Courses: Public speaking. Objectives: This assignment reduces speech anxiety through the affect-reframing power of gratitude, and enables students to consolidate their gains by experiencing social support from a staff mentor.

This research examines the implementation of virtual reality into an effective speaking course at a small business college in New England. The researchers detail how they piloted the use of MetaQuest 2 headsets to students for round-the-clock availability of public speaking software in an Effective Speaking course. Students were administered a…

Innovative assessment methods are increasingly being explored to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. This study examines the effectiveness of podcast assessments as an alternative to traditional written and oral assessments in higher education for forensic science. A mixed-methods approach was used to analyse student perceptions…

Preparing for tomorrow's supply chain leaders today involves an understanding of how students perceive the educational value of classroom learning approaches. To better understand how to prepare our students for the Industry 4.0 era, we surveyed current and former students on their perceptions of pedagogical methods that contributed to their…

Oral communication and presentation skills are considered key competencies for many academic fields and professions, including science-related ones. Therefore, it is vital that students are given sufficient class time in the curriculum for practicing public speaking. It is well documented in the literature that video technology can be of valuable…

The purpose of this article is to provide guidance for instructors who wish to develop a course associated with student participation in the College Fed Challenge (CFC), an academic competition designed to test students' knowledge of current economic events and monetary policy. We eschew a lecture-only methodology and use small-group and…

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between two content formats of the basic communication course (BCC) and first-year college student retention over a 4-year period (N = 5,653). Chi-square and logistic regression models indicated students who completed the BCC were more likely to be retained than those who did not complete the BCC.…

The use of guest speakers in college classes is a well-accepted pedagogical practice, but the academic literature has generally been based on instructors' or event organizers' anecdotal reflections about individual experiences. Research based upon student considerations of this practice has been especially sparse. The purpose of this study is to…

Effective presentation skills are an important ability for students and professionals to possess. Automatic analysis of presentation skills can help provide feedback to a speaker, and a complete analysis is possible only with both speaker and audience measurement. In this article, we propose a methodology to predict presentation skills on a small…

Past applications of virtual reality (VR) and related research have provided evidence that VR technology is helpful for educational and training purposes and that it can be used as a therapeutic measure. Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) may, therefore, be beneficial in reducing public speaking anxiety (PSA), which is a very common…

Guided by both the interactionist and sociocultural learning theories, this study investigates the interactive communications in text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and face-to-face (FTF) oral communication environments and the impacts they bring to subsequent L2 Chinese speaking. Learners' perspectives on using…

The use of grades as an extrinsic motivator in formal schooling has been demonstrated in previous research to have negative implications for students' learning and mental health. This subject matter has been particularly absent from the research literature in Vietnam, where the obsession with grades is self-evident. The present study aims to…

Involving students in policy debate is one of the most impactful academic interventions for secondary school students, according to a study, which between 2007 and 2017 followed about 3,500 students who were part of the Boston Debate League (BDL). The nonprofit supports debate teams in Boston Public Schools, which have a large concentration of…

Trying to learn the names of students is a challenging semester ritual for many professors and graduate students. In support of this endeavor, research suggests that learning students' names promotes greater student participation and engagement (Auster and MacRone 1994; Pearson and Lucas 2011). However, both research and practical pedagogical…

The introduction of the HyFlex modality provides students with increased flexibility to choose how they participate in a course. This flexibility extends to guest speakers allowing for synchronous interaction with students to occur across long distances. The following article outlines how instructors can incorporate international guest speakers…