Soft skills, the interpersonal skills that demonstrate the ability to work with others, are essential for job attainment and advancement. However, as noted in current research and as echoed by employers, a significant soft skills gap exists in communication (oral and written), teamwork, and critical thinking that can prevent workers from advancing…

This article addresses the inclusion of English learners with disabilities, including those with significant cognitive disabilities, in state and district assessments. The authors provide background information on who these students are and the relationship between academic English language development, content learning, and assessment. The…

The project described in this paper was designed for an undergraduate course titled the "Psychology of Adulthood and Aging". This course, capped at 20 students, is typically comprised of psychology, pre-nursing, and family studies students. The student learning objectives (SLO's) for the course are: (1) to understand and apply current…

The teaching lab is an important component of training and developing undergraduate chemistry students. The lab provides a complex teaching environment where faculty address a number of student-centered goals, including the development of technical proficiency, demonstrations of theoretical concepts, promotion of teamwork, and modeling of data…

Chris Allison was working as a public relations executive, and had no formal business training when his father phoned and asked him to take over the reins of his Pittsburgh telecom equipment business. His father needed to focus his energies on his other business which was struggling. Because of his Liberal Arts background Allison knew exactly what…

The ability to use written language to communicate receptively (i.e., reading) and expressively (i.e., writing) is important in school, work, and independent living. Students who struggle early with reading have difficulty catching up with their peers as they move through school and in academic areas that rely on reading proficiency. Individuals…

This short report is a summary of the findings from "Storycraft: The Importance of Narrative and Narrative Skills in Business." This ground-breaking report reveals how prominent business leaders in the United Kingdom view and utilise narrative as an integral part of doing business. Based on extensive interviews with 34 business leaders,…

This program profile describes a new approach towards integrating communication within Mechanical Engineering curricula. The author, who holds a joint appointment between Technical Communication and Mechanical Engineering at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, has been collaborating with Mechanical Engineering colleagues to establish a…

When a client faces a penalty of death, defense attorneys may call on social workers in many capacities: mitigation specialist, expert witness, consulting specialist, direct witness, or defense-initiated victim outreach worker. The American Bar Association set forth standards for capital defense attorneys, which led an interdisciplinary team to…

The technological and social/cultural demands of the 21st century are reshaping communication requirements. Students not only need to be able to communicate effectively in oral and written language, but they also need to communicate effectively in multimodal ways--they need to become skilled in multiliteracies. This article explains the two…

Public debate on literacy in remote Indigenous Australia emphasises a narrative of failure. The discussion commonly focuses on the low literacy and numeracy benchmarks achieved in remote Indigenous schools. Little attention has been paid to the short history of literacy in isolated Indigenous societies, the shift from oral to literate traditions…

The nature of meaning as it is developed through interaction between individuals is explored in a discussion of how writers lead readers to understand a text. (DF)

This author asserts that college English should provide students with certain communicative skills that enable them to analyze rhetorical effect and produce rhetorically effective texts, including those to be read, those to be viewed as images, those to be heard, and those not to be heard. Recently, new books on visual rhetoric, the rhetoric of…

The Administrative Medicine Program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed a course entitled "Medicine and the Media" for clinician-executives and health care professionals who may assume administrative responsibilities. The course is designed to help students (1) understand the respective roles and demands of both the…

The Oral and Written Communication (OWC) course at Ngee Ann Polytechnic was originally intended to equip students with occupational skills (e.g., report- and letter-writing, public speaking) but has expanded to be a course aimed at helping third-year mechanical engineering students to develop third-year project reports. This has been done through…