While understanding the concept of audience is an important step in learning to write, few studies have explored how student writers conceptualize audience in academic and nonacademic settings. This dissertation explores how college students enrolled in a first-year composition course conceptualize and operationalize audience and examines how the…

Many faculty perform work as public intellectuals, producing essays, op-eds, interviews, and other forms of media to amplify their academic work. However, educational research has not examined how faculty conceptualize non-academic audiences, influencing who faculty address in their public scholarship and what they work on as public intellectuals.…

We have explored designers having empathy for the audience of focus, designers using empathy as a means to an end, and designers using empathy to deliver a meaningful design deliverable. Our research has evolved from studying how designers reflect on their own design context and the audience's given circumstance to designers acting on moments of…

This article presents the ongoing conversation about generative AI guidance and policy in higher education. The article examines syllabus policies, including analyzing sentiment, emotion, and common themes in GenAI policies. Findings show that policies should be audience-focused, clearly written, and grounded in strategies to promote ethical AI…

Social media has revolutionized communication and changed how society accesses and receives information. As social media has become more prevalent, companies' advertising and marketing strategies worldwide have changed. In order to reach their target audience, organizations, including universities, have shifted their marketing plans to include…

This paper describes our implementation of a conversation series focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within an existing National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. While many REU programs actively recruit diverse participants, few include instructional time dedicated to DEI topics. Here, we…

This research is set in the active learning context and focuses on students' intentions for presentation. Following research that suggests teachers' teaching intentions and approaches are influenced by conceptions of teaching, we tested if a similar relationship exists between students' conceptions of teaching and their intentions for…

Journalism stakeholders increasingly believe that they need to better understand the news audience to accomplish their goals. Our study explores the extent to which this "audience turn" has unfolded in the education of future journalists. Drawing on data collected from course syllabi from leading journalism schools throughout the United…

A perennial problem for many first-year composition (FYC) instructors is deciding what curricular materials to use to teach their students about rhetoric and composition and how to use those resources to enable their students to practice and hone their writing skills. This dissertation argues that humor writing is a viable option as it offers…

Applied linguistics has recently seen a surge in research and methodological approaches to do stronger studies. One important factor affecting such a new movement is the researchers' individual differences in shaping their research repertoire. Therefore, this study, which employs a path-analytic approach, investigates the interrelationship between…

The psychological aspects of the properties and relationships that emerge during text comprehension have primarily been studied from both subjective and objective viewpoints. This paper aims to explore the psychological factors influencing scientific text comprehension, focusing on the quantitative and qualitative patterns of how students perceive…

While societies struggle with the implications of text-based generative artificial intelligence (TGENAI), businesses are embracing the technology. Using framing, this original activity unit prepares business communication students for professional TGENAI use. Activities emphasize the need for an effective cognitive frame, as well as introduce…

As technology changes rapidly, marketing educators are challenged with maintaining a curriculum that is ever-evolving in order for their graduates to be real-world ready. This paper suggests a highly adaptable exercise that can be used to teach tone analysis while simultaneously familiarizing students with an application of artificial intelligence…

Background: Seminal reports, based on recommendations by educators, scientists, and in collaboration with students, have called for undergraduate curricula to engage students in some of the same practices as scientists--one of which is communicating science with a general, non-scientific audience (SciComm). Unfortunately, very little research has…

Reflective writing tasks are commonly employed across higher education programmes, yet despite their use, they are often accompanied by concerns that students simply performance manage by constructing positive accounts of their practice in their reflections. To address this, students are encouraged to be 'honest' in their reflections based on the…