I recently discovered an unexpected benefit to having my students blog about their learning experience in my Leadership and Communication Class this summer. As part of this class, students work in teams over the entire term on a significant course project. The objective of the project is to provide experiential opportunities for students to develop leadership, team and communication skills.
For years, I have struggled to adequately integrate students whose first language is not English. For a variety of language and cultural reasons, many of those students struggle with the team project. As much as I talk with teams about ways to make sure all voices are heard and considered, the western style of collaboration (fast, furious and chaotic at times) can overwhelm a student struggling to understand the nuances of a problem or conversation. As a result, those students often get relegated to more passive roles in the project, or even get marginalized.
I don’t know that I have found the answer, but I am discovering that the students’ personal blogs for the course have given many of them a voice they have not had in the past. I have noticed that international students have been writing in their blogs about their experiences in their teams in ways that, in the past, would have been difficult for them to present in a face-to-face meeting. I also discovered that when other team members read those blogs, they have a better appreciation for what is going on in the minds of their seemingly quieter teammates. That understanding is already leading to better overall team functioning and integration of all voices in the project. Now that I have a sense of how blogs can be a tool for richer cross-cultural communication, I can be more proactive about that goal in the future.
