Courses: Public Speaking, Advanced Public Speaking, Capstone Courses. Objective: This activity is designed to help students identify different components of an elevator speech and assemble elevator speeches highlighting their strengths. The activity ultimately increases students' sense of self-competence.

Organizational behavior (OB) students often have difficulty understanding how individual-, group-, and organization-level OB concepts interact to influence employee behavior in the workplace. As a result, students may disengage from the class. Yet the simple prompt of asking students "How do you get promoted?" serves as an effective…

Play provides an opportunity for students to learn information and concepts in an active format while facilitating different ways of learning. This puzzle activity is designed to increase student engagement, leverage different learning styles, help students make connections in communication theories, and enhance memory of important communication…

Teaching the social contract tradition to students can be frustrating. Works by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau may seem arcane, abstract, or irrelevant to students. Yet, it is important for students to think about what processes or mechanisms would make consent and dissent legitimate. To address this problem, this paper explains how to use a short…

Although U.S. corporations rely heavily on merit pay programs to distribute pay increases to their employees, many undergraduate students, even those who have held jobs, lack exposure to merit pay programs until they take their first human resource management course. The exercise gives students an opportunity to experience how organizations make…

This article explains an activity that can be conducted to form teams in university business classes. It allows students to actively participate in the team selection process and learn valuable human resource management skills. Students are placed in the role of hiring managers. They have to identify the skills and characteristics needed to…

Historians have long appreciated the value of the U.S. Census as a source of statistical data for studying nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history. However, in ways that many other primary source documents do not, the census reflects and addresses social, political, and economic issues on national, state, and community levels…

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)…

Strategic alliances--voluntary interfirm arrangements involving resource sharing--are critical to firm success. To help strategic management students better understand alliance negotiation and formation, we developed a simple game that places them in a real alliance negotiation situation, involving simultaneous cooperation and competition (i.e.,…

Courses: This single-class teaching activity was designed for courses on public speaking, rhetorical criticism, and critical thinking. In addition, instructors can adapt this activity for online or face-to-face courses on intercultural communication, organizational communication, listening, and political communication. Objectives: By completing…

In this article, the author describes an exercise in which two pricing problems (product bundling and the sharing of digital information goods) can be understood using the same analytical approach. The exercise allows students to calculate the correct numerical answers with relative ease, while the teaching plan demonstrates the importance of the…

Reframing is the ability to identify and significantly change assumptions or perspectives. It is a powerful skill but can be difficult to learn and apply. This article presents two experiential exercises for teaching reframing in negotiations: the Rental Home case and the Multiplex Saw case. These exercises are designed to produce frame-shifting…

Some policies try to maximize net benefits by targeting different individuals to participate. This is difficult when costs and benefits of participation vary independently, such as in land conservation. The authors share a classroom game that explores cases in which minimizing costs may not maximize benefits and vice versa. The game is a…

Work motivation has long been considered a driving force behind optimal employee management. However, as the workscape continues its path toward increased globalization, today's managers must consider cultural influences on employee motivation to implement the most appropriate human capital management strategies within any given context. The…

This article offers readers 13 "My Favorite Assignments" that were presented at the Association for Business Communication's 83rd annual conference held in Miami, Florida, in 2018. The teaching innovations offered include assignments that present quick, fun icebreaker exercises; visual communication and diversity; rhetoric; email; and…