Morgan Markley
Senior Reporter
Not all classes at Keene State College are spent sitting in a classroom for an hour and 45 minutes. Some require hands-on projects that make students work outside their usual comfort zone.
Dr. Chitra Akkoor, an assistant professor of communication, is in her second year teaching at KSC and has provided a place for students to experience hands-on learning in her Organizational Communications class.
Akkoor said her reasoning behind offering this course had to do with her previous experience in the communication world.
Akkoor said, “My area is communication and culture, but I also have a Master’s in organizational communication, so I decided to offer a course in that because I thought it would be very relevant, thinking most of them [students] are seniors who are going out on the job market and things like that.” She also added, “We [faculty] pick the course based on research interests, teaching interests, things that we’ve specialized in.”
Akkoor said the course focuses mainly on, “Organizational communication, looking specifically at communication with an organization and so we draw from major theories of organizations like leadership, management theories, different perspectives, organizational culture.” Akkoor said that this experience for her was new and a different style of teaching. “This time I tried something different—in the past what I’ve just done is given them [students] the assignment where they can pick any organization and then they can go and do some interviews and do observations and things like that and then write a paper. This time I thought, well I want to do something different because I’ve heard at KSC there’s a lot of enthusiasm for service learning,” the professor said. This semester students in Akkoor’s class, which consisted of 25 students, received the opportunity to leave the KSC community and work with organizations. The six organizations that Akkoor’s class worked with were the City of Keene Human Resources, City Clerks Office, Keene Parks and Recreation, Stonewall Farm, Edible Arrangements and the Keene Public Library. Akkoor said she thought the hands-on experience would be good for her students.
Senior Jason Abisch said he worked with the Human Resources Department of Keene and said he’s, “always been interested in the way organizations run and communicate.” Abisch said this experience was great, “I definitely took away that it’s something I would want to pursue my career in and it’s a lot more difficult than people realize but the job can get done even with three people.”
Akkoor explained, “It would be so much nicer to have students do something hands-on like that where they can connect the class concepts rather than just learning about the material because it gets pretty dry after a while no matter how many examples and things you give.” She added, “For the first part of the semester we were looking at these different theories that have been developed over time.” She also said the course covers different communication structures, “We look at how communication differs based on the kinds of structures, what structures facilitate what kinds of communication and how does leadership work in those settings and how do organizations create a culture.”
To help Akkoor organize this course she received help from Center for Engagement, Learning and Teaching, Community (CELT). Akkoor said they help with resources for professors. Akkoor said that working with the organizations consisted of, “One day just do observations, be given a tour, get orientated because the kind of research I do and teach is also what I call ethnographic research, and ethnographic methods are where you don’t just do interviews but there’s that component of getting to know your site and the people.”
Akkoor also added that another day for the students consisted of conducting one-on-one interviews with people within the organizations. To make this project work, Akkoor said she made sure everyone could participate,“So I set it up during class time because coordinating schedules is so difficult so I reserved two class periods for that.” Akkoor said, “They [students] went off to the site on a Tuesday morning during class time, I visited the sites to make sure everything was working, and then the following Thursday class they went back for more in-depth interviews. So the observations sort of help them refine their questions too because some questions may have been answered.” During the visits to the sites Akkoor said, “They [students] seemed really into it, and they were asking really wonderful questions, and yesterday when I talked to them they all said this was just a great experience.” She added, “I think the concepts we have studied so far really came alive for them.” Junior Celeste Thibault agreed with Abisch that the experience was worth it. Thibault worked with the Keene Public Library and she said, “It was very eye-opening because I’m from Keene…and I’d always gone to the library when I was little, but I never actually got the chance to see how they work.”
She added, “Opened my eyes to how much these librarians really care about their job,” and said she learned, “How different cultures and organizations are all individual and unique and it will help me really learn what the norms are like what to do, how something works from the inside and how complicated it is.”
Abisch said he learned how an organization works and what to identify within them, “Have to see if everyone is on the same page about things or not or just to see how different organizations run and communicate with each other, whether it’s via email, whether there’s a hierarchy of leadership.” Now Akkoor’s students will produce a report that they will give back to CELT. The sites will then receive the report the students put together based on their findings. Akkoor said the report will include, “Suggestions for improvements, things we thought were going well, or not.” Akkoor said,“I can’t speak highly enough of these kinds of projects.” She also said, “What we were studying just came alive.”
Morgan Markley can be contacted at
mmarkley@keene-equinox.com