Traditionally, informative speeches are relegated to be passive. The classic scope of informative speeches does not consider "live" or "lived" rhetoric. After teaching public speaking for most of my career, there are times when one needs to reinvigorate assignments. This assignment challenges how we utilize memory and place to…

This activity aims to assist students with persuasive tactics for argumentative speeches. The activity involves students creating an argumentative speech to defend a hot-take assertion chosen from a list provided by the instructor. In small groups, students will craft an argument supporting their hot-take assertion and present it to the class.…

This article presents a curated collection of nine teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 89th conference in the "oil capital of the world," Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as online, in October 2024. Many of the MFA presenters demonstrated how AI can be used, integrated, and analyzed in business…

In the context of scholarly and scientific discourse, students often have to deal with graphic-visual modes of communication, which requires their ability to comprehend and utilize inscriptions, that is, scientific visual representations, to convey information effectively--what we call graphical literacy. Despite its pivotal role for training…

The introduction of the HyFlex modality provides students with increased flexibility to choose how they participate in a course. This flexibility extends to guest speakers allowing for synchronous interaction with students to occur across long distances. The following article outlines how instructors can incorporate international guest speakers…

This article describes the incorporation of a pitch presentation early in a Doctor of Education (EdD) program to help pre-candidacy students develop a dissertation in practice topic that has the support of their workplace supervisor in the K-12 or higher education setting. Twenty participating EdD students conducted presentations to…

This study integrates visual art with a public speaking assignment to explore participants' experiences and perceptions of engagement in the Teacher-Researcher's course at Lynn University. Using an action research design and with informed consent, seven students volunteered as participants. This study investigates these seven participants'…

Helping students recognize the value of humanistic inquiry can be challenging, especially in required courses. This essay presents a solution: an assignment in which students were asked to pitch one of the required readings to Netflix for adaptation. Through close readings of student responses and an analysis of the "so what" component…

Communication instructors have long insisted on the importance of audience adaptation. But they have said less about (a) the dimensions along which adaptation might proceed or (b) how a student might learn the art of adapting. In this article, I contribute toward addressing these two deficiencies. I suggest a dimension for adaptation - the value…

Courses: Persuasion, Marketing, Advanced Public Speaking, Argumentation. Objectives: The aims of this assignment are to introduce students to the concept of data mining as a tool for audience analysis and to improve students' ability to adapt a message to a specific audience.

Introducing ChatGPT offered higher education students a chance to use artificial intelligence to automatically generate assignment texts, and some might cheat in behaviorist tasks by using generative artificial intelligence. However, the introduction of ChatGPT could also lead instructors to expect more (rather than less) academic integrity in…

The aim of this research is to examine the pre-service teachers' opinions on online assessment during the COVID-19 process. In the study, which was designed with a phenomenological design, data were collected from 138 teacher candidates with a structured interview form consisting of open-ended questions created by the researchers and analyzed by…

This article offers a semester-long approach to using generative AI in the public-speaking course. Using critical communication pedagogy, the authors provide practices to navigate the turbulence that has followed the emergence of publicly available generative AI tools. These tools have received negative attention because of their potential to…

Students' emotional responses often provide valuable indicators of whether they are languishing or flourishing in their first-year classes, including introductory communication courses. Grading often exerts a strong influence on students' emotions. However, though students generally have positive moods after receiving high marks and negative ones…

An oral presentation assignment in a Physical Chemistry course was reimagined as a TED talk. The presentation is part of a larger course project which includes consideration of what traits mark good writing and good speaking that students can emulate. Evidence and observations show that this new format yields improved presentations, enhanced…