2016): The development of a set of core communication competencies for introductory communication courses, Communication Education, ABSTRACTIn most academic disciplines, there is one introductory course that presents an overview of the discipline and introduces fundamental, discipline-specific principles and competencies. However, in Communication Studies, the discipline recognizes and offers multiple course options that may serve as the introductory course. This project sought to identify a set of core communication competencies that should constitute the basis for any and all introductory communication courses within and across a variety of communication contexts. Working in four phases over a three-year period using a modified Delphi method and conducting seven focused group sessions with 125 participants, seven core competencies for the introductory communication courses were identified: Monitoring
While digitally mediated environments have altered how human communication takes place, they do not necessarily alter the human condition of alienation. Applying key principles from Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963), the popular blog PostSecret offers ways in which anonymous users attempt to remedy the alienations linked with the stigmatic act of secret keeping. Through imaginative, associative, and vicarious conversations, the blog purports to offer the unconditional acceptance necessary to remedy the alienations. Because of the complications of anonymity in the nonreal reality of the internet, the blog can offer only echoes of acceptance. Although some of the stigma literature argues that self-acceptance or assertions of power are the strongest solutions to stigma's negative effects, this article extends the stigma construct with the suggestion that vulnerability might be a viable option to remedy the attendant alienations correlated with stigma.
This reflection essay focuses on the problems inherent in the design and development of an online public speaking course, which in part result from presuming the course must mirror its face-to-face counterpart. Based on our own experiences and background in designing an online public speaking course, we recommend that instructors and administrators of this course solve such problems by employing design strategies that effectively adapt the course content and pedagogy to a digital context. The essay begins with a description of an integrated course design model (Fink, 2005) that proved useful to us for accomplishing this task. Then we discuss how we used the four components of the initial design stage of this model to take advantage of opportunities for teaching public speaking online.
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