In response to ongoing concerns about financial ethics, this study analyzes the speech of company executives in quarterly earnings conference calls to understand strategic usage of ethics-related language. Against the backdrop of the recent global financial crisis, the Aristotelian concept of ethos provides a framework to investigate linguistic…

Web 2.0 is not only for kids anymore, businesses are using it, too. Businesses are adopting Web 2.0 technology for a variety of purposes. In this article, the author discusses how he incorporates Web 2.0 into his business communications course. He describes a project that has both individual and collaborative elements and requires extensive…

Describes a three-session approach to coaching corporate executives to improve their presentation skills, focusing on their specific needs. (SR)

Describes how one teacher begins to address presentation anxiety by presenting a lecture/discussion on controlling nervousness, followed by small group work in class intended to demonstrate the variety of ways in which nervousness is manifested in different people. (SR)

Examines self and peer ratings of oral business presentations in business classrooms. Finds that both holistic and analytical peer assessments are reasonable substitutes for instructor assessment when raters are trained; self assessment does not closely reflect either peer or instructor assessments; and peer assessment of delivery characteristics,…

Effective teaching of presentation skills focuses on the most important element of the presentation--the message itself. Some instructors place the heaviest emphasis on the messenger (the presenter) and focus their presentation feedback on all the presenter is doing wrong--saying "um," gesturing awkwardly, and so forth. When students receive this…

Educators increasingly recognize that students need a more contemporary, multimodal literacy that requires them to examine how their written, oral, visual, and electronic modes of communication inform one another to generate meaning. Helping students hone their multimodal literacies will enable them to develop PowerPoint presentations in ways that…

When the author first added service learning to her business communication classes, she had three key goals in mind. First of all, she wanted students to take more ownership of their work. She wanted their projects and finished products to be more about fulfilling a business need and less about fulfilling the requirements of an artificial…

Describes an eight-hour module the author uses to teach multimedia presentations to students from the school of computer engineering. Focuses on color and animation, and examining overuse of effects, coordinating the chosen effect and the intended meaning, and altering the style to suit the audience. Includes an outline of assignments and of the…

In this article, the author describes how she changed her process for the oral presentation, which involved looking at its placement in the course, the pace, and the preparation. By moving the team oral presentation earlier in the course, the author hoped to solve two problems. One problem was the increased stress both students and the author…

Reports on the development of a systematic means of identifying, addressing, and assessing students' group skills. Describes a two-year research project that identified students' perceptions of their weaknesses when working in groups. Describes specific ways those weaknesses were addressed with only modest adjustments to the business communication…