engaging the question: how is this examination and deconstruction done?…

This article presents an activity in which students use narrative theory as a conceptual canvas for understanding resumes as autobiographical performances shaped by social and material forces. By asking students to story their lives in both conventional and creative resumes, this assignment invites students to produce autobiographical discourse…

An implementation and assessment of three creative-learning mechanisms in a research-inspired split undergraduate/graduate course in Analytical Microdevice Technology is described. Microscale research is challenging to incorporate into the classroom due to the phenomena length-scales and the creating learning strategies were used to promote…

When the author came to Villa Park High School in Orange County, California back in 1998, having just finished fourteen years in an East Los Angeles school, she expected to find communication technology already operative. It was just beginning at Bell High School where she had been, in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), with a Video…