"PRES" - Presentation Skills:
Oral Communication in General Education

The integration of both oral and written communication into general education is often referred to as Communication Across/In the Disciplines/Curriculum. A wide variety of acronyms capture this interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary endeavor, including: OCxC /OCAC, CxC/CAC, SAC, or CAD/CID, SAD, SALAD, WOVE, SAW... Public speaking, or "presentation skills," in General Education (GenEd or GE) is often called Oral Communication Across the Curriculum (OCxC).

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Universities take a variety of approaches in implementing these programs: 

• Speaking intensive programs designate specific courses as ones in which students will participate in multiple, varied, speaking opportunities. 

• General faculty development and student lab/faculty development initiatives use workshops, retreats and other forms of ongoing training, support and counseling to prepare faculty and support students in speaking classes. 

• Combined initiative programs partner with other campus initiatives to connect communication skills with other modalities.

• Discipline-specific programs focus on integrating communication into particular fields with emphasis on discipline-specific communication and instruction, and may rely on interdisciplinary teaching.

• Communication in General Education approaches may borrow from several of these, such as blending speaking intensive options (like SUNY Cortland's COM210) with discipline-specific options (other PRES-designated courses at Cortland), with or without development and support (Cortland has peer tutoring for COM210, speech preparation support through The Writing Center, and these resources plus one-on-one consultations by the Presentation Skills Coordinator).

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