This article describes an activity in which students of instructional communication (1) learn about hegemony in the classroom; and (2) analyze the pedagogical behavior of a cinematic teacher in the movie "Half Nelson." Through this analysis, students will gain a heightened awareness of hegemony and will identify avenues for praxis. Doing so will…

A fundamental concept in Intercultural Communication is developing an understanding of different cultural patterns. Understanding different value dimensions such as collectivism, power distance, and high versus low context cultures are important steps to gaining a facility in communicating cross-culturally. This article presents an activity that…

Service-learning scholars contend that engaging students in systematic reflection during community service promotes one, if not all, of the following student outcomes: (1) academic learning; (2) personal growth; and (3) civic engagement. For communication instructors in particular, Applegate and Morreale (1999) proposed that service-learning both…

The difficult nature of reporting accurately and objectively on religion, coupled with world events and discrimination against Muslims, motivated a pilot course called "Reporting on Islam." The activity detailed in this article addressed two issues--improving the coverage of religion, specifically Islam, in the news media and using communication…

From the earliest roots of rhetoric, practitioners emphasized the need for analyzing one's audience before developing a speech. Textbooks for most basic public speaking courses spend at least one chapter discussing audience analysis. Authors discuss adapting messages to various demographic, cultural, and individual differences. As a result,…

The ubiquity and familiarity of the world wide web means that students regularly turn to it as a source of information. In doing so, they "are said to rely heavily on simple search engines, such as Google to find what they want." Researchers have also investigated how students use search engines, concluding that "the young web users tended to…

Public relations (PR) educators and professionals often encounter strife of managing the need of teaching research, writing and critical thinking skills in the classroom. In addition, educators are also tending to the needs of implementing current industry trends into the undergraduate curriculum. In today's undergraduate PR programs significant…

Teaching communication policy to young college students can be a challenge. Students often consider law and policy as difficult, abstract, or even unrelated to their lives. Yet experienced teachers note that students--especially those who are first exposed to regulatory concepts--benefit when they actively participate, engage, and deliberate for…

The purpose of this assessment was to examine whether differences exist between students who self-select their classroom work group members and students who are randomly assigned to their classroom work groups in terms of their use of organizational citizenship behaviors with their work group members; their commitment to, trust in, and relational…

Asynchronous discussions are a useful instructional resource in the online communication course. In discussion groups students have the opportunity to actively participate and interact with students and the instructor. Asynchronous communication allows for flexibility because "participants can interact with significant amounts of time between…

Although a growing number of universities are mounting concentrations or degrees in health communication, the most common level of training offered in the subject is a single introductory course. Typically, prerequisites for these courses are an introduction to communication course and/or a communication theory course. This makes it challenging to…

This study assesses an assignment for incorporating diversity into the principles of public relations course. The assignment is tailored to the challenges of using an active learning approach in a large lecture class. For the assignment, students write a goal, objectives, strategies, an identification of tactics, and evaluation plans for either…

As public relations professions advance toward new media platforms, one traditional tool--the backgrounder/position paper (more technically termed white paper) remains a compelling vehicle to impart enduring professional competencies. Moreover, the skills requisite to produce a white paper can be deployed in a variety of new and traditional media…

How can public speaking instructors teach students how to be charismatic and confident speakers? The activity presented in this article suggests that instructors foster competent and charismatic presentational skills by having students channel the stylistic capabilities of an exceptional speaker. The activity requires students to take on the…

Today's students live in a mobile society beset with technologies that allow them to communicate through a wide variety of mediums. Mobile phones, for example, have become the fastest growing technology in history. Students have traditionally been at the forefront of most societal changes and this recent technological influx is certainly no…