Within the last decade, service-learning has experienced impressive growth in higher education, particularly within communication departments. According to Jacoby (1996), service-learning is a "form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities…

This article describes an assignment that was developed for an undergraduate course on communication technologies taught at a public university in the Upper Midwest. The course focuses on the impact of new media technologies on traditional media industries and contemporary culture, and is taken by students majoring in journalism, public relations,…

The current downturn in the economy combined with the need for students to aptly verbalize their knowledge, skills, and abilities influences their search for employment and application to graduate school programs, making this topic timely. Finding ongoing methods for communication students to detail and reflect on their skills and abilities as…

More research is needed that examines textbooks intended for the entry level college classroom. This study offers valuable information to academics that adopt a public speaking textbook for instruction as well as objective feedback to the collective authors. Readability levels of 22 nationally published textbooks, based on McGlaughlin's (1969)…

Courses: Communication and civic participation course; rhetorical theory, political communication, leadership. Objective: Students will explore citizenship through role models and story-telling. (Contains 1 table.)

Courses: Fundamentals of public speaking, basic hybrid course, introduction to communication, introduction to journalism, introduction to advertising, and any other course that includes components of communication ethics. Objective: Students will understand the fundamental elements of communication ethics.

Based on the typology posited by Kram and Isabella (1985) that identifies three peer relationships present in organizations (i.e., information, collegial, and special), this assessment examined the association between students' perceptions of their in-class group members and six group outcomes (i.e., grouphate, cohesion, relational satisfaction,…

Fear of public speaking is the most common social fear experienced by the general population and can have far-reaching academic effects, including lower course grades and even an increased likelihood to drop out of college. The typical curricular approach to remediating public speaking fears in college students is to provide training in basic…

Information literacy programs focus on teaching students how to conduct effective research. Perhaps even more important is that they teach students how to critically evaluate the information they find. Engaging students in a significant information literacy unit helps them realize the value of the research process and the limitations of relying…

Popular films can be important pedagogical tools in today's communication courses. Constructing classroom experiences that use film can make theory come alive for students. At the same time, theory can be used to probe deeper into the complexities of human behavior via astute film analysis. In the case of Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), a…

Invention deals with the content of a speech, arrangement involves placing the content in an order that is most strategic, style focuses on selecting linguistic devices, such as metaphor, to make the message more appealing, memory assists the speaker in delivering the message correctly, and delivery ideally enables great reception of the message.…

For over 30 years, instructional communication scholars have investigated the relationships between instructors' communicative behaviors and students' affective/cognitive learning, as well as student classroom motivation. More specifically, perceived teacher immediacy is positively related to student learning and motivation. Albert Mehrabian first…

In the upper-level communication seminar that the author teaches--"Practices of Citizenship"--students learn and reflect on multiple theories and practices of citizenship as they develop their own voices in civil, academic, and intellectual conversations. As Aristotle argues, citizenship is a practice, a habit that must be learned. Aristotle's…

This article describes the semester-long assignment called the Interpersonal Development Project (IDP) that was developed by the author to teach an interpersonal communication course that is both theoretically rich and practical. The IDP fosters significant theoretical and practical learning by placing the focus of learning on meaningful…

During recent years, some college classrooms have moved away from traditional teacher-centered lecture pedagogies toward learner-centered strategies. Relatively little empirical evidence exists to date assessing the utility of such pedagogies. This exploratory study examined the content and structure of student speech outlines from…