Professional Communication Instructors Research Articles

Entrepreneurial Mindsets & Rhetorical Canons: Enhancing Business Communication Pedagogy via Cross-disciplinary Theory, Praxis

Business and professional communication courses hold special opportunities to contribute to students’ development of entrepreneurial mindsets through the use and extension of classical rhetorical theory and praxis. We situate pedagogical activities within the context of the entrepreneurial venture pitch by using Rhetorical Canons of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery to develop oral discourse while recognizing and developing entrepreneurial mindsets. We utilize elements of entrepreneurial mindset development presented by Kuratko et al. and Daspit et al. to introduce business and professional communication instructors to cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aspects contributing to the establishment of entrepreneurial mindsets.

An Analysis of the Academic Environment in Business and Professional Communication

While previous research in business communication has surveyed business and professional communication instructors regarding their courses, it has not yet asked instructors about additional factors that affect their ability to teach and their students’ ability to learn. These factors include job satisfaction, institutional and collegial support, academic rank, physical teaching environment, teaching and learning resources, and student issues. This study examines the results of a survey of business and professional communication instructors regarding these factors, discusses implications for the disciplines of business and professional communication, and suggests additional avenues for advocacy and research.

Exemplary and Unacceptable Workplace Communication Skills

Thematic analysis of interviews with 22 managers highlight their perspectives on exemplary and unacceptable workplace communication skills. Exemplary skills were perceived to be relatability, documentation, and audience awareness/adaptation, while unacceptable skills were verbal aggression, deception, and defensive communication behaviors. The findings contribute to closing-the-gap research by identifying highly notable skills—both positive and negative—on typical lists of business and professional communication skills. This study also enriches anticipatory socialization scholarship by its application to vocational preparation. Business and professional communication instructors can use the findings here when deciding what topics to emphasize in a course.

Writing in Transnational Workplaces: Teaching Strategies for Multilingual Engineers

Introduction: Professional communication instructors in transnational contexts face unique challenges when helping students transition into the workplace. These challenges include preparing students for multilingual workplaces and educational settings, as well as multicultural communication in English at transnational workplaces. About the case: The authors, working at an international branch campus (IBC) in the Middle East, wanted to revise their assignments in a technical writing course for engineers in order to better prepare students for the realities of professional communication in the region. Situating the case: Engineering students matriculate into an increasingly diverse workplace, but instructors may not adequately understand the needs of employers in transnational corporations. Methods: Semistructured interviews were conducted with students and alumni of the IBC, and transcripts were coded for common themes. Results/discussion: Students and alumni had different perceptions of workplace communication genres, expectations for detailed writing, and the ability to adapt rhetorical strategies for different contexts. Alumni experienced a gap between their professors’ and their workplaces’ expectations for business genres and level of detail. They also reported that one of their significant challenges was adopting a flexible mindset toward written and spoken communication practices. Conclusions: Professional communication instructors should emphasize the strengths of multilingual writers, particularly their sense of language difference and rhetorical attunement, to better prepare them for the transnational workplace, in both the US and abroad. The authors describe changes in their pedagogy to help students adopt a more flexible and industry-oriented mindset toward technical communication.

Contradictory Comments: Feedback in Professional Communication Service Courses

Background: Professional communication instructors give profuse feedback on student writing in service or introductory courses; however, professional communication has traditionally borrowed feedback practices from first-year writing. In addition, professional communication instructors have relied on lore instead of data when giving students feedback. Literature review: Three recent studies examine the content of feedback comments given by professional communication instructors; nevertheless, these studies open questions about how professional communication instructors enact their pedagogical values when giving feedback. Research questions: 1. What do instructors value when teaching professional communication service courses? 2. What do instructors emphasize in their feedback? 3. To what extent do instructors' values align with the feedback that they give on students' writing? Research methodology: To answer these questions, this pilot study does close qualitative work to test interview questions and a coding scheme formed by inductive content analysis. I triangulated four interviews about instructors' pedagogical values with content analysis of their 599 feedback comments on students' writing. Results and discussion: The results reveal three implications: Rhetorical terminology may contradict the goals of professional communication, overly conversational or directive feedback may not give students tools to improve their writing, and borrowing pedagogical training from first-year composition may not prepare instructors to teach professional communication. Conclusion: Tensions between instructors' values and their feedback comments highlight a lack of consensus about professional communication's pedagogical values for the service course, particularly higher order values, such as audience analysis or purpose through giving feedback.

Foregrounding Accessibility Through (Inclusive) Universal Design in Professional Communication Curricula

Incorporating universal design (UD) both as a topic of discussion and as a pedagogical approach allows business and professional communication instructors to foreground accessibility in ways that acknowledge the rhetorical situatedness of accessibility. This article offers UD strategies that reimagine accessibility not just as a requirement that accommodates users but as an opportunity to create a rich rhetorical user experience for diverse populations. To illustrate how accessibility can be foregrounded in professional communication curricula, this article details the development of an information design course focused on usability and accessibility.

Writing Entrepreneurs

This article presents data from an electronic survey asking 101 entrepreneurs in Wisconsin and North Alabama about the documents they write before opening and while operating their businesses, the writing skills they value, and the audiences they consider when writing. The results demonstrate that entrepreneurs highly value writing and rhetorical skills, produce a huge range of documents, and require distinctive genres at different stages of their ventures. The results can help professional communication instructors, entrepreneurship and small-business consultants, and aspiring entrepreneurs to more effectively anticipate and meet the rhetorical challenges of opening and operating a business.

Revisiting a Genre

Infographics exist on nearly any topic you can imagine, proliferating in the digital age with social media. As this genre continues to explode in the business scene, business and professional communication instructors can no longer ignore showing their students infographics. After first defining the genre and outlining how it situates itself within business and professional communication, this article offers two approaches to increase awareness and exposure of infographics for students. The first focuses on an analysis assignment using infographics; the second focuses on a production assignment.