Research in communication education: Directional needs

Future Research in communication education should concentrate on (1) identifying and applying the communication functions necessary for one to participate successfully in interpersonal contexts, (2) examining communication in different learning environments, and (3) improving teacher competencies     

Factors influencing the accuracy of verbal reports of conversational behavior

Subjects interacted with a confederate in video taped dyads and were later asked to: (a) recognize whether certain specific communication behaviors had occurred during the conversation and (b) estimate the frequency with which certain behaviors occurred in it. Subjects consulted memory for conversational behavior more than they relied upon implicit theories to provide verbal reports. Subjects were better at recognizing the gist of a remark than its verbatim content. As Ericsson and Simon's theory predicts, subjects were better able to recognize verbal than nonverbal behaviors (when elicited in verbal form) and were better able to recognize specific behaviors than to generate frequency counts. Subjects were better at recognizing their own than other's behavior.     

You Can Lead Students to Sources,but Can You Make Them Think?

ABSTRACT

In developing and teaching a new first-year psychology course that integrates information literacy skills, a librarian and a psychologist learned the importance of teaching critical thinking skills explicitly, rather than implicitly. Students learned how to use the library resources and learned concepts in psychology, but until critical thinking was taught explicitly, students did not understand the value of what they were learning. In this article, implicit versus explicit learning is defined, and psychological principles are applied to demonstrate how critical thinking can be used to teach library and information skills.     

Radio and Television

Ralph M. Jennings and Pamela Richard's How to Protect Your Rights in Television and Radio (Office of Communication, United Church of Christ, 289 Park Ave. South, New York 10010—price not given, paper)

Ted C. Smythe and George A. Mastroianni's Issues in Broadcasting: Radio, Television, and Cable (Palo Alto, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1975—price not given but around $7.00 we learned from editors, paper)

James D. Secrest's Electronic Industries Association: The First 50 Years (Washington: EIA, 1974—price not given)

Ann M. Velia's KOB: Goddard's Magic Mast, Fifty Years of Pioneer Broadcasting (Las Cruces, N.M.: New Mexico State University Press, 1972—$6.95)

Harold Niven's Broadcast Education 1975: 14th Report (Washington: National Association of Broadcasters, 1975—$5.00, paper)

Broadcast Programming and Production (bimonthly/$7.00 per year, with first three issues free on request)

Joel L. Efrein, Cablecasting Production Handbook (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1975—$12.95)

NCTA is Over the Cable (Washington: National Cable Television Association, 1975—free on request, paper)

Community Antenna Television Journal (4209 N.W. 23rd St., Suite 106, Oklahoma City 73107)     

Technology and culture

INTERFACE CULTURE: HOW NEW TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMS THE WAY WE CREATE AND COMMUNICATE by Steven Johnson (San Francisco: HarperEdge, 1997‐$24.00, ISBN 0–06–251433–4, 272 pp., index)

IMMERSED IN TECHNOLOGY: ART AND VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS edited by Mary Anne Moser with Douglas MacLeod (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997‐$22.50, ISBN 0–262–63183–0, 368 pp., technical glossary, 64 illustrations, 18 in color)

INTERNET DREAMS: ARCHETYPES, MYTHS, AND METAPHORS by Mark Stefik (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996‐$30.00/$15.00, ISBN 0–262–19373–6 hard, 0–262–69202–3 paper, 412 pp., further reading, sources, contributors, index)

POSTMORTEM FOR A POSTMODERNIST by Arthur Asa Berger (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press/Sage, 1997‐$36.00/17.95, ISBN 0–8039–8910–2 hard, 0–8039–8911–0 paper, 184 pp., cartoons, bibliography, index)

THE NETWORKED SOCIETY: HOW TECHNOLOGIES ARE TRANSFORMING MARKETS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS: A Report of The Fifth Annual Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology, Aspen, Colorado, August 15–18, 1996 by David Bollier and Charles M. Firestone (Washington: The Aspen Institute, 1997‐$10.00, ISBN 0–89843–213–8, 43 pp., endnotes, appendix)

THE McDONALDIZATION OF SOCIETY: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL LIFE by George Ritzer (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1997 [2nd ed.]—$17.95, paper, ISBN 0–8039–9076–6 hard, 0–8039–9077–4 paper, 265 pp., bibliography, index)

PARCHMENT, PRINTING, AND HYPERMEDIA: COMMUNICATION IN WORLD ORDER TRANSFORMATION by Ronald J. Deibert (New York: Columbia University Press “New Directions in World Politics,”; 1997‐$49.50/$ 17.50, paper, ISBN 0–231–10712–9 hard, 0–231–10713–7 paper, 329 pp., illustrations, charts, index)

BEYOND THE HORIZON: COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE by Stephen Lax (Luton, England: John Libbey Media/University of Luton Press, 1997—price not given, ISBN 1–860–20514–3 paper, 133 pp., technical illustrations, index)

CYBERSCHOOLS: AN EDUCATION RENAISSANCE by Glenn R. Jones (Englewood, MA: Jones Digital Century, Inc., 1997—$19.95, ISBN 1–885400–60–8, 180 pp., appendices, index)

THE ORYX GUIDE TO DISTANCE LEARNING: A COMPREHENSIVE LISTING OF ELECTRONIC AND OTHER MEDIA‐ASSISTED COURSES by William E. Burgess (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1997 [2nd ed.]—$98.50, ISBN 1–57356–073–1, 497 pp.)

THE U.S. ALL MEDIA E‐MAIL DIRECTORY: COMMUNICATE VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL WITH MAGAZINE, NEWSPAPER, TV AND RADIO MEDIA AND CONTACTS NATIONWIDE by Paul J. Krupin (Kennewick, WA: Direct Contact Publishing, 1997‐$49.00, ISBN 1–885035–03–9, 229 pp., index)

THE RISE, DECLINE, AND RENEWAL OF SILICON VALLEY'S HIGH TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY by Dan M. Khanna (New York: Garland “Garland Studies on Industrial Productivity,”; 1997‐$52.00, ISBN 0–8153–2724–2, 182 pp., tables, notes, bibliography, index)

THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF KNOWLEDGE‐BASED RESOURCES IN THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY by Russell W. Wright (New York: Garland “Garland Studies on Industrial Productivity,”; 1997‐$37.00, ISBN 0–8153–2785–4, 108 pp., tables, diagrams, bibliography, index)

MOTHS TO THE FLAME: THE SEDUCTIONS OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY by Gregory J. E. Rawlins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997‐$10.00, paper, ISBN 0–262–68097–1, 184 pp., subject index)

TIME DETECTIVES: HOW SCIENTISTS USE MODERN TECHNOLOGY TO UNRAVEL THE SECRETS OF THE PAST by Brian Fagan (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1995‐$14.00, paper, ISBN 0–684–81828–0, 288 pp., index)

COMMUNICATION, TECHNOLOGY, AND POLITICS IN THE INFORMATION AGE by Gerald Sussman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997‐$56.00/$27.95, ISBN 0–8039–5139–6 hard, 0–8039–5140‐x paper, 317 pp., tables, references, subject index)

THE NEW COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES by Michael M.A. Mirabito with contributions by Barbara Morgenstern (Boston, MA: Focal Press, 1997 [3rd ed.]—$32.95, paper, ISBN 0–240–80258–6, 256 pp., index)

COORDINATING THE INTERNET edited by Brian Kahin and James H. Keller (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press “Publication of the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project,”; 1997‐$25.00, paper, ISBN 0–262–11230–2 hard, 0–262–61136–8 paper, 491 pp., glossary of acronyms, tables, charts, notes, index)

THE INTERNET & WORLD WIDE WEB: THE ROUGH GUIDE by Angus J. Kennedy (London and New York: Rough Guides [distribution by Penguin Group], 1997‐$8.95, paper, ISBN 1–85828–288–8, 432 pp., illustrations, index)

TELECOMMUTING: MODELING THE EMPLOYER'S AND THE EMPLOYEE'S DECISION‐MAKING PROCESS by Adriana Bernardino (New York: Garland “Garland Studies on Industrial Productivity,”; 1996‐$46.00, ISBN 0–8153–2723–4, 169 pp., tables, charts, references survey instruments, index)     

Institutional Support for Handheld Computing: Clinical and Educational Lessons Learned

Handheld computing devices, or personal digital assistants (PDAs), are used often in the health care setting. They provide a convenient way to store and carry either personal or reference information and can be used to accomplish other tasks associated with patient care. This article reports clinical and educational lessons learned from a longitudinal institutional initiative designed to provide medical students with PDAs to facilitate patient care and assist with clinical learning.     

Deceit,distrust and the social milieu: Application of deception research in a troubled world

This essay draws together deception detection research and explains its relevance to decision‐making in today's social milieu. Major areas of research focus are described including the differential effects of observational conditions, the correspondence between perceived and actual signs of deception, training observers to detect deception, and communicating with suspected deceivers. Communicator relationships, observer characteristics and observer professions are considered in relation to accurate deception detection, as is overall confidence in the ability to detect deception. Implications are drawn for legal, organizational, sales, medical and relational settings.     

Narrative approaches to raising consciousness about sexual harassment: From research to pedagogy and back again

In this paper we discuss narrative from both a theoretical and pedagogical perspective. After briefly reviewing the theoretical possibilities of narrative for addressing the problem of sexual harassment, we discuss how feminist pedagogy both draws from and advances our notions of narrative. We then focus on three forms of narrative as they are used to raise consciousness concerning the issue of sexual harassment. The three specific approaches include: (1) the personal narrative, (2) the case study, and (3) the interactive narrative or collective story. After providing illustrations of these three approaches as they are used in academic settings, we explore the possibility that utilizing these approaches might provide heuristic tools for the classroom instructor, useful strategies for the workplace practitioner, and insight into the theoretical exploration of sexual harassment.     

Is Inclusion an Illusion? An Examination of National and State Trends Toward the Education of Students with Learning Disabilities in General Education Classrooms

The inclusion of students with learning disabilities (LD) remains one of the more controversial issues in special education. Although research evidence seems to reveal that students with LD should spend most of the school day in the general education classroom, little data are available regarding the extent to which states are moving toward educating these students in less restrictive settings. This investigation was conducted to examine national and state data related to changes that occurred during the 1990s in educating students with LD in less restrictive settings. The results revealed that little change occurred across the United States as a whole, and that only 15 states moved toward educating students with LD in less restrictive settings during this time. The findings of this investigation further revealed that much of the apparent movement toward educating students with LD in general education classrooms is largely an illusion, explained primarily by the increasing identification rate for students with LD. The implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.