Written communication and oral communication are inextricably linked as essential life skills and as desirable educational outcomes. However, there is a clear disconnect between what Alabama colleges expect of their graduates and what they are providing them in terms of oral communication education. The steps taken to develop the general studies…

Business schools have established measurement tools to support their assurance of learning (AoL) systems and to assess student achievement of learning objectives. However, business schools have not required their tools to be empirically validated, thus ensuring that they measure what they are intended to measure. The authors propose confirmatory…

Research (Martin, 2008) has shown that speaking and listening are the literacy skills most used in the world of work. Yet, employers frequently bemoan the lack of young people's communication skills, with many believing that it impacts their chances of making it through an interview and their future employability (Simon, 2009). Effective speaking…

The main function of this speech communication framework is to present a general structure of objectives for sequential instruction in oral communication, grades K-14. It consists of sample activities related to the goal structure and organized in five learning levels. The six main goals listed under the general goal are broad educational concepts…

Since the norm-referenced grading system produces a student-teacher conflict situation, a climate and grading system conducive to supportive interaction seems desirable, especially in an interpersonal communication course. This can be accomplished through contract grading, in which the instructor defines the contract components and the student…

This paper describes a course conducted at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, during 1971-73 which was designed to fill the speech communication needs of vocationally oriented students or "technologists" preparing to work in Indiana industries. Most of the students had completed a basic speech course; thus the approach, behavioral objectives,…

Suggests that small group researchers investigate message variables as a method of communication analysis. Provides examples of research-based behavioral objectives for small group communication classes. (MH)

This paper outlines a speech communication unit that reflects the assumptions of competency-based education. The emphasis of the unit's content is on using knowledge rather than on how the knowledge is acquired. Students are required to participate in the decision-making processes of the unit to get them actively involved in their own learning and…

To ensure that all of the subskills undergirding pupils' speaking are identified, taught, and reinforced, the School District of Philadelphia prepared hierarchical listings of skills as exemplified in specific student behaviors. The structured sequence of oral language behaviors are stated operationally and are identified at 14 levels in terms of…

This student workbook contains two instructional units, the first dealing with using the telephone and the second dealing with conducting a meeting and making a speech. Addressed in the unit on telephone usage are using the telephone directory, placing a call, answering the telephone, and taking messages. The unit on conducting a meeting and…

This five-unit junior high school speech communication curriculum guide is designed to provide seventh, eighth and ninth graders with an introductory course in speech-communication. Presupposing that communication or speech is a regularly scheduled subject in the junior high school, the outlined course requires at least one semester of academic…

Sixteen lesson plans on communications are presented in this performance-based curriculum unit for distributive education. This unit is self-contained and consists of the following components: introduction (provides overview of unit content and describes why mastery of the objectives is important); performance objectives; pre-assessment instrument…

Intended for college-level instructors, this paper aims to establish behavioral objectives for listening or listening competencies and provide experiential learning to develop and assess those objectives and/or competencies. The paper begins with an overview which notes the lack of material on listening competencies in many college speech…

Using the premises that all communication efforts inside and outside the classroom setting are evaluated in some form and that teachers must use subjective judgment at least some of the time in measuring communication behavior, this report reaffirms the benefits of objective judgment and at the same time makes a case for subjective judgment as a…