< various levels of participation & success (pictures of people intentionally lack links for enlargement)

Lower row, left: Student is speaking German; Powerpoint summary is in English as a way to save time with simultaneous translation. Middle right / far right: Using necktie to demonstrate constructing a sample list (hand tools). How's your own L2ff. vocabulary?

How they are judged

Most assignments have scoring guides,
The company has specific standards for speaking (EU B2) and Writing (EU C1) - we also use ACTFL equivalents.
The "Ausstellung" has a scoring guide.
There is a bilingual overall course scoring guide. Students evaluate themselves at end of quarter; I evaluate them independently, and then the ratings / grades are combined. Where they rate themselves higher than I rate them, we split the difference. Where I rate them higher, my rating wins.

This issue involves the problem that performance in a (conventional) class is judged differently from performance in a company:

1) Companies usually desire consultation and revision; (conventional) courses give a grade and get on to the next assignment (repeat ad lib).
2) Companies often have their employees do self-evaluations; a few courses do that too (note progress in K-12 and portfolio evaluation).
3) Except in extreme cases, a teacher cannot fire a student. (Specific instance: attendance!

NOTE: Getting them to understand the need for initiative & teamwork is the greatest challenge of all. Some groups "jell" in about a month, some much later, under the pressure of the culminating group activity. A few do not come together sufficiently to allow a public group activity. I am still working on how to help make it happen. (from Guys and Dolls: "I hire people to be creative and then they don't do what I say!") A strong impulse is to assign reading about teamwork (in German for teamwork in a company, in English for teamwork and other features of CBI and TBL courses, but with obvious problems - "But this is a GERMAN course.")

A nagging problem: how to detect what they do out of my sight? (log of work sessions? personal performance summary at end of quarter?

Some miscellaneous pedagogical points that need attention (mine if not yours):

Largest scale: This is like no other course - attracting, retaining.

Medium: Thinking "business" (schema for event-planning, for starting a business überhaupt)

Small: Thinking creatively / in gray zones and talking at same time

Hic et ubi: my doubly schizophrenic role of (teacher vs CEO; CEO vs. the democratic nature of a startup - but when the blind would otherwise be leading the blind).

Small-scale tricks of the SpeakEasy CEO's trade (see "Mistakes and Lessons" for the large-scale stuff):

1) Use eye contact and a long wait to urge individual participation.
2) Get them to commit to an opinion (better: two+ to competing opinions), then insist that they support it.
3) Toss a point to a department, once they have formed ("Ist das nicht Sache der Verkaufsabteilung?")

But now the deeper issues:

1) How do this and similar innovations relate to the "traditional" curriculum? (But what about my Faust seminar?) At PSU we're presently discussing a small-scale issue: commit more resources to German for business purposes? Side issue: What to do with courses that are not so much linear as "fitness center"-based (=can be repeated, because the exercise is good for you)?

2) Relation to largest-scale curricular issues: a) preK-20 (or even life-long learning); b) Campus-Wide Learning Outcomes (critical thinking, internationalization, engagement, sustainability)

And, in a class by itself,

3) Does this improve language learning (other learning?), and how is that to be ascertained? In short, the "$64,000 Donato-Brooks Question":

I will claim that: a) the average classroom performance in SpeakEasy exceeds what D-B measured; b) an improvement in in-class language-learning and -demonstrating behavior is apparent over a notably short time (one quarter or less) - the "Music Man" Effect?; c) cloning the SpeakEasy model is not the only way to go - there are other approaches - but why not??

BUT some reservations: a) past tense (prime feature on way to Advanced) does not come naturally in an "office" environment; b) attempting to target grammar overtly, even in a very function-driven setting, is a dicey matter (passive when changing toner cartridge, adjective endings when describing competing products).

Suggestions for research:

1) Analyze the available "SpeakEasy" video footage: a) using Donato-Brooks methods & standards (study the group); b) follow an individual learner over one quarter; c) measure the group dynamics (where people sit, how they interact, when instructor / CEO moves away from center); d) look for progress in writing (accuracy in list-making, incorporation of new vocabulary, especially business terms, and also of structures used frequentnly by instructor).

2) Little point - the initial check of their "room" vocabulary (table, chair, ceiling, floor, wall, door, doorknob / handle, wallplug) suggests that even in third year there are big problems with lexicon, gender, plural

A remaining point of friendly dispute: just keep it a simulation and not try to make it real? (discussion with Glenn Levine)

Group: any other ideas? Me, I'm just an old retreaded Age-of-Goethe specialist, so any help is welcome.