This semester-long original teaching activity is a scaffolded writing assignment with accompanying rubrics that utilize an adapted academic publishing model (i.e. accept, revise and resubmit with minor revisions, or revise and resubmit with major revisions) to facilitate a growth mindset. This revise-and-resubmit approach to teaching and assessing…

Ageism is highly prevalent, especially among college students. However, efforts to reduce ageism largely take place in helping professions. This activity seeks to promote positive perceptions toward older adults and aging among communication undergraduate students through gerontological education, a positive intergeneration contact experience, a…

Perception is one of the most fundamental aspects of human communication. This activity utilizes art to help students experience and understand the psychological and communicative aspects of perception. Students are required to observe and discuss their observations about selected pieces of artwork. After completing the activity, students enhance…

This article introduces an assignment that will help instructors effectively teach media grammar and convergence to their students. Hybrid letter writing (HBL) is an experiential learning assignment where students learn about media grammar and convergence by experiencing it. The current modus operandi of teaching convergence and media grammar is…

Courses: Organizational Communication; any advanced communication course that can benefit from using a case study approach. Objectives: This semester-long case study assignment asks students to write a case study around an organizational communication issue based on their empirical data collection of a real organization. Students are expected to…

Courses: Business and Professional Communication, Persuasion. Objectives: Students demonstrate application of rhetorical invention and improved persuasive writing style through a brief, multi-draft writing activity.

Courses: This semester-long assignment can be featured in undergraduate or graduate communication courses that include a major writing assignment such as research methods, capstone classes, senior thesis sections, or advanced courses on topics such as interpersonal, intercultural, and interracial communication. This assignment is suitable for…

Guided by cultural identity theory (CIT), the authors offer the six-word memoir (6WM) as a storytelling vehicle to engage students in critical, reflexive (re)considerations of their cultural identities and positions. This activity's impetus is threefold. First, it recognizes the practical challenges of teaching and learning the important, yet…

Watching images through mass media presents a challenge for understanding the complexities of different cultures within and outside the United States. Photographic images, in particular, are ubiquitous in our mediated world, populating old and interactive media and many times serving to perpetuate established codes of understanding and action.…

Encouraging students to engage with principles and ideas is one way to address ambiguity with consistent, effective approaches in situations made up of "gray area." This includes the looming post-college world where students may be unsure about choosing between job offers, geographic locations, or even communication fields. Such…

This article describes an activity using Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" as a supplemental text in an undergraduate group communication course. This book will help stimulate conversation and promote easy avenues for classroom discussion. In addition to weekly quizzes over each chapter to help facilitate rich classroom discussions, the…

As public relations professions advance toward new media platforms, one traditional tool--the backgrounder/position paper (more technically termed white paper) remains a compelling vehicle to impart enduring professional competencies. Moreover, the skills requisite to produce a white paper can be deployed in a variety of new and traditional media…

This article presents an activity in which students use narrative theory as a conceptual canvas for understanding resumes as autobiographical performances shaped by social and material forces. By asking students to story their lives in both conventional and creative resumes, this assignment invites students to produce autobiographical discourse…

This article offers an activity which hopes to illustrate the variety of ways that the media are able to manipulate not just information but also societal understandings of critical issues and events and to connect disparate media and time periods via an activity extended over several weeks. The topic for which this series of activities was…