Amazing race: Finding and correctly citing credible sources

Courses: Public Speaking and courses familiarizing students with finding/citing sources.

Objective(s): After completing the activity, students will understand how to find and cite information in print, online, and personal communication formats.     

Gunn and Heid: Teaching small group development with reality TV

Courses: Small group communication or any courses with units on group/team work.

Objective: In this single-class activity, students will use reality TV to identify Tuckman’s five phases of group development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Students analyze how phases of group development manifest through group interaction and ultimately contribute to group performance.     

To watch or to read? The respective influence of televised political debates and media debate coverage on citizen learning

Courses: Media and Politics, Political Communication, Political Rhetoric, Media Effects.

Objective: By taking part in a classroom activity, students will explore how cognitive frames and media frames play a role in learning from political debates.     

Outside the box: Unpacking the group process model

Courses: Small group communication and advanced group dynamics.

Objectives: After completing this single-class activity, students should be able to: (1) evaluate successful communication characteristics that enhance the group's ability to achieve specific goals; (2) identify small group communication barriers; and (3) develop strategies to overcome small group communication challenges to achieve shared goals.     

Appreciative coaching for student academic and professional development

Negative self-talk and appraisals of self-efficacy can damage students’ abilities to do well in college and lead to self-fulfilling prophesies where students fail to meet their academic and professional potentials. This multi-class activity uses appreciative coaching to help students utilize a positive mindset and achieve academic and professional goals. This coaching model, based on the tenets of appreciative inquiry, begins with a topic selection and then progresses through four stages: discover, dream, design, and destiny. The coaching process can assist instructors and students in focusing on the positive aspects of student performance, increase self-confidence, motivation to do well in courses, and proactive career planning, and create a positive learning environment.

Courses: Business Communication, Freshman Seminar, Professional Development, Senior Capstone

Objectives: The objectives of this activity are for students to (1) practice positive reframing, (2) appraise and identify their strengths and skills, (3) select goals, (4) create action plans to reach goals, and (5) be empowered and take responsibility for their academic and professional progress.     

Activating metaphors: Exploring the embodied nature of metaphorical mapping in political discourse

Courses: Persuasion, Rhetoric, Communication Theory, Metaphor Theory, Multimodal Communication.

Objectives: This activity allows students to explore the embodied nature of metaphor and its interpretative significance by using gesture and physical movement. Students also understand how, in metaphor, abstract entities are conceptualized in terms of something more concrete.     

Using initial,derived, and terminal credibility to help students understand how they are perceived by others

Courses: Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Introduction to Communication Studies, Business Communication

Objectives: The goal for this activity is not only to provide students with an understanding of their initial, derived, and terminal credibility when relating a personal, edifying story but also to understand how they are initially perceived by their fellow students.     

Impromptu speech gamification for ESL/EFL students

Courses: Any introductory undergraduate public-speaking course, in particular in ESL/EFL contexts

Objectives: This single-class activity is intended to (1) build students’ ability to communicate orally “off the cuff;” (2) foster students’ understanding of the major organizational formats used in organizing speeches; and (3) increase students’ awareness of their nonverbal communication.     

Enhancing negotiation skills using foreign service simulations

Courses: Conflict communication, negotiation, small group

Objective: This activity will enhance students’ awareness and critique of their own negotiation behaviors.     

Stunning statistics for persuasive speaking

Courses: Advanced Public Speaking, Argumentation Theory

Objectives: This activity aims to enhance students’ ability to make statistics compelling and persuasive.     

Optimizing how we teach research methods

Courses: Research Methods (undergraduate or graduate level)

Objective: The aim of this exercise is to optimize the ability for students to integrate an understanding of various methodologies across research paradigms within a 15-week semester, including a review of procedural steps and experiential learning activities to practice each method, a criteria for understanding how to consume primary research, and a recognition of how the methodological techniques can be used in the classroom and in professional settings.     

Let's go toy shopping! Exploring early anticipatory socialization for careers and gender expectations

Courses: Gender Communication, Communication and Careers, Organizational Communication.

Objectives: At the end of the activity, students will be able: to identify and analyze the socialization of gender expectations, to recognize and describe how early this type of socialization can occur, to critique the early socialization of gendered career expectations through the analysis of toy-store shopping, and to propose new ways to approach this experience.     

Communicating grief and loss online: Evaluating person-centered support messages

This single-class activity expands current literature on person-centered messages by providing attention to message quality in mediated contexts. Students begin the activity by reviewing a hypothetical scenario in which a friend has posted about a family death loss on social media. After reviewing this scenario, students then create sample supportive messages that they could share with a grieving friend. Students are also asked to apply their knowledge about person-centered messages to evaluate other fictional support messages. Students who participate in this activity will be provided with additional skills for comforting grieving friends effectively.

Courses: This single-class activity can be implemented in several courses, including interpersonal communication, the dark side of interpersonal communication, and family communication.

Objectives: Students who complete this activity should be able to: (1) outline what qualities comprise a person-centered support message; (2) discuss why highly person-centered messages are effective in providing support to others; and (3) evaluate death loss support messages across levels of person centeredness.     

Irreplaceable: Exploring identity and relationships through the discussion of invaluable personal objects

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Family Communication, Relational Communication.

Objectives: Students reflect on and discuss how personal objects are connected to their identity and relationships with others. This activity illustrates the ways course concepts such as relational metaphors, stories, rules, rituals, and other patterns of communication influence the meaning we ascribe to an object and how that object helps to construct beliefs about ourselves and important others. This exercise can also help students connect with each other in a supportive environment.     

Teaching audience adaptation using connected presentations and teamwork

Courses: Introduction to Communication, Public Speaking, Persuasion, Business Communication.

Objective: This activity increases students’ understanding of audience adaptation and improves their ability to adapt presentations to specific audiences.     

Rube Goldberg salad system: Teaching systems theory in communication

Courses: Undergraduate Organizational Communication, Communication Theory, and Small Group Communication courses.

Objectives: This single-class activity aims to engage students actively in explaining and applying systems components, processes, and properties.     

COMS Day as a communication senior capstone team project

Courses: Senior Seminar

Objectives: (1) To provide graduating students a semester-long capstone experience where they can apply communication theories/skills in a professional context. (2) To create a capstone project that contributes to programmatic assessment.     

Critical communication pedagogy as a response to the petroleum industry’s neoliberal communicative practices

Courses: Professional Speaking, Business and Professional Communication, Environmental Communication, or any course covering topics related to neoliberalism and the environment.

Objectives: In this single-class activity, students will first examine the possible environmental effects of fracking near the Bakken Oil Formation in North Dakota. Second, students will evaluate how the petroleum industry obscures the effects of fracking through the use of corporate ventriloquism. Third, students will respond to the petroleum industry’s power by utilizing critical communication pedagogy.     

“Listening is an act of love”: Learning listening through StoryCorps

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Basic Survey Course, Group Communication, Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication, Listening, Family Communication, Interviewing, Business and Professional Communication.

Objectives: After completing this single class activity, students will be able to: (a) define listening; (b) identify listening as a top skill employers desire; (c) explain how listening may be perceived as an act of love; and (d) critically assess ways in which their listening behaviors may be improved.     

Social media listening and Title IX training crisis: Implications for discourse of renewal

Courses: Undergraduate or graduate organizational/crisis communication or public relations courses

Objective: The goal for this single class activity is for students to apply discourse of renewal to an organizational crisis fueled through social media.