Business Communication Students Research Articles

Incorporating Facebook and Twitter in a Service-Learning Project in a Business Communication Course

Implementing real-world business writing situations and service learning into business communication courses are not new concepts. Business communication students work through a service-learning project with nonprofit organizations to create communication documents to improve the nonprofit’s communication with the public. Writing for social networking sites is also included in the project. Students are asked to create a Facebook slogan for the nonprofit as well as various other Facebook announcements. Students also write tweets to encourage people to donate and to promote various activities. These activities help students write more concisely and think critically about the key elements of writing and of the nonprofit’s mission.

Eportfolios

Use of eportfolios for business communication students in an advanced two-quarter capstone brought an unexpected networking opportunity, in addition to their conventional use as a showcase for student writing and research. This article discusses how students developed their eportfolios. Then, through use of a course website providing an optional link to those eportfolios, students were able to use portfolios to jumpstart conversations among other students and business communication alumni. The instructor has required both print and digital portfolios since 2006 and explains why both types of portfolios are useful, especially to enhance professional networking.

Tackling the Sustainability Dilemma: A Holistic Approach to Preparing Students for the Professional Organization

Increased knowledge of business sustainability as the basis of a holistic approach to value creation has inspired many managers to integrate ecological and social stewardship into their strategic business innovation plans. However, the coverage of sustainability issues in business courses remains small at many universities. This article illustrates how business communication students can become cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally involved in the analysis and evaluation of the complex sustainability paradigm via an assignment focusing on sustainability. The approach integrates several levels of learning, stretching students’ cognitive skills and enhancing the emotional competencies and behavioral skills needed to enter high-level business jobs.

Students’ Perceived Preference for Visual and Auditory Assessment With E-Handwritten Feedback

Undergraduate business communication students were surveyed to determine their perceived most effective method of assessment on writing assignments. The results indicated students’ preference for a process that incorporates visual, auditory, and e-handwritten presentation via a tablet PC. Students also identified this assessment process would improve their writing by helping them understand the types of errors they were making and why these errors were incorrect. Students also indicated this type of assessment would help build a relationship with the instructor and help them be successful in the class.

Facebook: Challenges and Opportunities for Business Communication Students

Facebook: Challenges and Opportunities for Business Communication Students

Do Business Communication Technology Tools Meet Learner Needs?

While institutions of higher education are enthusiastically embracing technology-mediated learning (TML), little research has been conducted to identify factors that influence student use of TML tools or determine whether use of them increases student learning. This study of business communication students at two universities found that (1) students tend to be sensing, visual, active, and sequential learners; (2) perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of TML tools are positively associated with perceived learning success; (3) learning styles do influence the students' usage behavior of certain TML tools; and (4) students' sensing/intuitive learning style is related to their perceived learning success.

Integrating Writing Skills and Ethics Training in Business Communication Pedagogy: A Résumé Case Study Exemplar

An integrated approach to teaching résumé construction in the business communication classroom focuses on simultaneously (a) emphasizing writing-related proficiencies and (b) encouraging ethical and moral orientations to this task. This article provides a résumé construction exemplar that operationalizes these two pedagogical goals. The techniques and exercises used in the exemplar are presented as a way to make ethics education accessible for both business communication instructors and students.

Business Communication Students Appraisal Of Selected Communication Competencies

The purpose of this study was to determine business communication students perception of selected business communication competencies. Students enrolled in business communication classes at Texas A&M University-Commerce from the summer of 2006 until the spring 2007 were survey. Students were asked to evaluate each of the listed 44 competencies. The two competencies that ranked the highest were Spells Correctly, and Understands the Importance of Business Relationships.

Business Communication Students Learn To Hear A Bad Speech Habit

Students were trained to perceive filled pauses (FP) as a bad speech habit. In a series of classroom sensitivity training activities, followed by students being rewarded to observe twenty minutes of live television from the public media, no differences between male and female Business Communication students was revealed. The practice of teaching students to regard FP as a “bad” speech habit was supported by the literature. Male and female students learned to recognize FP they heard professional and non-professional speakers make.

Managing rapport in lingua franca sales negotiations: A comparison of professional and aspiring negotiators

This article presents selective findings from a study that investigated how facework is used to achieve interpersonal goals in intercultural sales negotiations. The article reports on linguistic analyses of what Spencer-Oatey has termed “rapport management” which, in a negotiation context, is aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at building a working relationship [Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000a). Analysing rapport management in intercultural encounters: a linguistic framework. In D. Lynch & A. Pilbeam (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sietar Europa congress 1998: Heritage and progress (pp. 429–437). Bath: LTS Training and Consulting; Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000b). Rapport management: a framework for analysis. In H. Spencer-Oatey (Ed.), Culturally Speaking: managing rapport through talk across cultures (pp. 11–46). New York: Cassel Academic]. The analyses were comparative, centring around two corpora of quasi-natural negotiation discourse, produced by professional negotiators and aspiring negotiators (students of international business communication). The negotiators were all lingua franca speakers of English for specific business purposes. I investigated the occurrence of interactional (safe) talk, and of personal pronouns, which I regarded as indicators of the negotiator relationship. Overall, the findings indicate that whereas professionals frequently initiate safe talk throughout their negotiations, aspiring negotiators engage in safe talk sporadically, and only in the initial and final stages of a negotiation. Furthermore, the findings suggest that by underusing institutional ‘we’ and formulating potentially face-threatening discourse from a subjective perspective, aspiring negotiators seem unsuccessful at maintaining professional distance, and thus, at creating a professional identity within the negotiation event.

Combining ESOL and Business Communication Students in the U.S. Classroom

Combining ESOL and Business Communication Students in the U.S. Classroom

Perception is the Thing: Presenting Variant Worldviews in the International Business Communication Classroom

Two assumptions underlie the teaching of international business communication. First, perceptual variations exist within a country, and they sharpen even more across countries and cultures. International business communication students need to be aware of such differences on substantive issues. Second, critical pedagogy maintains that making students think and revisit their worldviews through an encounter with discomforting or decentering ideas is a valuable teaching and learn ing tool. Exposing students in my class to controversial propositions caused them to demonstrate a gamut of reactions from agreement and disagreement to anger, pity, disbelief, and a sense of discovery.

Correlating Students' Personality Types with Their Rating of Topics Covered in Business Communication Classes

For years, students, faculty, and, most important, employers, have recognized the need for improved communication skills. The university business communication curriculum is filled with topics that lead to improving communication skills. A per centage of students find some topics to be boring, unimportant, intimidating, and/or nonessential. However, other students find these same topics to be interest ing, significant, challenging, and vital. For example, college students fear giving oral presentations more than writing papers. Could the preference or the abhor rence of various business communication topics be related to personality type? To answer this question, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), combined with a Likert Scale, was used to study the relationship between business communication students' personality types and their preferred topics in business communication.

Intuitive ethics: Understanding and critiquing the role of intuition in ethical decisions

This article examines the role intuition plays in forming ethical decisions. First, the article reviews examples of intuitive ethics in professional communication research. Second, the article suggests that intuition is the naturalization of dominant cultural values and beliefs. Third, the article considers naturalized values within institutions and organizations, demonstrating how naturalized values can lead to unquestioned and oppressive institutional practices. Ethical inquiry, according to this view, investigates and denaturalizes those assumptions that are carried forth by intuition. Fourth, the article offers a pedagogical example of this theory, demonstrating how a group of business communication students investigated the intuitive practices of a non‐profit organization. The article concludes by suggesting the value that a “critique of intuition” may have for the teaching, study, and practice of professional ethics.

Enhancing Intercultural Communication among Business Communication Students

The issue of international students in the tertiary classroom is of broad significance across disciplines as evidenced, for example, in the work of Ladyshewsky (1996), Pe‐Pua (1995), and Romm, Paterson and Hill (1994). The need for university instructors to employ teaching strategies that are student‐centred and interactive has also been gaining attention in recent literature, for example, in the work of Biggs (1992, 1997), Chalmers and Volet (1997), and McKay and Kember (1997). This article presents some practical teaching strategies employed in an undergraduate Business Communication class that, in our experience, provide a context that encourages student interaction and participation to the mutual benefit of both local and international students. Data collection procedures included an open‐ended questionnaire, observation of students, informal and unstructured discussions and reflective journals of students and tutor. The conclusions drawn here suggest that these strategies not only enhance classroom participation by international students but also allow international and local students to interact more productively with each other.

Predicting Computer Anxiety in the Business Communication Classroom

The purpose of this study is primarily twofold: (1) to determine what factors, if any, are predictors of computer anxiety among business communication students and (2) to explore alternative teaching strategies suggested by the literature to effectively reduce computer anxiety in business communication classrooms. Participants consisted of 431 students enrolled in business communication courses during the 1995 spring semester at three state-supported universities in three southern states. Statistical analyses revealed that gender, keyboarding skill, age, socioeconomic status, and self-directedness are adequate predictors of computer anxiety in business communication students. Teaching strategies for reducing or eliminating computer anxiety in business communication classrooms are discussed.

Student Attitudes Toward Written, Oral, and E-mail Communication

Business communication students at two midwestern universities were polled on the first day of the 1995 spring term to determine their (1) written com naunication assignment likes Idislikes; (2) oral communication assignment likes/dislikes; (3) experience using e-mail; and (4) attitudes toward written, oral, and e-mail communication. The 144 respondents viewed oral communi cation less positively than they did either written or e-mail communication. Significant differences were found among overall ratings for oral, written, and e-mail communication. In addition, students with prior e-mail experience gave significantly higher ratings to it and to oral communication than did those who had not used e-mail.

Addressing Issues of Cultural Diversity in Business Communication

The global business community makes understanding cultural differences importantfor business communication students, ourfuture managers and negotiators. But discussions of cultural diversity or multiculturalism should not be limited to cultures of a foreign country only. They should also include an understanding of the diversity within one culture. This article discusses several terms used to denote cultural diversity and their implications and then provides assignments that give students experience in researching various aspects of "culture," in exploring issues of cultural diversity, and in producing appropriate documents.

Introducing Business Communication Students to Automated Speech Recognition

Automated speech recognition (ASR) is rapidly demonstrating its ability to contribute to improved production cost effectiveness in a wide range of business settings. When ASR is applied to word-processing applications, however, highly skilled keyboard users often find the transition to using ASR dictation clumsy and inefficient. Results of this study suggest that 20% of the undergraduate business communication students tested could ASR dictate straight copy faster after a 1 1/2-hour tutorial than they could keyboard after years of keyboarding experience. Implications for teaching business communication are discussed.

Student Perceptions of the Value of a Prewriting Problem-Solving Plan

This study attempted to determine student perceptions of the value of using a prewriting problem-solving plan and its relationship to their success in writ ing. The business communication students in the study felt that the plan was beneficial, particularly for persuasive messages, individual writing, and small- group writing. In addition, participants seemed to feel that the plan was worth preparing even when not required as part of the assignment. The results sug gest that the problern-solving plan can be a useful tool for complicated assign ments and group work but that it should probably be optional for simple assignments.