In the late 1980s, noted communication scholar Cassandra Book laid out a comprehensive rationale and agenda for communication education research specifically focusing on pedagogical content knowledge for Communication courses in K-12 education. It has been 25 years since Book published her call for those in our discipline to pursue research…

The basic communication course, with its roots in classical Greece and Rome, is frequently a required course in general education. The course often serves as our "front porch," welcoming new students to the Communication discipline. This essay first outlines early traditions in oral communication instruction and their influence on future…

Articles published in "Communication Education" ("CE") from 2000 to 2013 yielded four major themes: teacher/instructor to student communication, public speaking, technology, and identity. An analysis of the articles within each major theme revealed a notable absence of research investigating the experiences of students of color…

When communication technologies are used by individuals to intentionally threaten or harm others, the potential for anyone to become a target of cyberbullying is very real. Therefore, when it comes to instructor-student interactions, even the most competent or award-winning instructors are not immune from cyberbullying if disgruntled students…

Parent-teacher communication represents a primary form of parental support, a phenomenon meriting significant attention given the connections between support and academic achievement (Thompson, 2008b). A series of studies advance the Parental Academic Support Scale (PASS) to assess the frequency, importance, and modes parents use to communicate…

The primary goal of this project is to provide a summary of extant research regarding humor in the classroom, with an emphasis on identifying and explaining inconsistencies in research findings and offering new directions for future studies in this area. First, the definitions, functions, and main theories of humor are reviewed. Next, the paper…

Communication in the disciplines (CID) is a model of situated pedagogy that prepares students for the communication demands of their professional work. A defining feature of CID is its "situatedness." Communication is meant to uphold, not disrupt, disciplinary norms surrounding communication outcomes, genres, and assessment. However, by upholding…

This comprehensive review of the assessment of oral communication in the communication discipline is both descriptive and empirical in nature. First, some background on the topic of communication assessment is provided. Following the descriptive background, we present an empirical analysis of academic papers, research studies, and books about…

This study investigated the relationship between teacher immediacy and college students' use of text messaging in class. Using a cross-sectional survey sample (N=228), structural equation model analyses showed that students' learning motivation does not mediate the potential effects of teacher immediacy and students' use of text messaging in…

The purpose of this study was threefold: to (a) identify students' experiences of distributive, procedural, and interactional injustice; (b) to examine students' emotional responses to these unjust experiences; and (c) to investigate students' behavioral reactions to perceived injustice. Participants were 138 undergraduate students who provided…

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how new technologies become a part of culture and change our traditional images of health care and providers. Using the diffusion of innovations theory provides an understanding of how providers can adopt technology into practice. More specifically, this paper focuses on…

Studies consistently confirm that there is an extensive need for new theoretical and practical directions for communication in disciplines (CID) programmes. The CID pedagogy calls for more specialized training with more specialized methods in particular professions. This study presents a method developed for practical training studies in pharmacy…

This paper proposes the Instructional Humor Processing Theory (IHPT), a theory that incorporates elements of incongruity-resolution theory, disposition theory, and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion. IHPT is proposed and offered as an explanation for why some types of instructor-generated humor result in increased student…

This study extended the technology acceptance model and empirically tested the new model with wikis, a new type of educational technology. Based on social cognitive theory and the theory of planned behavior, three new variables, wiki self-efficacy, online posting anxiety, and perceived behavioral control, were added to the original technology…

Journal citations are increasingly used as indicators of the impact of scholarly work. Because many communication journals are not included in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), SSCI impact factors are potentially misleading for communication journals. The current paper reports a citation analysis of 30 communication journals based on…