Business Commons^™

Service-Learning: An Experiment To Increase Interpersonal Communication Confidence And Competence, D. Brian Mcnatt

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether engaging in course service-learning projects can impact interpersonal oral communication confidence and skill development beyond that of traditional course research projects.

Design/methodology/approach – Three sections of a university management course were randomly assigned to have a service-learning team project, while the other three retained the traditional research team project. All projects were student-generated. Survey data were collected at the beginning of the semester and at the end four months later.

Findings – Results indicated that service-learning produces greater oral communication self-efficacy. For female students, service-learning projects also increased their …

Enhancing Public Speaking Confidence, Skills, And Performance: An Experiment Of Service-Learning, D. Brian Mcnatt

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Much of service-learning research has been characterized as anecdotal and testimonial with widespread calls for more empirical data to support the claimed benefits of this pedagogical tool. The present longitudinal experiment answered these calls by testing the effect of service-learning projects on several oral communication skills during a 4-month period, as well as some boundary conditions affecting this impact. The intervention consisted of involvement in 1 of 20 different team-developed service-learning projects compared to traditional research projects. This was hypothesized to boost management students' public speaking self-efficacy, lower anxiety, and improve public speaking mechanics competence along with actual public speaking …