Courses: Persuasion, Marketing, Advanced Public Speaking, Argumentation. Objectives: The aims of this assignment are to introduce students to the concept of data mining as a tool for audience analysis and to improve students' ability to adapt a message to a specific audience.

At the Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN), an Engineering Research Center funded from 2008-2018 by the National Science Foundation, the education department worked to develop new and innovative digital resources to engage students in learning science content. One resource created, the CIAN Comic Book, focuses on educating students about…

Courses: Business and Professional Communication, Persuasion. Objectives: Students demonstrate application of rhetorical invention and improved persuasive writing style through a brief, multi-draft writing activity.

Imagine saving just one of the 23,000 species threatened with extinction. Students studying endangered species in a general life science course faced the decision of which species to save as a summative assignment in a unit on scientific explanation and argumentation. They used the claim, evidence, and reasoning (CER) framework in which students…

This article offers readers 13 "My Favorite Assignments" that were presented at the Association for Business Communication's 83rd annual conference held in Miami, Florida, in 2018. The teaching innovations offered include assignments that present quick, fun icebreaker exercises; visual communication and diversity; rhetoric; email; and…

Instructional tips help educators carry out recommendations contained in IES Educator's Practice Guides. The tips, based on a practice guide authored by Steve Graham, Alisha Bollinger, Carol Booth Olson, Catherine D'Aoust, Charles MacArthur, Deborah McCutchen, and Natalie Olinghouse, translate these recommendations into actionable approaches that…

Courses: Argumentation, Public Speaking, Political Communication. Objectives: After completing this unit activity, students should be able to (1) demonstrate comprehension of Burke's (1941) concept of terministic screens; (2) apply the concept of terministic screens to write a brief political autobiography of themselves that analyzes the history…

This article, the first of a two-part series, offers readers 13 teaching innovations debuted at the 2017 Association for Business Communication's annual conference in Dublin, Ireland. Assignment topics presented here include communication strategy and message-packaging skills, deep communication insights, and career and personal development.…

Argumentation is one of the central practices in science learning and helps deepen students' conceptual understanding. Students should learn how to communicate ideas including procedure tests, data interpretations, and investigation outcomes in verbal and written forms through argument structure. This article presents a negotiation model to…

This article, the first of a two-part series, catalogs teaching innovations presented at the 2013 Association for Business Communication (ABC) Annual Convention, New Orleans. They were presented during the My Favorite Assignment session. The 11 Favorite Assignments featured here offer the reader a variety of learning experiences including…

When covering persuasion in the basic speech communication course, many textbooks include information on how students can detect logical fallacies in the persuasive attempts of others. It is important to provide students with a hands-on experience that will help them apply their knowledge of logical fallacies so that they can retain and better use…

Today's communication and information environments create an immense amount of clutter for consumers, but a well crafted advertising campaign can differentiate an organization from its competitors. Persuasion in Advertising is a critical assignment where students apply Aristotle's and Cicero's persuasive techniques to a specific advertising…

Describes an exercise that teaches the reverse of promotion--demand reduction. Discusses persuasive strategies to reduce demand for a product. (SR)

Examines prewriting and writing assignments designed to tighten the continuity between the personal essays typically written in English 101 and the more literature-based essays of English 102. Aims to help students blend personal and public voices. (MG)

Describes how generating effective advertising copy affords students practice in aspects of persuasive writing, such as developing a thesis, refuting counter-arguments, and writing in a comparison-contrast mode. Notes that this approach helps students negotiate the problematic shift from expressive to persuasive discourse without losing their…