Course Content & Learning Objectives

Through communicator skill building assignments and studying communication theories, you will have the opportunity to achieve three Course Learning Objectives:

1. Critical Thinking Skills:

·       Use of communication theories and concepts to explore gender as a socio-communicative variable.

·     Primarily understand basic communication theories enough to use them to:

·recognize that women and men use the same language, and communicate more similarly than differently.

·observe there are many ways to talk about gender: in funny stories; jokes or humorous bashing statements;| in personal stories; in generalized or stereotypical ways; in factual reports; in righteous informed or un-informed argument; etc.

·deconstruct or separate myths, contradictions, assumptions and notions from the facts, realities and truths about communication and about women and men.

·understand the problems created and maintained by under-explored and under-expressed ideas about gender.

·reduce over-focus on gender differences as the catch-all explanation for everything gender-related.

·     Learn the types of listening and reading (comprehensive, appreciative, therapeutic, critical and biased) and the influences of each on message construction and interaction outcomes.

·     Learn distinctions between sociological and communication observations in order to understand the nature of Gendertalk

·     Understand the concept of a continuum of message types: the concept of the levels or types of Gendertalk.

2. Observation Skills:

·     Develop or improve your observation and assessment skills of your own and other~Rs communicator choices while participating in different Gendertalk contexts.

·     Observe tendencies to combine and confuse opinions about a topic with:| opinions about the speakers and writers of the topics and opinions about the motivations for speakers messages.

·     Learn to| observes the distinctions in what is written or said (content of topic)| à from how it is written or said (manner or attitude of speaker/writer) à from how it is regarded (manner or attitude of listener/reader).

3. Interaction and Articulation Skills:

·     Through the use of behavior modification techniques (posting/blog assignment structures), develop or improve your comprehensive and critical writing skills in order to talk differently about gender.|

·     Resolve some of the problems you may have due to under-explored and under-expressed ideas about gender; be able to slow down during interactions.

·     Practice speaking and writing about gender with engaging, insightful, thought-filled, curious and complex ways.|

·     Improve or develop Communication Accuracy ~V be able to describe specific communication elements completely; use of descriptive skills of the facts of behavior in message exchanges about gender.

·     Use of comprehensive listening during Gendertalk experiences with your Volunteer.