Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

Communication Apprehension Among Community College Students: A Phenomenology, John R. Bragg Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A qualitative investigation was conducted to explore the phenomenon of communication apprehension among a purposeful sample of five community college students with high levels of communication apprehension. The phenomenon of Communication Apprehension (CA) is “an individual’s level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons” (Beatty, McCroskey, & Heisel, 1998, p. 197; McCroskey, 1970, p. 269). All individuals experience some level of CA, and between 30% and 40% of individuals are estimated to experience high levels of CA. For the community college student with high levels of CA, the introductory communication course …

Efficacy Of A Basic Public Speaking Course Delivered Via A Virtual Community College, Stephen Bradley Bailey

Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to: (a) determine if taking the basic public speaking course in face-to-face, hybrid, and online format statistically significantly reduces public speaking anxiety; (b) determine which course format, if any, reduces public speaking anxiety to the greatest extent; (c) determine if students’ satisfaction with learning is statistically significantly different in the three course formats; (d) determine faculty’s perceptions of students learning in the basic public speaking in the three course formats.

Pre- and post-data were collected from 263 participants taking the basic public speaking course in a virtual community college in January 2012 and in …