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In this study, the researchers explore required public speaking tutoring in communication centers and the effect it has on students' grades, speaking apprehension, and expected speech outcomes. Test and control group participants completed the Situational Communication Apprehension Measure after the completion of their persuasive speeches in a traditional public speaking course. Recorded speeches were also analyzed by the researchers. No significant difference was identified between the test and control group related to either communication apprehension or speech delivery. Students in the test group (those students attending required tutoring) did, however, have statistically higher scores related to organizational outcomes and final speech grades. Future directions of research and limitations are discussed.

This exploratory study examines the role virtual reality can play in student speech practice for oral communication courses. The study focuses on situational communication apprehension of the virtual reality practice session in relation to students who practice face-to-face and the final grade of the subsequent speech. Test and control groups practiced their informative speech presentations for either another student or in a virtual environment. Both the test and control groups filled out the Situational Communication Apprehension Measure after their session. Student grades were also collected for participants in each group after their in-class speech presentation. The test group (virtual reality practice) was found to have significantly higher situational communication apprehension than the control group. No significant difference was found for final speech grades between the test and control groups. The significance and implications of these finding are discussed as they related to public-speaking education.

We assessed the effectiveness of an integrated engineering public-speaking class relative to a traditionally taught public-speaking class. The integrated class was designed to meet the growing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics communication needs and the fundamental Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and the National Communication Association student outcomes related to public speaking. Working within the Communication in the Disciplines theoretical framework, this study employed a quasi-experiment with both a test (engineering specific communication class) and control (traditional communication class) group; finding a significant increase with respect to attitude toward communication for students before and after the engineering specific class compared with the traditional class. Along with attitude toward communication, efficacy toward communication and being enrolled in the engineering specific class related positively to a sense of engineering identity for students at the end of class. For students enrolled in the engineering specific class, their sense of engineering identity was mediated through an improved attitude toward communication.

Building a healthy campus climate, one that is respectful, inclusive, and supportive of intellectual growth for the entire university community, has always been a challenge faced by educators. From influencing students' thought to facilitating individual cases of bullying and harassment, the mainstream media is awash with stories about the role social media may play in fostering a hostile environment on college campuses. Work examining the challenges various social media pose to college campuses is underway: it is still young, though, and largely outside of the communication discipline. Even so, it is important for communication scholars to stake a claim in this space. Social media, as a technology, is here to stay and has clear implications for communication in all contexts--particularly considering that 70% of adults use it daily, despite the fact that most of these same individuals hold negative views regarding its effects (McKinnon & Dougherty, 2019). There are many challenges both in how social media is studied and how students are taught to engage with it. This article explores: (1) dangers posed within campus communities to which social media may contribute (i.e., cyberbullying, racial hostility, and stalking behaviors); (2) dangers posed by the evolving threat of coordinated disinformation; (3) challenges scholars face moving forward in how these dangers are researched and understood; and (4) necessary pedagogical changes needed to help students engage with the world through social media.

This article reports findings of two studies exploring instructor feedback orientations. Study one examined relationships between Big Five personality traits and student feedback orientations. Study two examined relationships between academic traits and feedback orientations. Canonical correlations identified two significant functions for each study. Study one found that agreeable, conscientious, and open individuals were more likely and neurotic individuals less likely to view instructor feedback as useful and likely to be retained while being less sensitive to it. Study one also found conscientious and neurotic individuals more likely and extraverted individuals less likely to desire confidential feedback. Study two found entitled and grade-oriented individuals to be more sensitive to feedback and view feedback as less likely to be retained. Study two also found learning-oriented individuals less likely to desire confidential feedback and grade-oriented individuals more likely to do so.

This study tests a model of students' reflective thinking, perceived ideological bias among university faculty, and reactions to ideological bias in the college classroom. Participants were 187 undergraduates who completed the Reasoning About Current Issues Questionnaire and the Political Bias in the Classroom Survey. Structural equation modeling revealed that participants in lower ranges of reflective thinking had increased perceptions of ideological bias among university faculty. The model suggests that these perceptions then lead students to adversely react to the presence of such ideological bias in the classroom. Theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications are discussed. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

In this content analysis, we explored how students address instructor ideology in the university classroom through the social media platform Twitter. We employed Boolean search operators through Salesforce Marketing Cloud Radian6 software to gather tweets and identified English language tweets by how students referenced their instructor's ideology. Tweets originated in the United States (U.S.), the United Kingdom (U.K.), and Australia. Using qualitative coding procedures, we identified seven themes in the data that described how students wrote about instructor ideology on Twitter: "venting regarding instructor's ideology," "sharing classroom anecdote," "affirming instructor's beliefs/actions," "expressing grade concern," "articulating an opposing view," "reporting conflict," and "indicating confusion." Across categories, Twitter was employed primarily as a back-stage means to communicate expressive dissent regarding instructor ideology and also to demonstrate students' identity. We identified differences between categories based on the perceived ideology of the students' instructors as well as differences in the number of tweets per capita originating in each country.

A common perception exists in the media that university instructors are a liberal elite who use their positions to instill a biased perspective in their students. Exploring student attitudes in the United States and Australia, the present study examined how students' academic beliefs are related to their inferences of instructor ideological bias and the degree to which they identify as reacting to these inferences in the college classroom. Results of regression analysis using previously validated survey instruments revealed that students' academic entitlement and grade orientation (GO) predicted perceptions of instructor bias. In addition, students' GO predicted students' reactions to such inferred bias. Institutional differences, pedagogical implications, and areas for future research are discussed.

Course: Civil discourse, argumentation, debate, persuasion, political communication. Objectives: This unit activity will help students build an understanding of civil discourse and its function in society. Students will: (1) increase their capacity to examine arguments critically, (2) enhance their own ability to self-reflect critically, and (3) improve their ability to engage in civil discourse. This activity will employ inquiry-based learning strategies to apply students' understanding of civil discourse in a dialogue with the broader campus community by partnering with campus media to develop and publish original opinion-editorial pieces. A list of references and suggested readings is provided.

Communication theory courses are among the most difficult courses in communication curricula. The breadth and complexity of the discipline requires instructors to confront material with which they may have limited familiarity. Such courses are crucial, however, because learning communication theories cultivates critical thinking, helps students to understand the breadth and depth of the field, empowers individuals in their personal and professional lives, and fosters self-awareness (West & Turner, 2014). Central to any communication theory course should be the teaching of the epistemological, ontological, and axiological features of various theoretical approaches. Differing visual display options exist that may aid student learning. Venn diagrams, in particular, are useful for teaching and visualizing conjunction and disjunction, or, alternately, intersection and union (Waddell & Quinn, 2011). The activity proposed in this article engages students in an active, iterative process that asks them to account for their understanding of metatheory, exploring the complex field of communication studies and their place in it.

Research indicates that Americans believe instructor political bias to be a serious problem in the college classroom, as many professors are considered a liberal elite. In light of scholarship suggesting that characteristics students bring with them to the classroom may influence their perception of instructor communication behaviors, the present study explores the role student aggressive communication traits play in students' dispositional inferences of their instructors holding an ideological bias and how students react to that inference in the college classroom. Results reveal that students' verbal aggressiveness predicts their perceptions of instructor ideological bias, whereas students' argumentativeness predicts their reactions to instructor ideological bias. Pedagogical implications and areas for future research are discussed.

This study explored the relationship between identity development, as gauged by Marcia's identity development construct, and student perception of instructor political bias. Regression analysis was employed to compare participant responses on the Ego Identity Process Questionnaire, a measure of Marcia's construct, with the Political Bias in the Classroom Survey, a measure gauging perceptions of and reactions to instructor political bias. The EIPQ's commitment scale was found to be a significant positive indicator for the PBCS's perception scale, suggesting that students who are strongly committed to their identity are more likely to perceive an instructor as having a political bias. Recommendations are made for how to address perceptions of political bias. (Contains 3 tables.)

The role ideology plays in the university classroom has been debated since the publication of Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" (1951). The "Chronicle of Higher Education's" Special Report (2004) found that more than half of United States citizens polled felt that U.S. colleges and universities improperly introduce a liberal political bias into the classroom. A number of states have proposed legislation aimed at increasing ideological diversity in state-supported institutions of higher education. The American Association of University Professors reported nearly two dozen such bills since 2004; and while none have passed, they illustrate the concern many have over the issue of politics-centered ideological bias in higher education. Student populations have also felt the effect of this issue. If educators are to properly adapt their practices, research is necessary to fully understand the challenge posed by the perception of political bias on campus and how these perceptions may affect students. Existing research has focused on the effects of the perception of political bias without first exploring what is being perceived and by whom. Understanding student perceptions is crucial in allowing educators to create a learning environment that is both challenging and inviting for all students. This study explores how students experience the phenomenon of political bias in the college classroom and also demographic differences in how the phenomenon is experienced among the population of one midsized, public, land-grant university in the Southeastern United States. (Contains 4 tables.)

The 2015–2017 Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)'s coordinated information operation is one of the earliest and most studied of the social media age. A set of 38 city-specific inauthentic "newsfeeds" made up a large, underanalyzed part of its English-language output. We label 1,000 tweets from the IRA newsfeeds and a matched set of real news sources from those same cities with up to five labels indicating the tweet represents a world in unrest and, if so, of what sort. We train a natural language classifier to extend these labels to 268 k IRA tweets and 1.13 million control tweets. Compared to the controls, tweets from the IRA were 34% more likely to represent unrest, especially crime and identity danger, and this difference jumped to about twice as likely in the months immediately before the election. Agenda setting by media is well-known and well-studied, but this weaponization by a coordinated information operation is novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do those who complain about liberal bias in higher education have any actionable point at all? Critics of the politicization of higher education claim that political partisanship in the classroom is pervasive and that it affects student learning. Although the existence of such partisanship has not been empirically proven, allegations of bias are perennial and have made headlines several times over the past year. Claims of liberal bias in higher education were even incorporated into the party platform ratified at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa. Such claims of bias are based largely on anecdotal evidence. Research has failed to show a link between faculty ideology and any specific student outcomes.

This exploratory study examines the role virtual reality can play in student speech practice for oral communication courses. The study focuses on situational communication apprehension of the virtual reality practice session in relation to students who practice face-to-face and the final grade of the subsequent speech. Test and control groups practiced their informative speech presentations for either another student or in a virtual environment. Both the test and control groups filled out the Situational Communication Apprehension Measure after their session. Student grades were also collected for participants in each group after their in-class speech presentation. The test group (virtual reality practice) was found to have significantly higher situational communication apprehension than the control group. No significant difference was found for final speech grades between the test and control groups. The significance and implications of these finding are discussed as they related to public-speaking education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common perception exists in the media that university instructors are a liberal elite who use their positions to instill a biased perspective in their students. Exploring student attitudes in the United States and Australia, the present study examined how students’ academic beliefs are related to their inferences of instructor ideological bias and the degree to which they identify as reacting to these inferences in the college classroom. Results of regression analysis using previously validated survey instruments revealed that students’ academic entitlement and grade orientation (GO) predicted perceptions of instructor bias. In addition, students’ GO predicted students’ reactions to such inferred bias. Institutional differences, pedagogical implications, and areas for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]