What is communication?

This is a question I’ve been pondering—as per national mandate—in the Communication Skills course I’ve begun teaching at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA). The course is for the 20 students who are working toward earning a one-year diploma in computer science this year. My students are part of the incoming student body at SUZA, comprising 613 students, 301 of whom are women.

It’s good to be back in the classroom, which I’m finding to be the most familiar place I’ve been in the two months I’ve been here. I have a syllabus, I make assignments, I explain things, we laugh, we ask questions, we explore—so much is the same.

But in the weeks leading up to the semester, I often felt panicky about teaching because so much seemed unfamiliar to me. Thinking about the “What is communication?” question has helped crystallize for me why that was.

At Puget Sound, communication happens very quickly, physically dispersed though the members of the campus community sometimes are (this post being a case in point). Months before the fall semester begins at Puget Sound, I can count on knowing what I am teaching, when my classes will meet, where they will be, who my students will be, and (often) what my students’ interests will be—especially if the students are ones I know from previous classes or are incoming advisees. Having that information, I can spend considerable time tailoring my courses to best match the evolving subject matter with the particular students and the physical classroom environment in which I’ll teach. Here in Zanzibar, I did not have most of this basic information until three days before classes began, a terrifying prospect for a planner like me. I’m not accustomed to teaching from a syllabus that has been written and approved by someone else, let alone the national government; however, I was grateful on the first day of class to have a few things that I didn’t need to hand-design.

I now realize how much of what feels natural to me as a teacher is dependent on everyone involved having continuous digital access. Here in Zanzibar, we have computers and Web sites and digital classroom aids, and so it seems like it should be possible to do things like send out mass informational e-mails and to have electronic course registration records; however, we don’t have reliable electricity and although there is high-speed Internet at SUZA, there is none in the homes and villages of most of the prospective students. Even e-mail addresses are rare here. There is no well-established campus e-mail domain at SUZA; faculty and staff here use free hotmail and gmail accounts, and many of my computer science students (likely the most tech-savvy students on campus) have never had the need or opportunity to get e-mail addresses until now. Without those basic communication routes, all kinds of information move slowly, from student applications to acceptance letters to student registrations to course teaching assignments to classroom assignments. Communication here does sometimes happen electronically, but it happens even more successfully face to face (as I learned when students in my class questioned whether communication can happen in e-mails because there is no real-time dialogue and because the addressee might not have Internet access).

Like much of East Africa, we at SUZA are at a liminal moment, between the oral , local culture of the past and the digital, global culture of the future. Although I never dreamed I’d be a member of a computer science department, I’m thrilled to be at this pivotal moment, as I teach English communication skills to my computer science students. Look out, world!