This dissertation introduces and employs the HERC model, a novel conceptual framework developed to critically analyze the intricacies of town-gown relationships during a boundary-spanning crisis. Situated in Tucson, Arizona, the study delves into the nuanced communication dynamics of two key higher education institutions: The University of Arizona…

Linguistic analyses of the Question Under Discussion (QUD) provide an interesting extension to Tony Sanford's work on discourse coherence (e.g., Sanford & Emmott, 2012). The QUD approach claims that discourse is organized by a series of overt and covert questions and answers to, or comments on, them. In a coherent discourse, material that…

Author Jennifer Waldeck writes that her earliest research exposed her to the difficulty that students appear to encounter in accessing potential mentors and building productive relationships with them. In fact, the lack of student mentees available to serve as research participants was one of the drivers behind a decision to explore communication…

The purpose of this study is to better understand new college students' attitudes toward and perceptions of communication media and technology and themselves as communicators in the context of communication competence. Building on the results of a previous qualitative study, the researchers developed a survey focused on communication competence in…

In daily language use, we sometimes comment on the conversation with phrases such as "What do you mean by saying that?" or "That was nice of you to say." This communication about the communication is sometimes labeled as metacommunication. It can be used for many different purposes; for instance, to try and clarify or appraise…

The widespread use of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in the higher education sector in recent years highlights the importance of forging successful relationships with employers, business, industry and government. This article reports on a large ethnographic study conducted by Victoria University into host organisations' perceptions of WIL.…

Students have social and personal needs to fulfill and communicate these needs in different ways. This annotated bibliographic review examined communication studies to provide educators of diverse classrooms with ideas to build an environment that contributes to student well-being. Participants in the studies ranged in age, ability, and cultural…

The White House will soon unveil a final version of its "college scorecard"--an online tool giving college-bound students and their families a hype-free snapshot of reliable information about any U.S. campus: real costs, graduation rates, student debt statistics, and earning potential of graduates. The college scorecard is a good idea…

An abundance of academic research has focused on identifying, explicating, operationalizing, and analyzing variables used to understand the dynamics of customer service. Despite this scholarly attention, applied researchers and the popular press have long reported consumers' dissatisfaction with the service received during their customer…

This eighth in a series of surveys of the basic communication course, begun in 1968, has as its purpose to gather longitudinal and descriptive data on the nature of the course. The latest study differs from past studies in that some of the results are presented comparatively for two-year and four-year colleges and universities. Samples for both…

Communication, collaboration and community development are processes that contribute to student satisfaction and learning in online courses. This paper describes a study that investigated how campus and distance graduate students in a library science program communicated with one another outside the official boundaries of their courses. We…

Communication-across-the-curriculum (CXC) programs provide assistance to other disciplines on the teaching and learning of communication--meeting an increasingly important need for students not only to be content specialists, but also coherent communicators. Research emerging from this initiative details programmatic challenges and emphases, but…

Overlaps with one's interlocutor in the choice of words are called lexical entrainment. This article looks at accounts for these overlaps in word use. The question addressed is the extent to which the word use of the addressee, as opposed to available words from other sources, has a special impact on experts' choice of words. A laboratory…

Although much interest has been generated regarding the functions speaking centers serve and the effects consultations can have, minimal research has addressed the dynamics of consultations themselves. This study documents what speaking center clients and consultants identify as barriers in consultations and how they address them. Analysis of…

Classroom communication between deaf students was modeled using a question-and-answer game. Participants consisted of student pairs that relied on spoken language, pairs that relied on American Sign Language (ASL), and mixed pairs in which one student used spoken language and one signed. Although the task encouraged students to request…