The CBC is a business-specific writing center offering free consultations on all kinds of communication projects, including research papers and oral presentations, but students can also get help from the CBC on related projects such as job interviews or graduate school applications.
Please encourage your students to utilize this free service to help them improve their written and oral communication work. Ideally, students should contact the CBC as soon as they receive an assignment from you. A consultant can then meet with the student and establish a plan to assist them with any aspect of the writing process (researching and organizing material, writing, revising, rehearsing, or simply getting started).
Students will go to moore.mywconline.net to log on and select an in-person or virtual appointment time.
In-Class Workshops
CBC faculty offer in-class “Communication Refreshers" in two formats:
- a 20-minute foundational skills workshop, and
- an approximately 40-minute extended workshop that incorporates the specifics of your upcoming assignment(s).
Contact CBC Director Brad Stratton at bstratton@moore.sc.edu for more information about booking a workshop for your class.
We currently offer the following workshop topics:
A poorly structured meeting can kill all the enthusiasm in an organization. In this workshop, students will learn how to lead an effective meeting from start to finish. We’ll discuss remote meetings, agendas, and minutes, and we’ll leave time at the end for small group consultations.
This workshop is intended for graduate students teaching for the first time while also balancing graduate coursework and research. In this workshop, we’ll cover how to develop classroom presence, how to communicate effectively with students, and how to and develop clear assignments and evaluations. Participants can expect to take away sample assignments, syllabi, and rubrics. We will also close the session with a round table discussion during which graduate students can ask teaching-related questions and receive ideas from peers and CBC faculty.
This interactive workshop is designed to help your students learn the importance of crafting an effective message and how the goals and conventions of speeches compliment their written research. Students are challenged to focus on the keys to effective presentations including how to analyze and read audiences, and how to select the best arguments and data for particular situations. The longer 40-minute workshop also provides opportunities for volunteers to make short presentations and receive immediate feedback on how to develop their core strengths.
This workshop discussion will define writing process at the individual and team levels. In order to consistently produce high-quality written work, it is crucial for students to recognize the stages of the writing process, leverage their strengths, and self-edit in various contexts. By understanding the benefits of each writing process stage, students can make more strategic decisions about overall structure and content to increase individual efficiency and team productivity. The discussion principles are applicable to any writing task, regardless of length or complexity.
What exactly does revision mean? How does one practice revision successfully? These questions begin the Revision Strategies workshop discussion, where students learn the professional value and necessity of revising their own written communications, including academic assignments and personal, daily communications. The Revision Strategies workshop focuses students on approaching revision first from a general, comprehensive viewpoint and then from a more detailed, sentence-level practice. The presenter will discuss reverse outlining, error analysis, assignment parameters, categorizing and utilizing available resources. Although the workshop content is applicable to all writing contexts, the workshop can also be customized for any specific class and assignment, from memos and case studies to team reports and extensive research projects.
This 20-minute presentation introduces students to a streamlined process for incorporating research into their writing. We will cover: research objectives; thesis statements; the difference between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing; paragraph organization; and APA citations. By the end of our time, students will be able to develop narrow, focused research objectives and a strong thesis statement. Students will also understand the basic rules for citing sources in APA style. If your students are currently working on a research project for your class, we can spend additional time workshopping their research objectives and thesis statements with them.
Incorporating Writing in Your Classes
Even a course without an intensive writing component can integrate communication skills for the workplace. Research demonstrates that college students across majors tend to see their writing and public speaking skills deteriorate as they move away from the required English and communication courses taught in the freshman and sophomore years. Yet, strong communication skills are a required skill area for AACSB-accredited programs and a valued competency for employers. CBC consultants can assist you in seamlessly incorporating new writing or speaking assignments and rubrics. Building up your students’ business communication skills can be easy; here are some possible assignment ideas:
- Informal reading responses
- Essay questions for exams
- Annotated bibliography on a topic relevant in the field
- Letter, memo, or email to a fictional client
- Team project charters, project plans, and/or meeting minutes
Sample Syllabus Language
I encourage you to utilize the Center for Business Communication (CBC) as a resource for all of your writing assignments and oral presentations. The CBC is a business-specific writing center for the Moore School that provides free consultations for students. CBC consultants are expert writers and business communication faculty members. It is best to make an appointment early in the process since they can help you plan your work even before you start writing. You can make a virtual appointment at moore.mywconline.net. You will need to create a login with your university email address to access the appointment schedule.