Value for Learning Communication Skills in Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Students should develop proficient interpersonal skills, including communication. The need for developing communication skills has been explicitly identified in national reports for undergraduate students in STEM and healthcare related programs, which includes anatomy. To help students develop effective communication skills throughout their education, instructors need to consider the value students give to learning these skills. According to expectancy-value theory (EVT), students’ motivation for learning and persistence with completing a task is tied to how they value the task. Previous work looking at student value for learning communication skills focused on mainly verbal communication in a graduate and medical school context. We developed a survey to measure and investigated how undergraduate students value learning communication skills. The Student Attitudes Toward Communication Skills Survey (SATCSS) consists of 36 items including 12 items for each mode of communication (verbal, written, and non-verbal). The 12 items for each mode are divided among each of the four task values proposed by expectancy-value theory (importance, interest, relevance, and cost). Students (n = 260) in two different anatomy and physiology courses over two semesters in 2019-2020 completed the SATCSS. We analyzed the SATCSS for reliability using Cronbach's alpha and validity using Principal Components Analysis. Further, we compared student responses among the task values using a general linear model with post hoc Tukey tests for multiple comparisons. We found the SATCSS to reliably measure total value (α = .946) and the four task values individually (α ≥ .819).There was a significant difference in sub-scores among the four task values (F(2.2,259) = 370.413, p < .001, η2 = .589) such that students thought that learning communication skills was important and relevant, but were less interested in it and found it to be costly. This two-component grouping was consistent with our validity findings that importance and relevance items loaded as one component and interest and cost items loaded as a second component. Students with high total value scores valued communication skills across all four task values. As total value scores decreased, it was first due to students finding learning communication skills to be time prohibitive and then a lack of interest in learning communication skills. Our results suggest that, instructors should incorporate communication skills training that increases interest and considers cost concerns to help motivate students to value and learn communication skills. This work helps to inform instructors how to motivate their students to learn critical communication skills. Additionally, the SATCSS could be disseminated and analyzed in instructors’ courses to guide their instruction more precisely in communication skills training.