The goal of this activity is to equip students with skill sets for overcoming unfair experiences at work, drawing on interactional justice theory that is developing in organizational communication. Students reflect on their interactional injustice experiences and then proceed to generate response strategies to cope with such injustices. In doing…

Undergraduate students, particularly those with limited experience in business, struggle to appreciate the complexity of organizational communication dynamics. Communication complexities such as role conflict, position power, and individual perception--and their influence on effective communication--are particularly challenging for this…

Courses: Public Relations, Organizational/Crisis Communication, Social Media in Organizations. Objective: The goal for this activity is for students to simulate an organizational response to an environmental/health crisis impacting their business operations. By working through various components of a crisis event, students apply theoretical…

Course: This assignment is a unit activity designed for use in a skills-focused undergraduate public relations, organizational communication, or crisis communication course. Objective: The goal of this activity is to increase students' understanding and ability to apply message design concepts in an unfamiliar context. Students will work…

Students are challenged to write papers and give oral presentations across disciplines. Yet, the audience for students often remains the same: college personnel and classroom peers. Communication classrooms are ideal places to learn about and practice audience adaptation, specifically modifying content for different audiences, contexts, and…

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…

Systems theory has been a staple in organizational communication textbooks since the field's inception (Miller, 2015; Poole, 2014). Nevertheless, the authors' classroom experiences have revealed that systems theory may not seem applicable to students due to its complicated nature. While examples and cases can help students make sense of the…

Course: Organizational Communication. Objectives: After completing this single-class activity, students should be able to (1) identify stereotypes that are created and/or reinforced by images frequently used in communication materials, (2) explain how those stereotypes influence communication and relational barriers in organizations, and (3)…

Courses: Ethics, Organizational Communication, Political Communication. Objectives: After completing this unit activity, students should be able to (1) apply multiple ethical perspectives to real-world diversity issues in a debate format, and (2) explain the role of informational and social category diversity in current controversies.

The thought of learning about the principles of classical management and the machine metaphor of organizing can get many organizational communication students yawning just by seeing the subject in a syllabus. Abundant movie and television examples associated with the machine-like nature of workplace productivity are often used to demonstrate…

One of the most effective ways to help students integrate classroom knowledge they have gained in an Organizational Communication class is for students to put that knowledge literally "to work" through analysis of an actual organization. However, unlimited entry into a "real" organization's communication systems is sometimes limited and often…

When learning about a phenomenon, one must directly experience it in order to fully understand it (Kolb, 1984). So how may an instructor of introductory organizational communication ensure that students "directly experience the phenomenon" of organizing? The author describes an activity he developed to enable students to share a direct experience…

Points out two facets of the concluding section of a problem-centered report: the semantics of three widely used terms--finding, conclusion, and recommendation--and what can be done to clarify them; and how these terms can be put into useful patterns that will facilitate organizational decision making. (FL)

Traces the movement away from the classical model of speechwriting and proposes a new rationale for viewing ghostwritten speeches as organizational products. Notes the implications for speech pedagogy. (PD)

Describes the management by objectives approach to teaching organizational communication, where students set their own objectives and deadlines for the course and arrange a "contract" with the instructor, resulting in better student motivation. (SR)