The 12 Favorite Assignments featured in this article were presented at the 2011 Annual Convention of the Association for Business Communication (ABC), Montreal, Canada. A variety of learning objectives are featured: delivering bad news, handling difficult people, persuasion, reporting financial analysis, electronic media, face-to-face…

English 317 is a second writing course designed for business majors primarily but available to all students who need to fulfill the second writing course requirement. The purpose of the philanthropic research recommendation report is to familiarize students with the ways that corporations envision and enact social responsibility as depicted on…

To help alleviate issues of free-riding and conflicts in team projects, this study proposes the systematic incorporation of project management methods to introduce a process-oriented approach to and a critical praxis in team projects. We examined how the systematic use of project management methods influenced students' performance in team…

Describes a project for professional writing classes that teaches effective persuasive writing, as teams of students research local nonprofit or campus service organizations, design projects to address their groups' main needs, and write solicitation letters for donations or volunteers. Discusses potential problems and how students benefit. (SR)

Describes how students in an Advanced Literature and Composition Course specialized for business students encountered an ethics assignment used as a culminating activity which employs course skills in research, writing, documentation, oral presentation, group dynamics, and multimedia design. (SR)

Business and professional writing courses offer ideal contexts for incorporating service learning into the academic classroom. The focus of such courses on rhetorical analysis and language as social action provide a sound theoretical and practical ground for the application of writing and speaking skills to solve problems and effect change. In…

Teaching communication to MBAs often involves focusing on corporate strategic discourse when student projects are intended to help companies move to a more advanced stage of development. This focus on corporate strategy--the language and concepts that concern the mission and direction that an organization should adopt--requires, in turn, that…

Assignments that combine case studies with applied research can work for presentations as well as for written reports. One such assignment that has proven to be successful both in the author's classes and later in the students' professional lives is based on (1) incorporating banking concepts and encouraging their use in presentations; (2)…

As advances in information communication technology have continued to affect business communication, the challenge for teachers over the past decade has been to stay abreast of new developments by integrating into the curriculum current theoretical and practice-based perspectives that can inform their students how to effectively create, manage,…