Learning the Intricacies of Effective Communication Through Game Design    

As many teachers of communication come to realize, students often operate under the misconception that the effective use of language consists primarily of memorizing and applying the rules and regulations of grammar. Even worse, some students believe that they must inherit a talent for language and that without a genetic predisposition, they can never learn to use language well. Demonstrating otherwise isn't easy, but because good communication skills are crucial to success in a professional environment, teachers must attempt to do so. In Introduction to Technical and Scientific Communication, a course I teach at James Madison University, I have students complete a fairly traditional assignment in a somewhat nontraditional way, one that highlights the intricacies of effective communication in a context that students find accessible. A typical assignment for an introductory-level technical communication class requires students to write a set of instructions for a procedure they know well. This straightforward assignment is useful but rather uninspiring, not only because students have difficulty realistically defining the audience they're addressing but also because it's much too easy to tap into the already existing sea of instructions available on the Internet. I remembered an assignment from my days as a graduate student teaching freshman composition. The assignment, based on the rhetorical mode of process analysis, required students to create and explain a game generically called 'Student.'

Bednar, Lucy. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Education>Business Communication