Public speaking and knitting are both forms of art, and Cecil “Buddy” Betros, Jr., a basic course director in the Department of Communication Studies, knows them very well.  

Cecil “Buddy” Betros is a public speaking instructor in the Department of Communication Studies and an accomplished knitter — he made the UAB socks he’s wearing. He also designed a new online public speaking class, now modified to bring content and live instruction to all students.

“I said, ‘I don’t think so. No surgery this week. I’ve got to finish this sweater,’” he said. “And I did, too.”

Betros is sidelined from knitting for a couple of weeks while his elbow heals, which means the knitting class he teaches on Saturdays is postponed for a little while. However, his teaching duties for his Communications 101 courses on public speaking continue. They include working with the students enrolled in the online version of the course, which is his main priority.

Betros developed the online public speaking class, now modified to bring content and live instruction to all students. The number of students taking the online component of the course has grown to 110 this year from 15 two years ago. In fact, almost 25 percent of the students taking the public speaking course are enrolled exclusively online.

“Most of these students are sophomores and up,” Betros says. “Interestingly enough, we’ve had a lot of UAB employees take this class. There are several reasons for taking this class online, but central to that is students learn differently today. We have to have educators look beyond traditional teaching methodologies and pedagogy. The challenge is transferring the traditional classroom to a virtual learning environment.” 

Housed on the Web
Betros uses the BlackBoard Vista 4 system for the CM 101 online classes. All sections of CM 101 are part of a master course, which is a hybrid of online and classroom instruction. The master course is uploaded each semester to all sections. All sections then, are standardized in content, testing and student outcomes. Pearson, an educational publication company also responsible for the University Writing Web, designed a separate Web site housing materials for the courses.

The site, called My Speech Lab, houses the assignments, video lectures, weekly objectives, tests, PowerPoint slides students can print out and use to take notes, a speech outline training system, a topic selector and research navigators that can connect students to Lister Hill or other reference centers around the world.

“The new BlackBoard system tells students every week where they stand on their assignments,” Betros says.

“And everything else is in My Speech Lab. They have their assignments for all 15 weeks, and I’ve videotaped all of the lectures for every one of those weeks, including the orientation.”

Students are able to view the lectures at their own pace each week, but they have to take each assignment one week at a time. If it’s Week Eight of the semester, then every Communication 101 class — whether online or in the classroom — will be engaged in learning that material. The next week is unlocked each Sunday.

Trial and error
In this new area there has been plenty of trial and error during the first three years. Betros learned early he had to set strict ground rules for students.

“The first time I did this I had people in front of a Christmas tree in their stocking feet and pajamas giving a public speech to their mother, daddy, aunt and anyone else there for Christmas,” he says. “So I had to establish criteria.”

Students now have to have their speech topic approved by Betros and deliver their speech as part of a community service project. Students have two choices: They can have their speech videotaped and submit it in electronic form or be graded by a contact person of Betros’ choice during the live presentation.

“If they choose to do it the latter way, I have developed a speech rubric, which is a grading schema of sorts, and I have a contact person at the off-campus community venue whose job it is to grade this person’s performance,” Betros says. “I send them information on what the student needs to be doing and what I’m looking for. It’s intensive and by no means easy.”

More to come
Betros hopes to develop places in the community for students to deliver their speeches. And eventually, he hopes students will be able to check out Web cams and join them on a centralized Web location to watch their speech and grade it then.

“That’s where I want to go with this,” he says. “We haven’t even tapped what we can do.”