APPENDIX F

The Communication Initiative in the School of Humanities and

Social Science:

Preliminary Report

HASS Overview Committee

November 19, 1997

I. Overview

The Communication Initiative at MIT began a two year experimental phase this year, mandated by a vote of the faculty in April 1997. Dean Philip Khoury has charged the HASS Overview Committee (formerly the HASS-D Overview Committee) to oversee the contributions of the HASS Curriculum to the Communication Initiative during this period. The committee's first two meetings of this academic year were devoted to this subject. We discussed the ways in which contributions of the HASS Curriculum to the Communication Initiative can be solicited and, once in place, how they ought to be vetted.

Most of the general principles underlying the Communication Initiative were accepted by our committee, and those principles framed our discussion: Communication intensive experiences ought to be sustained experiences for the student. Students should take communication intensive classes at regular intervals during their four years, and each communication intensive class should provide sustained writing and speaking, with ample feedback, over the course of the semester. Students should have at least one opportunity to revise a major writing assignment in the light of professors' comments, suggestions and critiques. Oral communication skills should be developed in conjunction with written communication skills.

Many classes in the HASS Curriculum are already writing intensive. This is especially true of classes in the humanities, but it includes classes in the arts and social sciences that approach their subjects from humanistic perspectives. In the humanities, writing is central to the disciplines. For many scholars in the humanities, writing is not merely a means to express ideas and summarize activities of an essentially different nature (such as is the case when, say, a scientist writes an experimental report). Rather, the activity is the writing; subject and expression are indivisible. This inevitably affects the way in which humanistic disciplines are taught. In the humanities, writing, and the development of ideas through writing, are central to learning. Oral communication receives less consistent emphasis in the current teaching of humanities. Some faculty regard oral presentations by their students, with feedback, as part of the learning process and thus require it. Others regard writing and speaking as separate skills and emphasize writing over speaking. However, most humanities classes stress the importance of discussion, and supervised, student-led discussion, with professors' guidance and feedback, are a very effective means of developing students' oral communication skills.

While writing is central to scholarship and learning in all the humanities, disciplines (and teachers) differ with respect to details. Long, expository essays might be appropriate for a literature or history subject, for example, while shorter, closely argued papers are normally more appropriate in a philosophy class. There is a strong consensus among members of the Humanities Overview Committee -- echoed by our discussion with department heads and other interested faculty -- that specific criteria regarding the nature, length, and style of the writing that is required by the Communication Requirement ought not to be developed externally to the subjects taught in the HASS Curriculum and then applied uniformly across disciplines. Rather, the nature of the writing that satisfies a Communication Requirement should flow naturally from the proclivities of the specific subject being taught and the professor who is teaching it.

Having said this, however, MIT does already have in place a General Institute Requirement that demands sustained writing and speaking according to criteria that are applied across disciplines in the HASS Curriculum, namely the HASS-D requirement. With some adjustments, many of those classes, as well as many HASS-E's that similarly demand sustained writing and speaking, can easily be designated 'Communication Intensive' (CI). The contributions of the HASS Curriculum to the new Communication Requirement will consist primarily of such classes, thus leveraging the kinds of learning that is already in place. New, additional communication intensive classes in the HASS Curriculum will of course be encouraged, but they will not be our main contribution.

The discussion here concerns the moderate sized classes that are typical of the humanities. Large lecture classes in the social sciences will no doubt require creative solutions of a different nature, perhaps along the lines of the writing practica that are already in place in some large science and engineering classes. Similarly, small seminars and tutorials, most of which are certainly communication intensive, are not addressed here.

2. CI HASS-D

The mechanical criteria for HASS-D's determine that they each require a minimum of 20 pages of writing. This work must be distributed among a minimum of three separate paper assignments, thus ensuring that the writing is sustained. Furthermore, there is a component to all HASS-D's that affects the students' oral skills: Every HASS-D must include a minimum of 1 hour of discussion per week. Because of these criteria, many, perhaps most, HASS-D's already constitute communication intensive experiences.

A communication intensive HASS distribution subject (CI HASS-D) would include an opportunity for each student to revise at least one major writing assignment in the light of the professor's critique. Moreover, in place of discussion of a general nature, which we presume is normally led by the professor, a CI HASS-D will have student led discussion: Each student will have an opportunity to lead a discussion at least once over the course of the semester, with the professor's guidance and substantial feedback. Alternatively, the oral component of the Communication Requirement might be met by student presentations, at the professor's discretion, again with substantial feedback. Other models are possible. In order to allow an increased amount of individual attention, CI HASS-D's will have an enrollment cap (e.g. 15) that is set lower than that of regular HASS-D's (28). The additional work that is demanded of students in a CI HASS-D will replace the final exam that is required in normal HASS-D's. Finally, in order to acquire CI credit for a CI HASS-D, students will be required to earn a minimum grade of 'B;' grades less than a B will continue to earn HASS-D and general institute credit, but a grade of less than B will not satisfy the Communication Requirement. (This grade requirement is at odds with Institute policy regarding Freshmen, whose grades are internal and not part of their permanent academic record. However, we understand that a separate CI classes will be provided for Freshman in the new Requirement.)

3. CI HASS-E

The shape and structure of most humanities electives that fulfill the communication requirement (CI HASS-E) will be the same as those that affect CI HASS-D's with regard to sustained writing (with revision) and speaking (with feedback), the enrollment cap, and the minimum grade requirement. They may differ with regard to the specific nature and style of the writing and speaking that takes place, according to the proclivities of the discipline and the instructor. Instructors of HASS-E classes who wish to be granted CI licenses will have to argue each case, and the HASS Overview Committee will decide each one on an individual basis.

4. Vetting

As with any General Institute Requirement, a mechanism must be set into place that allows the CUP to interrogate the ways in which the Communication Requirement is being met. Since we envision variety and nuance from subject to subject with regard to how the Communication Initiative is accomplished in the HASS Curriculum, the vetting of communication intensive subjects will need to be handled with sensitivity to the disciplinary conditions that drive those variations. Moreover, many CI HASS classes will be subjects that are central to the curricula of our departments rather than newly minted subjects that are designed from scratch to meet the new requirement. The most effective ways to teach proficiency in any discipline entails expert judgment by the faculty in that discipline about classes' content and design. Thus, the vetting of such classes by individuals outside the department or section is a very sensitive matter.

For these reasons, the primary agency that oversees the Communication Requirement in HASS Curriculum should be within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. We propose that the HASS Overview Committee (HOC) be assigned that responsibility. The HOC will judge how effectively the principles outlined here have been interpreted from subject to subject. The HOC will be empowered to grant or deny CI licenses to HASS subjects based upon those judgments. The licensing process will be developed along lines that are similar to that presently in place for HASS-D's, except that we propose the criteria for the Communication Requirement as guidelines rather than rules, allowing for greater flexibility and nuance. Classes that are recommended to the HOC for CI licenses will undergo careful initial scrutiny by the committee and possibly some negotiation with the instructors. CI licenses, like HASS-D licenses, will be periodically reviewed. Department and section chairs will be called upon to mediate between the HOC and individual faculty much more actively than they are in the present HASS-D system. We hope that this decentralization will establish the Communication Requirement as a cooperative effort throughout the HASS Curriculum rather than a requirement that is imposed and administered from above. The agency responsible for oversight of the Communication Requirement throughout MIT will of course be the CUP. Just as department and section chairs will be responsible to the HOC, so the HOC will be responsible to the CUP.

5. Reservations

Most members of the HASS Overview Committee have concerns about the proposed new Communication Requirement. Some of these stem from a sense of doubt that the basis for new requirement has been thought through with sufficient clarity. What is the nature of the problem that this Requirement aims to address? Is it that MIT students, even after four or more years here, display the kind of inability to communicate effectively that bespeaks a failure to have received the broad-based education that a premier institution should be giving its graduates? Or is it that, even upon graduating, they find themselves lacking the specific communication skills needed for success in their chosen careers?

We also feel that the contribution of the idiosyncrasies of the culture of MIT to the writing problem, whatever it is defined to be, has not been adequately addressed. MIT students are bombarded by the message that certain of their courses are much more important than others. Among the ones typically deemed less important are those which, if taken seriously, would give the students the kind of practice in writing and speaking that they need, especially humanities subjects. Moreover, science and engineering courses are typically cumulative in a way that humanities courses are not. Students will routinely ask for an extension on the HASS-D paper because they have a problem set coming due, but they rarely ask for an extension on the problem set because they have a paper coming due. (No surprise, either, that so many of the HASS syllabuses include explicit requirements on attendance and participation that would, at any other school in MIT's league, seem excessively patronizing and punitive.) Students often have a clearer sense than faculty of the effects of MIT's culture. The problem should continue to be closely studied during the 'experimental' period by instituting regular discussions with small groups of undergraduates.

If this characterization of the existing state of affairs is accurate, it would seem to be far better, on the face of it, to address the 'writing problem' by playing to our existing strengths rather than by instituting a new requirement. We think it might be possible to improve writing skills among MIT undergraduates in a much simpler way by requiring that every undergraduate once a year take a writing intensive class of a type that already exists. Every student would have to take at least one of the following per year: a writing intensive HASS-D or writing intensive HASS-E, an expository writing class offered by Writing and Humanistic Studies, or a science, engineering or social science class that has a writing practicum attached to it. In this way it might be possible to provide each student a sustained experience with writing over her four years as an undergraduate in the context of existing departmental and Institute requirements. An informal model of this sort, and no doubt there are many others, might well garner more support than the proposed new Communication Requirement among faculty across the Institute. Our students already feel overburdened by requirements. We hope that the experimental period will afford ample opportunity to consider alternative ways to improve our students' writing and speaking skills without necessarily imposing another complicated, costly new requirement upon them.

HASS Overview Committee:

Peter Child (Chair)

Bette Davis (ex officio)

Peter Donaldson

Ned Hall

Frank Levy

Megan Hepler (student representative)

Elizabeth Wood