Studies focusing on affective factors/emotions in learning are a mainstay in second language (L2) research. L2 teacher-focused research has also made advances in this domain and established the importance of affective factors for both learners and teachers. Despite the field's understanding of the emotional complexity of L2 teaching, much remains…

Employee empowerment yields positive outcomes for employees, managers, and organizations. Yet, too many employees feel disempowered at work, and managers, while wanting to empower employees, often do not know how. Contributing to this state of affairs is the lack of published, high-fidelity exercises explicitly designed to instruct students on how…

Courses: Organizational Communication, Advanced Organizational Communication, Organizing Work, Management/Organizational History. Objectives: This activity will help students to understand major shifts in the organization of work and creatively represent changing work structures and practices. An optional follow-up assignment is included. A…

Purpose: The paper aims to clarify the relationship between organisational and educational use of microblogging. Although enterprise and education are very different sectors of activity and have diverse research traditions, this review argues that there is a benefit to be derived from comparing research work across the two settings.…

In this article, Wieland and Bauer discuss a teaching activity that helps students understand how meanings of work (MOW) are socially constructed through commonplace texts: children's books. The activity helps students consider how children's books shape future workers' understandings of what work is, what kinds of work are most…

In this exploratory study, the author examines both students' and teachers' perceptions of Moxtra, a cross-platform cloud collaboration service, as a blended learning tool in a language course. Participants were 242 first-year students studying General English and 8 teachers at the Bunkyo English Communication Centre (BECC) at Hiroshima Bunkyo…

Essential life skills such as confidence, motivation, resilience and communication are associated with better academic outcomes and better prospects in the workplace, and there is an increasing emphasis on their value, given labour market trends towards automation. While 'character' has traditionally been at the centre of British private school…

The Under Construction Exercise was developed by the authors to highlight key factors of work design that when implemented among the work group or entire organization can lead to an environment conducive to fostering satisfaction and motivation. In the exercise, groups are assigned to one of four different conditions that are designed to emulate…

In spite of turbulent urbanisation in Slovakia we assume that the 21st century is also a period of differences in value criteria of people living in rural and urban areas. The level of urbanisation, i.e. inhabitant movement from the countryside to towns and the level of suburbanisation, i.e. inhabitant movement from towns to the countryside, are…

Recent college graduates are entering a competitive workforce that demands strong communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. However, many recent surveys and reports describe college graduates as deficient in these skills. For two courses at separate institutions, we each framed a course as a job, playing the role of a supervisor or…

This paper describes two teaching strategies from our workshop, "Teaching the Sociology of Gender and Work," that can help students understand the mechanisms and consequences of workplace gender inequality at the macro- and micro-levels. Cynthia Anderson's class project uses wage and sex composition data that allows students to learn actively how…

Few learning experiences give students immediate feedback on ethical and unethical behaviors and provide opportunities to repeatedly practice effective behaviors. This article describes how the authors have used challenge course activities to stimulate students to observe their own and others' ethical and unethical behaviors. Specifically, these…

Discusses the corporate trend of "dressing down," its popularity, and company policies on casual business wear. Notes that students preparing for careers in business should be aware of this change, and discusses the need to include this concept in business communications curriculum. (SR)

Presents a case study for use in business communication classes to help students understand and learn both the context and the strategies for communication with business and management. Deals with a situation in which diverse internal groups in a company neither understand nor effectively interact with each other. Includes two assignments. (SR)

Describes the Ethics Challenge Game (developed by Lockheed Martin Corp. and free to educators), which is a board game based on the Dilbert comic strip character that provides realistic scenarios for discussion of ethical behavior in various business/workplace situations. Describes the game, offers comments on faculty reactions after playing the…