J Mcginnis

The root of my approach to teaching business communication grows from a focus on approaching communication as a very CMU-like problem-solving process. When I was the Associate Area Head, I used to tell prospective students that we sometimes define the CMU approach to a business education in this way, “If we had all the data, we could predict any outcome (but we never have all the data).” The business education, then, is a process of understanding a problem, setting out to discover the data, determining what data is useful, analyzing it, drawing inferences and conclusions, and then helping folks to make use of it. Successful communication can follow a similar pattern. Faced with a new communication situation, business communicators can analyze the problem, identify the relevant issues, gather valuable data, analyze it, draw conclusions and craft understandable solutions. I try to model that to my students through all of the assignments and experiences we share. Throughout, I try to break down the silos between business subject areas and courses and link our coursework to professional business skills that will carry them into their careers.

I hope to help students to achieve the highest possible standards, closely approximating the communication situations they will encounter as managers, understanding the rhetorical, persuasive nature of communication, making audience analysis a key to shaping messages, and recognizing how delivery of messages impacts rhetorical success.  I provide students with tools and classroom methods to help them fine-tune that focus.  We use comprehensive communication planning tools to understand communication situations.  Line-by-line communication rubrics provide them with detailed, assignment-specific rubrics upon which their communication products are judged.  Digital video recording allows immediate opportunities for self-analysis and one-on-one conferences.  We use peer evaluation and classroom discussion to add depth to the analysis of each other’s work.