Tutors often fail to address learners' misconceptions. Although this may indicate a failure to grasp these misconceptions, it may simply be due to a wish to be polite and save the learner's face. In this study we examined whether instructing tutors about the pitfalls of politeness could increase the clarity and precision of their tutorial…

This article presents a hybrid methodological technique that fuses elements of experimental design with qualitative strategies to explore mediated communication. Called the "qualitative experiment," this strategy uses focus groups and in-depth interviews "within" randomized stimulus conditions typically associated with…

The influence of communication processes on group outcomes is discussed from two perspectives, one in which influence does not exist and one in which influence is central. Formal models for both perspectives are presented as a means of bracketing discussion of the role of communication processes in group outcomes. The implications of these models…

Over the last 2 decades, the nations that once comprised the Soviet Union have begun to play an increasingly important role in the global economy. As a result, today's technical and professional communicators could find themselves interacting with co-workers, colleagues, and clients in these nations. Being successful in such contexts, however,…

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.…

This study explores the potential for automated indices related to speech delivery, language use, and topic development to model human judgments of TOEFL speaking proficiency in second language (L2) speech samples. For this study, 244 transcribed TOEFL speech samples taken from 244 L2 learners were analyzed using automated indices taken from…

There was a time, not so long ago, when having a website for a teacher's music program was considered cutting-edge. But today, over 40 years after the birth of the Internet, everyone lives in an age of instant information. New online services and Internet technologies have changed more than just the interaction between teacher, student, and…

Strengthening the association between education and communication is difficult due to the scarcity of educationally initiated research into the mechanics of communication. Most of the existing communication research is domiciled in the departments of sociology, psychology, anthropology, journalism and business. Many educators are satisfied in…

Message interpretation, the notion that individuals assign meaning to stimuli, is related to listening presage, listening process, and listening product. As a central notion of communication, meaning includes (a) denotation and connotation, and (b) content and relational meanings, which can vary in ambiguity and vagueness. Past research on message…

This study assesses the current state of undergraduate instruction in empirical research methods in communication and offers recommendations for enhancing such instruction. Responses to an online questionnaire were received from 149 communication-related programs at four-year colleges and universities. Just over 85% of responding programs offered…

Journalism as an academic field in the United States has frequently changed and grown through new professions and new industries coming under its umbrella (sometimes but not always driven by technological and/or economic changes) and academic developments such as cultural studies and media studies. But journalism is still rooted in good…

Although communication program faculty have traditionally not enjoyed large grants for research, administrators are pressuring them to garner external funding. This article examines the success rate of securing external funding that communication administrators reported for their units. Results show that while the pressure has increased on most…

Objective: The authors quantitatively examined differences in psychiatric residents' and attending physicians' communication profiles and voice tones. Methods: Audiotaped recordings of 49 resident-patient and 35 attending-patient medication-management appointments at four ambulatory sites were analyzed with the Roter Interaction Analysis System…

The study of communication and its disorders often involves coding several behaviors and examining the proportions with which individual behaviors are produced within data sets. Problems are encountered when studying multiple behaviors between data sets, because of the interdependence of the proportions: as one coded behavior increases, at least…

There is a "prevalence of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in education," and a concern for its negative psychosocial consequences and lack of effectiveness as an instructional tool. This essay identifies five variables in the CMC research literature and shows their moderating effect on the psychosocial, instructional expevrience of the CMC…