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Courses: Communication and Diversity, Intercultural Communication, Gender Communication. Objectives: After completing this semester-long activity, students should be able to (1) articulate a systems-of-oppression (privilege??oppression) approach to thinking about difference; (2) confront and "interact differently" with one social identity category where they have privilege; and (3) explain the corresponding form of oppression at individual, institutional, and societal/cultural levels.

Instructors who teach critical communication theory sometimes have difficulty explaining key concepts to students. Discussions of power, ideology, hegemony, and emancipation often bring confused expressions to students upon first exposure to these ideas. This activity provides a simple, grounded approach to examining facets of critical theory in that students role-play a script written from actual words of private country club employees to explore how power is created and maintained in "ordinary" communication exchanges. Doing so not only demonstrates how layers of structure (e.g., board, members, managers, employees) create circumstances where the interests of some individuals are maintained over other individuals, but illustrates how deeply embedded scripts of societal inequities, including differences in sex, race, and class, can emerge in the form of status and power differentials between members and employees. A list of references and suggested readings is included.

This article presents a curriculum involving communication research methods. This course helps students become knowledgeable consumers and limited producers of communication research as they develop skills in gathering, organizing, interpreting, presenting and evaluating research information competently using appropriate methods. Working alone or in dyads, students design and conduct an original research project that measures individual opinions on an issue of interest. If students choose to work in dyads, twice the resources are expected. After topic approval, students conduct library/online research about their topic and collect at least five published sources of information, three of which must be peer-reviewed journal articles. Students then write a 3-4 page research proposal integrating this information to create an argument for their research. Students should be developing the research instruments to execute the study throughout the proposal phase. To expose students to several methods, students are required to create a survey protocol to gather quantitative research as well as an interview protocol to gain some experience in qualitative methods. Students present their findings to the class at a poster session. Students are instructed to address a lay audience in formatting their findings. In addition to creating the poster, students are also expected to answer questions about their projects.

The article presents a course related to work-life communication for senior college students which searches the intersections between paid work and personal or family life. It focuses on communication and other issues surrounding balancing personal needs and commitments particularly child or elder care, with a career. It also tackles differences in societal and organizational expectations of workers based on gender, marital status and childbearing/childrearing status. In addition, the ways in which people communicate about their working lives at home are discussed.

The article discusses the impact of technological innovations on training future physicians on health care interviewing through the use of standardized patients (SP) and computer-simulated patients (CSP) in the U.S. It focuses on the practical experiential activities of students who does not possess the medical knowledge required to complete a diagnostic interview. Moreover, SP is a non-physician who is hired to simulate illnesses in a standardized fashion to provide medical students with an early introduction to patient care. In addition, through the technology the replacement of human SPs with CSPs has made possible for it offer cases with chief complaints to the student who interacts with the patient by requesting additional history and interviewing laboratory data and x-ray.

The article offers information pertaining to cultural studies in communication. The goal of the said study is to sentisize students to representations of organizational diversity in popular culture. Cultures are referred to texts and practices that function to represent or create meaning. Critics to culture hope to restructure the attitudes and behaviors of men and women who produce and consume the discourse of particular societies through analyzing the textual forms and documented cultural practices. Its classes were divided into two parts. The first one focused on the explanation of ideological criticism and the second part emphasized to the themes of diversity. The said activity provided the students an opportunity to their own ideological criticism, either individually or groups.