Collaboration Among Colleagues

The authors describe a two-college collaborative project designed to enhance student learning in public speaking. In higher education, faculty are often encouraged to collaborate with their colleagues, to – as the American Heritage Dictionary defines it – “work together in a joint intellectual effort. ” We often think of such projects as occurring within a department or on a particular campus, but we have discovered that even faculty in similar disciplines from different colleges can collaborate effectively, bringing their own particular strengths to that venture. Distance and Adventure Rappahannock and Germanna Community Colleges have combined forces in the area of public speaking instruction, with two goals in mind: to enhance first-time delivery in a distance learning environment and to co-develop content modules, which could be used in any speech communication course. To make our partnership effective, we began by considering the individual strengths of the two instructors, Bill Fiege of Germanna and Karen Newtzie of Rappahannock: Also, from the onset, we knew that a venture of this nature must include technology support and vision. We also recognized that we needed to create a work group with high energy in order to develop a quality product in a limited amount of time. So we followed the advice of Pregent (1994), who identifies the characteristics of an effective work group as identifying and valuing the pursuit of a common goal, creating and maintaining harmonious interpersonal relations, overcoming obstacles that hinder productive activities, and becoming involved on all levels. Thus, we knew our team needed to include both faculty members (Newtzie and Fiege) and both directors of distance education (Smith and Blankenship). Technology Developmen