Small-group Communication Studies: Open pedagogy-based group activities?

Heyyas all!

I have an OER-enthusiastic faculty member in Communication Studies that is revamping the Small-Group Conversation course. He’s looking to include more open pedagogical-based activities in this course as a way to open up the learning experience for his students.

More specifically, for this course he’s looking for group activity ideas, based on communication, that involves conflict. Ideally, the activities would allow students to identify where it can arise and to diffuse situations. To be clear, this shouldn’t include emotion-based conflict, as that’s covered in a different course (Interpersonal Communications).

To that end, are there any ideas out there of these types of activities?

Thanks in advance for any comments and ideas!

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Hey all back, Sarah! Thanks for putting the ask out there for help, hope we can stir up the conversations here and get some input from the rest of the community.

I can’t offer an first hand derived expertise on communication studies. When your enthusiastic faculty says he’s looking for “open pedagogical-based activities” does he mean he’s seeking OER activities or specifically, an an activity using open pedagogy approaches? To me the latter would be more along the lines where many students create/develop scenarios, or perhaps possible scripted narratives of conflict and resolution n say, the workplace, or social interaction.

I could only do what you likely have done, and poked around OER Commons. I did come across the University of Manitoba Libraries guide to resources for peace and conflict studies, where one link led me to the. Conflict Studies Book Project which seems to be partly aiming to publish a collection of content in Pressbooks format.

Please, anyone else reading this, please chime in and help Sarah.