With our core focus on teaching and scholarship, business communication teacher-scholars are well placed to become leaders in the international Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) movement. In this article, SoTL is defined and contextualized, three SoTL research approaches are introduced, and disciplinary research projects are suggested. A…

The increasing availability of recording technologies makes it easier to include usability testing projects in business communication courses. Usability testing is a method of discovering whether people can navigate, read, and understand a print or electronic communication well enough to achieve a particular purpose in a reasonable time frame.…

Most business communication textbooks treat "unfavorable" communications as written documents--denials of credit, collection requests, rejections for employment, inability to meet deadlines, etc. These written "unfavorable" documents are no longer actually written by most employees. In fact, many of these communications are computer generated and…

Offers an overview of Canada's business-communication research efforts. Describes its definition and scope; issues facing Canadian researchers (gaining an institutional presence, creating Canada as a viable research site, and creating a Canadian research focus); disseminating research in Canada; and expanding Canadian business-communication…

Discusses how the validity and reliability of business communication research can be improved by using both quantitative and qualitative methods and studying both real life and simulations. Suggests that studies should build on both American research on strategy and innovation and European research on psycholinguistics and perception. (SC)

Describes a researcher's efforts to study how electronic communities function. Offers guidelines for citing electronic mail in investigations of electronic interactions. (RS)

Describes the author's research to identify and describe effective and satisfying pedagogical designs to provide guidance in making technological delivery choices for professional communication distance education. Reviews research questions asked and describes her use of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to compare two Internet-based…

Describes the author's research that explores the role of language, particularly texts, in the engineering design process. Notes that results of this case study support a new "mediated" model of engineering design as an inventional activity in which designers use talk, written language, and other symbolic representations as tools to think about…

Some language features are described that could account for feelings of people from different cultures not being on the same "wave length" when they communicate with each other in business negotiations. Candlin's explanatory approach involving a "top-down, bottom-up" methodology is used. It views language as being indeterminate…

Describes the differences in organization between print and electronic documents, methods of providing structure in hypertext, and their implications for technical communicators, designers, and instructors. Notes that web designers may need to consider rhetorical issues differently when creating hypertext documents than they would when composing…

Offers an overview of some notable business-communication research from New Zealand and Australia, dealing with plain English in business communication, and form design and visual communication. Notes research on teaching business communication; mentions organizations that foster business-communication research in the region; and notes…

A 20th-century discipline in American universities, communication has struggled with questions of academic identity: generically, as to whether it is a "humanities" or a "social science", a "practice" or a "technology", and theoretically, as to what sorts of axioms, theorems, research methods or logics, and problems should form its core. This…

Offers an overview of three broad areas studied by European researchers of business communication, focusing on the first area: the language and discourse of business events. Includes addresses for pertinent Web sites and contact information about conferences as well as research and teaching projects. (SR)

Discusses research developments in business communication in Japan from the early 1900s to present. Describes early interest in business English; the emergence of business communication; business communication as a broad and interdisciplinary research field in Japan; and its impact on teaching. (SR)

Offers an overview of business-communication research in Malaysia and Singapore, discussing its close associations with business-communication teaching, professional organizations, and consulting. Discusses research directions in the region. (SR)