Throughout our online teaching semesters, my Zoomers were univocal in their appreciation for breakout room discussions. Returning to in-class instruction, I decided to incorporate breakout teams from day one and to assign them a specific task: to create a mock corporation, organized by their desired areas of management professions.

My rationale was that their mock companies would serve as communication anchor points throughout the semester. Since our formal written CL2 assignments can only cover five or so major genres of business communications, a mock corporation would provide an informal (and hopefully fun) venue for imagining all sorts of internal/external, top down/bottom up, formal/informal daily corporate communications. 

Now with several weeks left in the semester, the mock corporations have taken on imaginative lives of their own. Even more, my students email me under their corporate personas, and I respond accordingly. I didn’t anticipate the positive envisioning of future professionalism, and how the envisioning would facilitate their transformation from “student” to professional communicators. 

As one example of how the mock companies have worked, I’ve witnessed Happy Pawz Pet Boutique’s communication practices in writing a corporate mission statement, hiring and firing employees, responding to customer complaints, establishing Happy Pawz digital presence (a full corporation website), and promoting a new product line (dog owners will welcome the Sticky Mat, no more need to wipe muddy paws!), all documented through formal agendas and meeting minutes. 

On the downside, a few students have asked how their team contributions “count” towards their course grade, in quest of numbers. As well as the mock companies have performed, in terms of instructional goals, I haven’t figured out how to transfer the enthusiasm into numbers. I wish I didn’t have to.