For more than 75 years, instructors have taught students to use Monroe's (1935) Motivated Sequence (MMS) when organizing speeches designed to move audiences to action. However, modern approaches to teaching the sequence are needed to help instructors remain relevant and effective. This activity advocates the use of constructivist pedagogical…

This assignment described here serves as a meaningful way to engage students who are perhaps less involved in giving back to their own community (Galston, 2003). By engaging students in "pay it forward" experiences, this assignment can help foster a sense of active citizenship. Often political engagement is associated with acts related…

Media have become ever-present factors in most college students' lives (Turan, Tinmaz, & Goktas, 2013). Despite this infiltration, students (and most of the public) remain remarkably unaware of the significant role the media can play in the construction of a social reality and, in turn, how individuals act and interact on a daily basis…

Academic literature suggests that today's college students are not as information literate as educators might expect, despite their generation being frequently described as "digital natives" or "Millennials" (Becker, 2009). A faculty survey at Pima Community College in Tucson, AZ, revealed that students' actual…

This single class activity described here: (1) illustrates the importance of interdependence in groups; (2) can be used to measure group productivity and performance; (3) can encourage groups to engage in group learning; and (4) can facilitate group cohesion for newly formed groups. Students will be working in groups for the majority of their…

Aristotle's three proofs remain central to students' understanding of argumentation and persuasion. They are fundamental for those just beginning rhetorical study, as well as being of interest to experienced scholars. Investing time in learning the proofs supports students' future practice and study of rhetoric. Unfortunately, the…

Using Critical Communication Pedagogy, this semester-long service-learning approach to public speaking requires students to apply public speaking concepts to a speech they develop and deliver to a specific community audience, to examine their own biases, and to explore and evaluate various strategies for adapting to their audience.

The objective of the exercise described here is for students to be able to recognize Habermas's public sphere theory and analyze public deliberation occurring within the online public sphere. After completing this unit activity, students will also be able to distinguish between civil and uncivil comments that people use in online forums.…

Silence is not nothing. Its presence can occur as a meaning-carrying message during interpersonal interactions, making it a vital aspect of communication. It can also both guide and limit behavior and cultural understanding (Braithwaite, 1999). At either level, silence can bring some ideas into an interaction while excluding others--it can both…

Evidence that K-12 schools had successfully integrated conflict resolution into curricula (Johnson & Johnson, 2004; Stevahn, 2004) includes students' resolution of personal conflicts and improved academic performances (Johnson, Johnson, Dudley, & Magnuson, 1995; Stevahn, Johnson, Johnson, Green, & Laginski, 1997; Stevahn, Johnson,…

The subject of research methods is often unknown, foreboding, and unappealing to undergraduate communication majors. Thus, in the research methods course, two ways to overcome such issues and achieve learning are by: (1) making the unfamiliar more familiar and accessible; and (2) placing abstract knowledge in its useful real-world context. Making…

An auction, though an economic tool, is essentially a performance dependent on communication (Smith, 1989). The auctioneer dictates the pace, asks for bids, and acknowledges responses; the enterprise is controlled by a voice (Boyce, 2001). Bidders must listen and respond strategically to the communication of the people around them. An auction…

This article describes a speaking problem very common in today's world--"vocalized pauses" (VP). Vocalized pauses are defined as utterances such as "uh," "like," and "um" that occur between words in oral sentences. This practice of everyday speech can affect how a speaker's intentions are…

Research finds that student effectiveness can be related to how well a student interacts and communicates in the classroom, supporting the notion that student-student interaction is important (Frymier, 2005; Poulou, 2009). According to Sidelinger and Booth-Butterfield (2010), student-student connectedness (defined as "a supportive and…

Among the many difficulties beleaguering the communication research methods instructor is the problem of contextualizing abstract ideas. Comprehension of variable operationalization, the utility of the measures of central tendency, measures of dispersion, and the visual distribution of data sets are difficult, since students have not handled data.…