Faculty Focus features highlight the innovative teaching practices, projects and accomplishments of faculty across Austin Community College (ACC). Through this initiative, faculty are invited to share experiences ranging from classroom strategies and service-learning projects to research, presentations and community collaborations. In this feature, Jason Vidrine shares how an interpersonal communication project encourages students to engage in meaningful conversations, explore historical events through personal narratives and strengthen their communication skills through real-world connections.

Interested in reading more highlights of what faculty are doing across the College? View all Faculty Focus blog features here.

People define and explain the importance of communication in different ways. As an instructor, my hope is for students to understand the effects communication has on relationships and goal attainment so they, in turn, work to improve their communication competence in different contexts. This hope mandates that I create meaningful curriculum and assessments that highlight the importance of communication in their lives.

With that in mind, I decided to create an interpersonal project that challenges students to find and converse with someone who experienced a unique event. These stories not only satisfy a course requirement but also help students see historical events through the eyes of someone who lived through them. Furthermore, students can continue to share these stories many decades from now, showing that we are not that far removed from history.

For those interested in learning more about the project structure, including the research, interview and reflection components, you can view the Historical Conversation project guidelines here.

Many students have interacted with people who have had unique experiences. Some of these experiences include a person who grew up in a migrant farmer family, a nurse who lived and worked through the California earthquake of 1989, veterans who fought in a variety of wars, a NASA employee who spent his career working on the Mars rover, a person who lived through Pinochet’s terror, and a Broadway actress who had to deal with the aftermath of 9/11. 

When reflecting on the importance of these historical events, some students mentioned how they learned new things about their loved ones that they would have otherwise never known before. One student learned about her father’s experience in Desert Storm, and another student learned that her grandfather was wounded in the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s.

The one story that remains with me the most pertained to a student who interviewed her stepmother, who helped with the annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. During the conversation, her stepmother mentioned that she wanted to take the student with her to Rio to see the Carnival herself. My student later wrote that they had a strained relationship, so she was deeply moved by the invitation.

As the project continues to grow, Chris Rzigalinski and I are working to refine the experience and make the submitted videos more accessible and viewer-friendly. Our goal is to further strengthen students’ engagement with individuals who have experienced significant historical events while preserving these personal stories for future audiences to view, appreciate and learn from.

This project did more than satisfy course requirements; it profoundly touched lives. It brought a family closer together, and for that, I’m deeply grateful for this service-learning project.

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Have a teaching strategy, classroom project, collaboration, publication, presentation, or accomplishment you would like to share with colleagues across ACC? The Office of Academic Affairs Communications invites faculty to submit a Faculty Focus feature!