Traditionally, informative speeches are relegated to be passive. The classic scope of informative speeches does not consider "live" or "lived" rhetoric. After teaching public speaking for most of my career, there are times when one needs to reinvigorate assignments. This assignment challenges how we utilize memory and place to…

Incorporating civic engagement in the undergraduate curriculum has become a goal in higher education generally and the communication discipline specifically. Given this emerging priority, we offer a framework that integrates civic engagement in the communication classroom and meets students and instructors needs, experience, and goals. Drawing on…

Courses: Visual Rhetoric, Visual Communication, Multiplatform Journalism, Advertising, Journalism, Public Relations. Objective: This unit activity requires that students analyze and produce imagery with the help of semiotic theory. Students will: (1) learn to connect theory with practice holistically by simultaneously practicing visual analysis…

In this semester-long activity, I describe how to create a collaborative cabinet of curiosities that engages critical methods of inquiry as an alternative summative assignment. Courses: Communication Pedagogy, Gender and Communication, Performance Studies. Objective: The objective of this assignment is for students to identify and analyze how…

Courses: Public Speaking. Objectives: This unit aims to (1) illustrate the classical and contemporary utility of "ekphrasis" ("description") as a genre of civic communication; and (2) introduce students to essential skills in public speaking, including invention, arrangement, and, in particular, style

Courses: This semester-long assignment series was developed for an online introductory public speaking class, but it has also been used successfully in a hybrid (combination of online/face-to-face meetings) format. Objectives: Students will practice delivering speeches in an online format by applying key concepts from course materials to personal…

Courses: Communication Activism; Public Advocacy; Social Movements; Public Speaking; Persuasion; Argumentation; Public Sphere. Objectives: This semester-long activity helps students implement a solutions--strategies--tactics framework into their advocacy work. More specifically, students learn to (1) designate, research, and assess the causes of…

Courses: This semester long activity can be employed in any communication classroom and is designed particularly to provide first-time graduate student instructors (GSIs) with a theory-based assessment tool. As such, the article is appropriate for graduate-level pedagogy classes. Objective: To introduce a theory-based, critical thinking activity…

The "Amazing Race" activity utilizes experiential learning by encouraging students to venture outside the classroom to collect and cite sources for an upcoming assignment. In the popular TV show, "Amazing Race," teams compete to complete tasks that take them around the world. Similarly, in this classroom activity, groups…

Today's college students increasingly need skills in social media and teleworking. To develop these skills, instructors at four institutions created and implemented a cross-institutional group project that required students to create and share online an instructional video about a social media topic. Students then discussed the videos and their…

This paper examined the practice of using LinkedIn as a tool for teaching students how to create a professional online presence. A descriptive analysis of student LinkedIn profiles revealed that students included some basic requirements, but many students still neglected to fully complete the profile, thereby leaving out some important information…

One of the methods used to enhance students' ability not only to identify different cultures but also to describe their own cultures with proper analytical vocabulary is to teach students how to play the role of an outsider of their culture and de-familiarize their everyday practice so that they can distinguish cultural patterns and…

The purpose of this study was to revisit Coombs' suggestions for teaching the crisis communication course using service-learning as a framework. The author sought to assess the effectiveness of using this method in terms of the benefits to both students and the partnering organization and students' perceptions of whether they met the learning…

This article describes an activity in which students will understand, analyze, and apply the principles learned in the RACE process (research, action, communication, and evaluation). Students should have the ability to identify the four-step public relations planning process and ultimately create a public relations plan. This two-week activity is…

This article describes an activity in which teachers and students use music in the form of a "Mix-tape" to relate communication theory to students' lived experiences. When students identify and use their own familiar popular culture texts to explain concepts and identify relationships, they do so in ways that the course textbook cannot. This…