Speakers included Nicholas Negroponte, describing his One Laptop Per Child initiative, the wonderfully entertaining (and thought-provoking) Seth Godin, and Bill Marriott, chairman and CEO of Marriott International.

Whenever I’m at these speaker-driven events, I tend to listen like a learner. I ask myself: why is this speaker effective (or ineffective)? Mostly I analyze speakers because much of my work depends on my speaking and facilitation skills. I want to learn how I can get better at it and avoid putting listeners to sleep.

What I know (and what all good speakers do)

• captivating speakers sprinkle their addresses with stories
• stories reinforce the key learnings they want audience to know
• stories reveal a speakers’ humility and humaness
• good speakers know how to park their egos and concentrate on what the audience needs.

A number of the seminar leaders at the conference were far less inspirational. They tended to talk at their audiences. After listening to a few speaker sessions, it struck me: what an ineffective model a lot of the speakers employed.

It went like this:

1. speakers introduced

2. speakers speak

3. speakers put up a PowerPoint slide

4. speakers speak some more, put up anther slide and speak even more

5. audience members sit passively–some take notes, others text messages, others compulsively check their Black Berry

6. an hour and a quarter later, speakers and audience members get up and leave the room

7. process was repeated.

It takes so little to engage an audience I wonder why these presenters—all of them professional communications specialists—didn’t build in some simple audience-engaging techniques. For example, don’t just pose a question to the audience and move on. Pose the question. Instruct audience members to think about it. Get them to share their answer with the person beside them. Take up a few sample answers. Reinforce your key points, then move on. Simple stuff.

My advice: abandon the slides. Tell stories. Provide examples. Ask for examples from the audience. Put people in small groups and get them solving a problem. I’ve seen this done for groups as small as 20 and as large as 120.

In other words, engage your audience.

Writing meaningful memos for students to place in their portfolios (as a kind of reference letter) proved much, much harder. For top students, I’d want to describe just the right example, adjective or academic achievement to convey why I thought they were special. This was a struggle as I didn’t want to suggest they walked on water. No employer would believe that.

For the poor-performing student, writing such a reference memo was even more challenging.

How to write something positive about a student who hands in most assignments late, who misses 30 percent of his classes, who, when she was there, contributed little and whose writing needed strenuous editing to make it comprehensible?

What I discovered is you can say something meaningful about everyone. You just have to open your eyes to see their merits. So, your reference letter might describe how they got along well with colleagues or demonstrated progress in one area or another.

Questions: is this kind of reference letter doing the student any favours? Or, can potential employers see through these phrases? And, what to do when a student requests a reference and you’re not comfortable doing so?

This got me thinking: we do lots to prepare students for how to manage their internships, but how about a primer for Field Placement supervisors?

Based on what I heard from this crop of students (some of whom, admittedly, have grandiose ideas about what they should and shouldn’t be doing as interns) here’s what I’d advise supervisors:

1. Take the time to orient the intern to your organization. Don’t just stick your intern in a cubicle and say, “read these annual reports; they’ll give you all the information you need.” Give him or her the big picture. Introduce them to key people. Tell them why these people are important. Provide a history of your projects and what role they’ll play. In other words, give them a context.

2. Clue interns in about “the way we do things around here.” For example, student interns are often surprised at how long it takes to get approvals for the simplest of editing requests. Or, they’re unaware of an organization’s preference for how people are addressed. Why not share as much as you can about your corporate culture, instead of expecting interns to pick it up by osmosis?

3. Don’t assume the intern possesses common sense. Some interns turn their noses up at updating media lists, running out for a tray of lattes, or FedExing parcels. Let the intern know how important these activities are to the smooth running of your department. Help them understand that if they do a good job of getting the right tray of various coffees back to their boss at the right temperature, they might just get the chance to tackle something more complex.

4. Avoid misleading advertising and promotion. If your internship description promises a Cadillac-of-an-internship-opportunity, don’t deliver a Kia. Interns—full of youth, energy and ideas—want to contribute. They generally hate filling their days surfing the ‘net. When their supervisor hasn’t planned activities for them, or their requests to help are are met with: “just relax; enjoy the down time, ” they feel they aren’t contributing.

5. Model ethical, professional behaviour. Two of our students were asked to flog during their internships. At school, professors advise that flogging is considered by many in the blogosphere, and in PR circles, as sketchy at best. So it creates a bit of a conflict when their supervisor makes this kind of request. They’re eager to succeed and make a good impression and don’t want to refuse for fear it will block a potential job offer.

6. Create a sense of community. These 20-somethings value community and connection above all else. Make them a part of your department. Ensure you don’t situate their work station away from the main action and fellow communicators. Invite them to your brain storming sessions and encourage them to speak up.

7. Communicate your expectations clearly. Along with asking you your intern what he or she expects to gain from the experience, clearly spell out your expectations. How you expect them to perform, what skill sets you expect them to demonstrate, and how they’ll get along best with you and your team.

These are my seven steps for supervising interns. Students, educators and employers, what are yours?

As an educator speaking to potential employers I want to know:

What I’ve learned in recent visits (and many in the past few years) is that most supervisors spend little time answering these questions. We spend the bulk of our meeting discussing observations like these:

“We’re really impressed at how hard she works; she’s willing to pitch in on just about any project.”

or

“We love that he takes initiative. Once he’s finished a project, he’s asking what else he can do to help out.”

or

“I‘m impressed that she’s not afraid to speak up during our Monday morning brainstorm. She fits in; everyone likes her.”

Internship supervisors judge attitude, not aptitude. As educators, we spend most of our time evaluating and grading assignments that measure aptitude. Awarding grades for attitude is often discouraged. Too subjective. And, pragmatically, they’re too hard to defend if you face a grade appeal.

For example, let’s say you want to include this learning objective in your course outline: Students will demonstrate the ability to cooperate in team settings during a variety of in-class problem-solving situations involving their peers, and you decide to award 10 percent of the student’s grade for demonstrating this quality.

For a learning outcome that will stand up to scrutiny, you must define what you mean by “cooperate.” Then you must ensure students understand the “defined standard,” or benchmark, they’ll try to achieve. Then, you’d have to observe and record all instances of cooperation, to this defined standard. (You might be doing all of this for a class of 40 or more.)

To calculate the grade, you’ll devise a mathematical formula to arrive at a letter grade. You’ll probably use a simple formula, like, if a student exhibited cooperation, to a defined standard, in eight out of 10 in-class problem-solving situations with peers, he or she would earn eight out of 10, or an A grade.

However, a student might challenge your assessment. He might suggest various levels of cooperation exist and his in-class instances of cooperation should be rated higher than his neighbour’s. Or that he might tell you he would have co-operated more often if only the room wasn’t so noisy, or the professor had spoken more clearly, or the course outline had provided better examples. If only, if only, if only…..

Educators operate within a ridiculous system of evaluation. So unrealistic. That’s not how the world works. My dream course evaluation would more accurately reflect the work of work our students interns navigate. It would award one third of a student’s grade for technical competency and two-thirds would evaluate a student’s:
1. ability to consistently meet stated deadlines
2. ability to show up most of the time and to genuinely contribute
3. efforts to get along with classmates, faculty and front office support staff
4. ability to “roll with the punches” and quit blaming others for lack of success
5. genunine desire to learn
6. amount of curiosity and creativity
7. emotional maturity, especially when dealing with criticism from classmates and faculty.

Educators, students and employers: what do you want measured? And, how can these measures be taken within traditional academic courses?

An e-mail note from a grad of about 10 years ago (who now works in PR in the U.S.) got me thinking: have times really changed?

She writes: “This morning, I spoke with the woman who manages our internship program. There are so many graduates who have zero experience. As an agency, we run pretty lean and don’t have a lot of time to teach (yes, teach!) how to write a news release. I can’t get over how much Centennial’s program taught me. It’s amazing to see the difference in academic quality.

Of the interns we have had, there has been so much push back from them if you can believe it. There’s this sense of what we’re calling “corner office entitlement” where they think putting together a media list is beneath them and that they should be engaged in higher-level strategy and account direction.

She and I were just reminiscing about the “old days” when it was you, a bound media directory and the phone book and had to actively seek out your contacts as opposed to logging on to Bacon’s (Bowden’s) and running a quick search.

Times have changed (and in what a short time!)”

From my perspective, times haven’t changed that much.

Students with a “what can you do for me?” attitude instead of: “how can I help?” were the same in 1988 as they are in 2008. Students who begin internships with the idea it’s all about shining a light on them, rather than them helping to shine a light on their boss, client or organization are bound to get a rude awakening from supervisors like my grad.

So, employers out there: have times changed that much? Are you experiencing new hires who exhibit “corner office entitlement?”

“Yeah, like, I figure, why should I come to class to learn about the history of the telegraph? What good is that going to do for me?” How’s that going to help me get a job?”

“Yeah, like, I have a friend who doesn’t bother going to his MBA classes. He figures, why am I paying all this money to have somebody at the front read stuff from the textbook? I can do that myself.”

The conversation ended with one of the young women remarking: “Like, I pay a lot of money to come here. Why should I pay for stuff that I can do on my own, like reading?”

All good questions. Why bother attending class?

For some students, the most difficult adjustment is our expectation that they attend classes regularly. They’re more familiar with the university model: attend a few classes, make sure you show up for exams, do your required presentations, hand in your essays.

We demand that they attend class and participate in lots of in-class group work, exercises, simulations, role plays, problem-solving and graded assignments. Many of these activities aren’t pre-announced. (Just like a regular day at the office, you don’t always know what’s going to unfold.)

I sympathize with students forced to sit through a 40-minute class where the entire time all they’re expected to do is listen and take notes. This is not teaching and learning.

I also understand how students perceive a class has no “value added,” when it consists of just going over the readings or endless, off-track, circular debates with no conclusion. This is not teaching and learning.

Learning is about making meaning. By extension this means designing meaningful classes that get students involved.

How do do it?

Ask their opinions. Find out how much they already know about the subject. Learn about their previous experience in the work world that relates to the subject. Provide concrete, current examples. Get them to dig into the material by analyzing samples. Expect them to add to content. Challenge them to think critically about the concepts being explored during the class. Set up classroom conditions that raise their curiosity about a subject, concept or point of view in an entirely different way.

Like the comedian who wants to leave ‘em laughing, make it your goal to have them leave the classroom thinking.

If you do that, the next conversation you might overhear is: “Like….boy, am I sorry I missed that class! I heard I missed a lot.”

The GO train was running late. My mother-in-law needed a ride to the dentist. The electricity in my apartment was shut off last night. My brother arrived here last night from Romania and I had to pick him up at the airport. Bell Canada said it would be here between nine and noon. My bird died. My street was piled up with snow. My cousin just won a trip and wants to take me along. My cat died.

It’s no different in academia.

Just like an employer, I can usually predict which students will leave e-mails, voice mails or come by my office to offer an excuse as to why they’re unable to meet a critical deadline. These Calamity Janes and Johns quite often are beset by multiple events that prevent them from succeeding.

My printer broke down. My apartment’s flooded. I have to take my landlord to court. I’m fighting a parking ticket. My computer broke down. I lost my USB key with all my notes. The security guard wouldn’t let me in the student lab. I’m suffering from food poisoning (that’s a really popular one!)

Student excuses are fodder for all kinds of jokes. They’ve almost spawned an industry with academics trading notes about variations on “my grandmother died.” With some students, it gets to the point where you ask: “just how many grandparents do you have?”

As in the workplace, professors and students engage in a little dance. The student knows the professor really isn’t buying the excuse and the professor wants to give the student the benefit of the doubt. So they dance the familiar dance. For the student, it’s a bit of a crap shoot. Sometimes an excuse works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

I really value honesty. I respect students who tell me straight up:

• I missed my deadline because I didn’t plan
• I slept in when I should have been up and printing that assignment
• I totally forgot
• A bunch of us were out clubbing last night; I left it too late to finish.

I admired the student who told me this week–when I asked her why she booked a shift as a volunteer at a local event at the very same time when she should have been in class:

• ” I wasn’t thinking.”

Good for her. She chose not to offer an excuse.

So, what’s the psychology behind excuse-making?

(The longer I teach writing and PR courses the more I know students arrive at our college with minimal knowledge of these mechanics. Even our English Literature majors manage to sail through four years of university without a solid understanding of grammar and punctuation.)

To mark the March 4 th Grammar Day, she’s created her Top 10 Grammar Myths and posted a transcript of the show.

Helpful stuff. Worth reviewing.

So, when students learn you’ve scheduled a test for next week, immediate anxiety sets it.  No matter how often you tell them:  “if you do your readings, you’ll be okay,” or “it’s weighted at just 10 per cent of your overall grade,” the questions start tumbling out:

How many questions will there be? What kind of questions? Short answers? Multiple choice? How much will each question be worth? Can I use point form in my answers? Will you only be using chapter readings on a chapter readings test? Are you expecting me to study my class notes too? How much time will we have to write the test? Will the test take place at the beginning of the class or at the end?  And, on and on.

Instructors are under tremendous pressure to set tests that (like effective PR plans) meet the objectives of a particular unit of study.  Most instructors, including me, aren’t particularly skilled at creating tests.  If they’ve had no formal teacher training, they’ve likely never been taught how to construct tests that produce meaningful results.

Even a short 10-question current affairs quiz based on yesterday’s headlines isn’t simple.  An awkwardly phrased question (e.g. on what Toronto street did a huge fire take place yesterday?) will be open to interpretation.  Some students will answer Queen Street.  Others Queen Street West. Others will answer Queen and Portland.  When you point out that you wanted them to identify just ONE street correctly, some will argue they were close enough with their answer and deserve partial marks.

For the most part, I’m not a big fan of evaluating students’ knowledge via tests, mostly because that’s not how they’ll be evaluated in the world of work. 

However, in the teaching/learning process, tests have their place.  I’ve worked with many accomplished student test-takers.  For them, earning top marks for a test weighted at “just” 10 per cent of their grade means the difference between earning an A and earning a B.  And, that’s why I keep attempting the set the perfect test.  So students can write perfect answers and feel good about their results.

When I returned to Centennial College, I learned that my colleague Gary Schlee, had dived head first into the Web 2.0 world. Excited to incorporate this new knowledge into our curriculum, he introduced me to local and global PR practitioners blogging and podcasting at that time.

As I listened and learned, it struck me: most of these early adopters were middle-aged, mostly white guys. I quite like middle-aged guys. I’m married to one. But, I wondered: where are all the women? And, more importantly , where are Canadian women who might inspire our students–the majority of whom are young women.

Then, I began reading about Maggie Fox, founder of Social Media Group that bills itself as “one of the world’s largest and best-known agencies devoted exclusively to helping business understand Web 2.0.” A fearless entrepreneur whose Dundas, Ontario agency has more than tripled in size in a year, she’s much in demand as both a consultant and speaker.

When she agreed to come in this week and speak to our students, I was thrilled. Maggie didn’t disappoint. While she delivered a powerful message, her low key, confident presence spoke volumes. She let students know: “this is your time,” “you can do it,” and “learn all you can.”

After the talk, several female students told Maggie just how inspired, energized and encouraged they now felt about starting their careers in communications. They saw themselves in her place in a few years. Just like her. Confident. Competent. Capable. And, maybe even owning and running their own businesses.

One of the findings of Edelman’s 2008 Trust Barometer is that (at least in Canada), when it comes to spokespersons, people trust “people like me.” By the same token, students relate to PR professionals they can one day see themselves becoming. That’s such valuable learning. Thanks, Maggie!