Introductory Communication Course Research Articles

Mechanisms of Mindfulness in Communication Training

Mindfulness, an ancient spiritual practice, is becoming an increasingly popular component of communication courses, training individuals to reserve judgment in their dealings with others. However, the effects of mindfulness in communication courses are not well researched. We compared students taking an introductory communication course that included a mindfulness component (N=20) against a control group of students taking an equivalent course without mindfulness content (N=24). Both groups improved in their positive reappraisal tendencies following communication training; however, the groups appeared to differ in how they positively reappraised situations. Only the mindfulness group demonstrated improved mindfulness scores following training, accounting for that group's increases in positive reappraisal, and providing evidence for mindfulness training as one mechanism for reducing negative reactivity in communication.

Looking Across the Divide: Analyzing Cross-Disciplinary Approaches for Teaching Business Communication

This study elucidates pedagogical differences and similarities between the ways in which instructors from business and communication disciplines teach the introductory business communication course. During the spring of 2008, the authors surveyed 444 instructors teaching this course at colleges and universities across the United States. Their findings highlight several cross-disciplinary commonalities and disparities. The article discusses potential implications for the complementary and contradictory instructional approaches and call for more cross-disciplinary uniformity in contemporary business communication education.

Patterns of Change in Willingness to Communicate in Public Speaking Contexts: A Latent Growth Modeling Analysis

This study offers a comprehensive analysis of change in willingness to communicate (WTC) in public speaking contexts (i.e., PS-WTC). The proposed conceptualization of change was tested using longitudinal data collected from a sample of 706 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory communication course in a US university. Results of latent growth modeling (LGM) analysis indicate that PS-WTC scores increased linearly over a semester. In addition, this investigation found significant interindividual differences in students' PS-WTC intraindividual change trajectories, which were in part accounted for by differences in communication apprehension level, age, and class rank. The importance of these findings for advancing communication research and informing current pedagogical as well as methodological practices is discussed.

Using the Perry Scheme to Explore College Student Classroom Participation

Using Perry's Theory of Ethical and Intellectual Development as a framework, the purpose of this study was to identify the extent to which dualist, multiplist, and contextual relativist students differ in their in-class participation behaviors (i.e., asking questions, being willing to talk in class, and exhibiting an involvement in classroom interaction). Participants were 202 undergraduate students enrolled in two introductory communication courses at a large mid-Atlantic university. Results indicate that multiplist students ask more questions than dualist students, and contextual relativist students are more involved in classroom interaction than multiplist students.

The Relationship Between College Students' Self-Reports of Class Participation and Perceived Instructor Impressions

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the extent to which college students' self-reports of their in-class participation are related to their impressions of instructors (i.e., credibility, attractiveness, and homophily). Participants were 223 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a large Mid-Atlantic university. Students' self-reports of their in-class participation were positively correlated with perceived instructor social attractiveness, physical attractiveness, background homophily, and attititude homophily, but not with perceived instructor competence, character, caring, and task attractiveness. Furthermore, class size, perceived instructor social attractiveness, and perceived instructor background homophily emerged as significant predictors of in-class participation.

“Sleeping Beauty Gets a Makeover”: Using the Retelling of Fairytales to Create an Awareness of Hegemonic Norms and the Social Construction of Value

Courses: Any course that addresses gender, ability, identity, self-image, and power (e.g., gender communication, the introductory communication course, and interpersonal communication).

Exploring Decorative Typography in the Classroom Through Font Poems

In this essay, we examine the historical and cultural contexts of decorative type during three periods in history: pre-Gutenberg age, industrial age, and the information age. Using insights from the historical review we develop a font poem assignment to encourage students in an introductory visual communication course to explore decorative font use. The parameters of this assignment and a sample of font poems generated through assignment are presented.

REVISING GENERAL EDUCATION: ASSESSING A CRITICAL THINKING INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL IN THE BASIC COMMUNICATION COURSE

Abstract This study examined critical thinking instruction in a required introductory communication course (N = 324). Experimental group participants received enhanced instruction using various active learning strategies, activities, and assignments. Results indicate significant improvement in their critical thinking skills. Implications for pedagogy and general education course design and assessment are discussed.

REVISING GENERAL EDUCATION: ASSESSING A CRITICAL THINKING INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL IN THE BASIC COMMUNICATION COURSE

Abstract This study examined critical thinking instruction in a required introductory communication course (N = 324). Experimental group participants received enhanced instruction using various active learning strategies, activities, and assignments. Results indicate significant improvement in their critical thinking skills. Implications for pedagogy and general education course design and assessment are discussed.

The Relationship Between Perceived Instructor Aggressive Communication and College Student Involvement

This study investigated the link between college students’ perceptions of instructors’ aggressive communication and students’ involvement in and out of the classroom. Participants were 218 students enrolled in introductory communication courses. Results indicated that students’ reports of instructor argumentativeness were not positively associated with their motives to communicate, question asking, overt information seeking, interaction involvement, or out-of-class communication. Students’ reports of instructor verbal aggressiveness were negatively associated with their use of the relational, participatory, and functional motives to communicate as well as question asking, overt information seeking, interaction involvement, and out-of-class communication. Future research should consider the role students’ aggressive communication plays in their perceptions of their instructors, learning outcomes, and perceptions of the learning environment.

The Influence of First-Year "Success" Courses on Student Learning and Democratic Outcomes

This study extends the extant research on first-year programs to include a closer examination of their impact on student learning and democratic outcomes. Based on data collected from three courses—a first-year success course with an explicit focus on diversity, an introductory communication course, and an introductory engineering course—we examined student change across three outcomes: multicultural awareness, commitment to social justice, and attributional complexity. Our findings suggest that although students in the different courses showed no pretest differences on the outcome variables, only students in the first-year success course made significant gains on all three outcomes. ANCOVA results also demonstrated significant course effects for the first-year success course after controlling for a number of covariates. The article concludes with a discussion of the importance of using developmental theory to guide first-year programming and implications for practice.

Revising General Education: Assessing a Critical Thinking Instructional Model in the Basic Communication Course

This study examined critical thinking instruction in a required introductory communication course (N = 324). Experimental group participants received enhanced instruction using various active learning strategies, activities, and assignments. Results indicate significant improvement in their critical thinking skills. Implications for pedagogy and general education course design and assessment are discussed.

Perceived Instructor In-class Communicative Behaviors As a Predictor of Student Participation in Out of Class Communication

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of instructor in-class communicative behaviors on college student participation in out of class communication (OCC). Participants were 298 students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a Mid-Atlantic university who completed the Communication Functions Questionnaire, the modified Affinity-Seeking Strategy scale, and the Out of Class Interaction scale. Results of stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed that student participation in OCC was predicted by perceived instructor use of the ego support and persuasive functional communication skills as well as perceived instructor use of the sensitivity, self-inclusion, inclusion of others, comfortable self, and supportiveness affinity-seeking strategies. Future research should examine if students choose not to participate in OCC based on instructor communicative behaviors and how this choice is reflected in their choice of particular communicative channels.

The relationship between perceived instructor credibility and college student in‐class and out‐of‐class communication

This study explored the relationship between perceived instructor credibility (i.e., competence, character, caring) and student in‐class (i.e., willingness to talk) and out‐of‐class communication. Participants were 158 college students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a Mid‐Atlantic university. Results indicate (a) perceived instructor character and caring, but not perceived instructor competence, are positively related to student willingness to talk and (b) perceived instructor competence, character, and caring are positively related to student participation in student out‐of‐class communcation. Future research should explore the specific attributions made by students considered to constitute perceived instructor competence, character, and caring.

Straight/Narrative? Writing Style Changes Readers' Perceptions of Story Quality

Few studies have empirically examined whether narratives work or whether the straight-news approach is unappealing to readers as has been suggested.1 This exploratory study examined these issues, and it also investigated whether the subject matter of a story, separate from writing style, had an effect on reader assessment of story traits and whether writing style influenced readers' assessment of the importance of the news subject (also known as salience). Research questions for this study follow:Research QuestionsRQ1:Is writing style related to readers' assessments of a story in terms of its interestingness, informativeness, dullness and other story characteristics?RQ 2:Is story subject matter related to readers' assessments of story characteristics?BackgroundA basic component of any journalism curriculum is instruction in news writing. News-writing textbooks and other aids typically begin by emphasizing a straight-news approach then encourage students to move beyond the inverted toward narrative techniques that help the reader see the story and/or understand complex issues-especially in nondeadline stories.2 However, not everyone agrees that the narrative style is always advantageous. Haas, for example, has written that the narrative could make it difficult for readers to understand the significance of the news.3At the same time, supporters of the narrative approach to news emphasize the basics-who, what, when, where, why and how-and encourage journalists to think of them in terms of story line and character.4Story style is not only the concern of educators and journalists, but also of newspaper managers, who seek to maintain and increase circulation levels. Johnson of the Poynter Institute's leadership and management faculty argued that the inverted pyramid is off-putting to most readers while a 'feature-style' approach to all types of news ... has special appeal to many at-risk readers, particularly younger people and women.5Studies of writing style have produced mixed results. Bostian tested the readability of two science news stories written in three styles on 266 college students.6 The participants in this study read active passages more quickly and judged those passages more interesting than both the passive and nominal passages. Chartprasert found that subjects rated authors who used a bureaucratic writing style as more intelligent, educated and expert than authors who used simple style.7 In a study of the use of imagery in writing, Tankard and Hendrickson found that show sentences were not seen as more credible, contrary to those who argue that a straight-news style of writing is less persuasive.8Studies from a range of perspectives have considered the effect of particular story characteristics on reader estimation of issue salience. Gibson and Zillman found support for their hypothesis that quotes could make an issue seem to be more salient and/or compelling for the consumer of a news report and sway a reader's or listener's perception and judgment of an issue.9OverviewStories about crime and the environment served as the independent variables in the experiment. These two subjects were used to check for the possibility that participants might react to the story's subject matter, rather than to its writing style. The topics were also selected because they focus on societal risks, which made it possible to draw from the literature in creating an instrument that served to explore the impact of story style on salience.MethodStories were drawn from actual news accounts and then treated to create one straight-news and one narrative version of both a crime story and an environmental story. The stories were typeset to appear identical. Neither version of the stories included direct quotations or headlines in order to eliminate possible confounding variables.10Participants were 117undergraduates enrolled in two introductory communication courses at a large midwestern university. …

Exploring motivations for consumer Web use and their implications for e‐commerce

This study examines the influence of demographic variables and dimensions of motivational factors of two types of consumer Web use: percentage of weekly Web surfing time spent searching for product and service‐related information and online shopping and transactions. It combines data from two sources: a self‐administered survey of 59 undergraduates in an introductory communication course at Cornell University; and a mail/Web survey of 59 New York State residents who had reported subscribing to an online service in a previous mail survey. We found distinctively different patterns of relationships among demographics and motivational factors for the two types of dependent variables. Most importantly, transactional privacy concerns were found to be negatively related to percentage of time spent on product searches and online shopping, while economic motivations had a positive influence. In addition, online shopping was found to be predicted by information motivations, interactive control motivations, and socialization motivations. Implications for Web‐based commerce and advertising are discussed.

The relationship between student communication motives and information seeking

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between college students’ communication motives (i.e., relational, functional, participatory, excuse making, sycophantic) and their use of information‐seeking strategies (i.e., overt, indirect, third party, testing, observing). Participants were 149 students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a Mid‐Atlantic university. Results indicated that (a) students who communicate for the sycophantic, relational, and participatory motives use the indirect and observing information‐seeking strategies and (b) students who communicate for the functional communication motive use the overt information‐seeking strategy, but do not use the testing information‐seeking strategy. Future research should examine whether college students use information‐seeking strategies with their classmates and the impact of the use of these strategies on their learning experience.

Students' Motives for Communicating with their Instructors: Considering Instructor Socio-communicative Style, Student Socio-communicative Orientation, and Student Gender

The purpose of this study was to explore how student motives to communicate (i.e., relational, functional, participatory, excuse making, sycophantic) with their instructors are influenced jointly by perceived instructor socio-communicative style and student socio-communicative orientation. Participants were 225 students enrolled in a variety of introductory communication courses at a Midwestern university. Results indicate that (a) the relational and sycophantic motives to communicate are related to both student and instructor assertiveness and responsiveness, (b) the functional, participatory, and excuse making motives to communicate are related to student assertiveness, and (c) the participatory and functional motives are related to instructor responsiveness and student responsiveness, respectively. Moreover, it was found that (a) female students communicate more for the functional motive than male students and (b) male students communicate more for the relational and the sycophantic motives than female students.

Perceived understanding, interaction involvement, and college student outcomes

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between perceived understanding and interaction involvement and student outcomes (i.e., perceived affective learning, state motivation, satisfaction) in the college classroom. Participants were 176 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a large midwestern university. Results indicated that students who feel understood, and to a lesser degree are involved in classroom interaction, report high amounts of affect toward the instructor, state motivation, and satisfaction as well as moderate amounts of affect toward the course content and the recommended course behaviors. Future research should consider exploring what experiences or interactions affect students’ perceived understanding and/or interaction involvement in the classroom.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication technology learning part 2: preprofessional students

In this study, the learning styles and preferences of preprofessional students enrolled in an introductory augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) course were investigated. The specific purposes of the present study were to examine preprofessional students' (1) achievement goal orientation, (2) computer technology interest, and (3) learning mode preferences regarding AAC. The results revealed that preprofessional students were statistically assigned to four distinctive clusters with regard to their achievement goal orientation. Their interest in computer technology was relatively low, and they preferred individual and small-group learning opportunities as compared with direct instruction in new technology.