Faculty Tips

University Speaking Center Procedures and Operations Update for Spring 2009 Faculty

Schedule of operation: The Communication Consultants will return to classes and immediately start attending two weeks of staff training. Consultants can do 10 to 15 minute center orientations for you as early as Monday, August 31st. We can schedule workshops to begin as early as Tuesday, September 8th (with your request coming to us two weeks in advance and subject to availability). We will reopen the doors of The University Speaking Center on Tuesday, September 8th and end our regular hours of operation on the last day of the semester. We will offer very limited hours during exam week. We are closed on reading day.

Appointments: We offer sessions that last 20 or 45 minutes. All 45 minute sessions start on the hour. When we take appointments we listen to needs identified by the client and schedule a 20 or 45 minute session as we see fit. If you are planning to require your students to come to the center for a consultation, please be sure your students know what you expect of them before they call to make an appointment.

Location: Our consultation services take place in 3211 MHRA. We plan for our original home in the McIver Building Underground to operate only as a place for us to develop and facilitate workshops.

Two day policy: The latest that we can help a client in the form of one-on-one tutoring is two days before their final presentation. We schedule all appointments according to this two day policy. Occasionally a student will misrepresent their final presentation date when making their appointment. This will be reflected in the report form we send to faculty members. We are happy to give tip sheets to students who stop by. We do not track who stops by for such.

High Volume: During the 2005-06 academic year we started completing over 2,000 consultations. This is twice the number of consultation we have done in the past. With no additional resources we found ourselves with very little down time between consultations and workshops. Occasionally, a faculty member needs to know that their students have come in to get assistance earlier than when we mail the report form(s) to them. If this is the case, we request that individual faculty members ask their students to provide the student copy of the report form at the time of the in-class presentation. Every student leaves us with a copy of their report form.

Deadlines: If you plan to require your students to visit the center and it involves a specific class assignment, please consider setting an early deadline for the student to complete their visit. This will cut down on clients coming in so late that we cannot really offer them much help. This should also improve the final presentation you view in your classroom. Some faculty members have reported success with setting a Friday deadline for speeches that start the following week. At the close of that first session we will invite the student to make an appointment to come back again the next week. We require that students schedule their appointments to take place no later than two days before the class/final presentation. This would allow two days to incorporate and practice our suggestions.

Web page: We've added a FAQ section, on-line request forms for workshops and orientations, AIM, and some informative videos. We hope you and your students find our Web site, which can be accessed at http://speakingcenter.uncg.edu, of use.

Missed appointments: "No shows" can be a problem. In an effort to encourage student responsibility, we will continue to send faculty members a bright orange "no show" notification any time a student fails to keep an appointment or is more than 5 minutes late for a scheduled appointment session. This will also be the case if an appointment is cancelled near the start time.

Procedures in the center: We follow the guide lines set by UNCG's academic integrity policy and the federal privacy law. We do not write speeches for our clients, we aid them in their own development. Each client will leave the center with a copy of their report form to aid them in incorporating our feedback. Unless our client requests otherwise, we will send a copy of the report form to our client's instructor(s) or other referring agent. After the copy is given to our client, our consultants will complete the (optional) faculty comment section and/or prepare the report form to be mailed. We will not mail report forms to faculty until after the date of the final course/class presentation. To aid us in offering the best help possible, we will continue to ask each client to complete a short opinion survey (at the close of their session) and place it into our feedback box.

Tip Sheets: Our oral communication tip sheets have become very popular with faculty members. The tip sheets are available on our Web page under "resources". We hope you find these useful. Upon your request, we would be happy to send copies for your students directly to your office. Most faculty members instruct their students to access them directly from the web. If you need a new oral communication tip sheet created for a course assignment, please let us know. We welcome every opportunity to help in supporting the SI elements of your course(s).

Center Orientation: Gone are the days when we stood in front of a class and told them how wonderful our services are. We now let students know that speechmaking is a 5 step process. When we are done they understand what the process is and they know how we can support them in each step. While we still offer in-class speaking center orientations to serve as an overview of the SI services we offer in support of each individual student, we are scheduling as many as we can in our training room. We are doing this because we want to get potential and future clients into the center in an effort to lower the anxiety and uncertainty some associate with a trip to our facility. Faculty members who schedule an orientation in the center might be able to use our training room after the orientation (to finish their class meeting time). This offer is subject to room availability. To request this service go to http://speakingcenter.uncg.edu. We also offer orientations in our MHRA spaces.

Workshops: Call early if you wish for us to facilitate a workshop for your class. We filled up fast last semester. We are not able to offer more than one workshop per a faculty member's course. We continue to offer class-specific workshops upon request. Please keep in mind that we need two weeks notice before the scheduled workshop is to be presented. The staff is larger this year, but management/leadership remains small, and our budget is the same. We can facilitate only 3 client specific oral communication workshops a week. A list of course specific workshops that we have offered at the request of UNCG faculty in the past can be obtained via our Web page under workshops. To request this service go to http://speakingcenter.uncg.edu

Center vs. Lab: Our facility is not designed to operate as a lab. We are a center, we offer support and helpful feedback to clients who wish to improve upon their oral communication skills. All of our consultations are run as "students-helping-students" sessions. Each session is designed according to the specific needs of the individual client (or group of clients). Those who call looking to practice that are not interested in a helping session are referred to the TLC to reserve a recording room, "which is a practice lab with video recording ability. Those looking to have a group meeting are referred to the library to take advantage of the first-come-first-serve meeting rooms on the second floor or http://library.uncg.edu/about/collaboratories.asp to reserve collaboratories.

Groups: Group sessions will continue to be scheduled to start on the hour. However, if a group is not ready to start their session by five minutes past the scheduled appointment time, the appointment will need to be rescheduled. Groups of four or more will be scheduled to work with two consultants at the same time. We can start a group consultation with an incomplete group. Groups are expected to come in ready to run through their presentation. Groups should not make speaking center appointments to conduct a planning meeting. We will continue to offer conflict management sessions to groups who request such assistance.

Extra credit: Some faculty members offer their students extra credit for coming to the center for one-on-one consultations. We think this is a great way to get students to come and take advantage of the services we offer! We ask that you be specific as to what you want them to do when they come for such a consultation. Unlike other support organizations on campus, we are not set up to help clients who do not have a specific oral speech/communication improvement goal in mind. For example, they might come in to practice a speech they are working on, view a previously recorded speech, get assistance with choosing a topic, seek strategies for increasing their own interpersonal assertiveness, or want to become a better listener. If students are not clear about what they are suppose to work on when they visit they often tell us that they are just there to get extra credit.

We plan to run our open enrollment evening Strictly Speaking Workshop Series again. We will send a copy of the attendance sheet to faculty members for records. Seating is limited to 32 for the workshops.

Call to make an appointment: Please encourage your students to schedule their center appointments as soon as they receive related assignments. This will ensure an appointment that works best around their busy schedules.

E- reserve: In the resources section of our Web page, you will find chapters from oral communication texts that might serve your class well. Please let us know if you need us to add any additional chapters.

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