Think Globally, Act Locally

In a joint business communication class and University District Chamber of Commerce project at the University of Washington, student teams surveyed 20 local merchants whose first language typically was not English. By working in teams to conduct the interviews; write letters, reports, and graphs; and present their findings orally, the 40 students gained valuable experience communicating with culturally diverse audiences of peers and professionals. The Chamber gained valuable information on how better to serve merchants who might have been unaware of its services prior to this project. And the instructor relearned valuable lessons in guiding students in projects with actual businesses. PRE-CLASS PLANNING Planning for the project started two months before classes began. I set up an appointment with the executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce to talk about how my students might be of service to the Chamber by surveying small international businesses on a topic of interest to her. The director thought my visit was serendipitous because the Chamber's directors were very interested in knowing more about and better serving the international businesses within the Chamber's district. At that first meeting we went over the following five criteria I had developed for selecting a topic for class projects with actual businesses. The topic must * have a central communication-related question that management really wants answered * be double in eight weeks, along with other course requirements * require communication through a variety of channels (for example, telephone, interviews, letters, graphs, and reports) * require gathering, analyzing, and reporting quantitative and qualitative data * match students' academic preparation (our students are junior and senior business and nonbusiness majors) By the end of that first meeting, we had agreed on two important points. First, we determined this central question for a survey: How can the University District Chamber of Commerce serve more small businesses? Second, the executive director would draw up a list of questions she and the Chamber would like answered that related to the central question. Later, with her questions as a guide, I developed a questionnaire, which was handed out early in the quarter for the students' input and then given to the Chamber for final approval. Several of the questions are shown below: * How long have you operated a business in the University District? * Why did you choose the University District to open a business? * Have you heard of the Greater University Chamber of Commerce? * The Chamber works to improve the local business environment by (list of six activities). Please rank three of these activities as most important to your business. * How do you evaluate the University District as a place to do business? (Scale of -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, where -2 is "Poor" and +2 is "Excellent") * Because our class is studying business communication, would you please tell us what languages other than English you and your employees speak or read. * If other languages are spoken, how has the use of those languages helped or hindered the success of your business? * How can the Greater University Chamber of Commerce help your business succeed? CLASS ACTIVITIES On the first day of class I handed out a list of course assignments, about half of which related to the communication project. Of these, some required all 40 students to work in pairs, others to work in teams of four to six. In pairs, students were to (a) write a direct-request message to a University District merchant describing the class project and requesting an interview; (b) conduct a field interview of the merchant and type up that merchant's responses to the questionnaire; (c) study the pooled data from all 20 questionnaires and identify and graph one important message (trying not to duplicate other teams' messages); and (d) write a letter of appreciation to the merchant interviewed and include a copy of the summary report. …