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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver
Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity seeks to explain to undergraduate students how to craft a proper attack and defense in argumentation and debate, persuasion, or political communication courses. The activity teaches students 1) the parts of a basic argument structure and 2) how to construct a rebuttal using a basic argument structure. Students will argue against their true political typology by selecting an opposing typology from the Pew Research Typology Quiz. Broadly, this exercise is designed to encourage students to engage in dialogues with people who disagree with their political positionality. Specifically, the activity accomplishes this by teaching students the value of basic …
Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia
Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Drawing objects and concepts, such as cats, trees, love, democracy, and family, is probably the last activity students expect to do in a communication course. Although this sounds like an introductory art activity, creating visual representations provides a nuanced understanding of the encoding and decoding processes. Encoding and decoding are the most hidden and often the most unfamiliar and complex fundamental components of communication for students to comprehend. By engaging in this activity, students translate their decoding process into drawings, which serve as personal artifacts representative of their encoding and decoding. Students come to better conceptualize this cognitive process with …
“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler
“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity demonstrates communication competence and allows students to observe, assess, and ultimately utilize the model of communication competence to engage with other people successfully. To understand how to engage in communication competence, students must recognize that appropriateness and effectiveness are crucial aspects of their communication. Through the communication competence model, students examine how to achieve effectiveness in their communication by setting goals for specific contexts; they also consider to what extent their goals are achievable given the particular situation. Using a 2014 MTV Video Music Award example, students can analyze why Miley Cyrus allowed a homeless man to accept …
Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick
Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Despite numerous quantitative assessments of teaching interventions that have helped mitigate public speaking anxiety (PSA), this common barrier to public speaking persists. In addition, quantitative measures may not be appropriate for all instructional goals, especially with students from across a variety of cultures. To enrich educators’ capacity to help diverse bodies of students overcome the challenges presented by PSA, this qualitative study asked students to “Please describe yourself as a public speaker” at the beginning and the end of a freshman-level, general education public speaking class. Thematic analysis identified a two-dimensional pattern within student responses (N = 51) (a …
Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota
Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
No abstract provided.
Reconnecting With The Truth: Conspiracies, Perspective Taking, And Misinformation, Scott Sellnow-Richmond, Mili Pinski
Reconnecting With The Truth: Conspiracies, Perspective Taking, And Misinformation, Scott Sellnow-Richmond, Mili Pinski
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
“I’ve done my research.” Misinformation has become a prevalent topic in communication courses, particularly those focused on argumentation, public speaking, or even interpersonal and family communication. Students thus benefit from adapting public speaking-focused assignments to illuminate how to understand - and thus combat- disinformation in their own lives. This assignment works toward this goal in two stages, allowing students to argue not just against misinformation and conspiracies, but also to argue for them as an act of empathy and understanding. The applied nature of this exercise also empowers instructors with a way to concretely address this issue in the classroom. …
“People Don’T Always Show Up The Way You Want Them To”: Utilizing The Hunger Games To Differentiate Between Persuasion, Coercion, Propaganda, And Manipulation, Nancy Bressler
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
The ability to define and conceptualize persuasion and its nuances without engaging in coercion, propaganda, and/or manipulation can be difficult for students at first. This activity centralizes the fine points among these persuasive concepts. Students also recognize the role of their audience in the persuasive messages that they create. Rather than only having a conversation about the common characteristics of these terms and how they differ, students can observe them within the fictional movie The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (Lawrence, 2014). After discussing these ideas with their classmates, students then apply what they have learned by creating persuasive messages …
“Number Of Nonverbal Delivery Techniques”: Innovative Approaches To Gestures, Movement, And Vocal Delivery, Nancy Bressler
“Number Of Nonverbal Delivery Techniques”: Innovative Approaches To Gestures, Movement, And Vocal Delivery, Nancy Bressler
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Through this activity, students consider to what extent gestures, movement, and vocal inflection affect a speech. Using the same speech content as the rest of their group, each student is provided a prompt requiring them to adapt their speech delivery differently. Through these differences, students can better understand how to incorporate nonverbal speech delivery that is natural, balanced, communicates emotion, and effectively communicates the message of the speech. Students discover the importance of nonverbal delivery while using an entertaining speech they may have seen in a television show. Overall, students learn how planned versus natural speech delivery can alter nonverbal …
Listen Up!: Measuring And Mitigating College Students’ Most Commonly-Reported Listening Challenges, Karla Hunter, Erin Lionberger, Ashley Phillips, Kaitlyn Luebbert, Andrea N. Briggs
Listen Up!: Measuring And Mitigating College Students’ Most Commonly-Reported Listening Challenges, Karla Hunter, Erin Lionberger, Ashley Phillips, Kaitlyn Luebbert, Andrea N. Briggs
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This study updates the existing literature on listening education in two ways: 1) by providing an assessment of an effective listening education intervention and 2) by identifying what college students' self-assessment and reflection revealed as their most common barriers to listening and the actions that helped mitigate those challenges. Through content analysis, five graduate student coders analyzed six consecutive pre-Covid-19 semesters of student submissions to a Listening Log Self-Assessment assignment in an online interpersonal communication course (n = 186). This experiential activity was designed to motivate students' metacognitions to elicit accurate self-appraisals based on reflections of students' current listening encounters …
Building Resilience: An Exercise To Create Network Structures And Assess Resilience With Marshmallows And Spaghetti Noodles Or Lego® Pieces, Seungyoon Lee, Bailey C. Benedict
Building Resilience: An Exercise To Create Network Structures And Assess Resilience With Marshmallows And Spaghetti Noodles Or Lego® Pieces, Seungyoon Lee, Bailey C. Benedict
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Scholars, practitioners, and society at large are becoming increasingly interested in how resilience works (Coutu, 2002). This activity gives students the opportunity to build a network structure and assess its resilience, while learning the concepts and calculation steps of basic network metrics including density, reachability, and centralization. The article provides guidelines for preparing necessary materials (e.g., marshmallows and spaghetti noodles or LEGO® pieces), detailed procedures and worksheet for the activity, and debriefing questions for connecting the experiences from the activity with real world examples of communication networks and resilience.
Simulated Creative Collaboration: Experiencing Challenges To Innovative Virtual Teaming In The Classroom, Brian C. Britt, Kristen Hatten
Simulated Creative Collaboration: Experiencing Challenges To Innovative Virtual Teaming In The Classroom, Brian C. Britt, Kristen Hatten
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity provides students with in-depth experience working as part of an innovative virtual team, which will enable them to better understand the relative advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to creative collaboration in different contexts. Participants are divided into groups, which must then solve an assigned problem using a specified communication technology and creative process from the literature. The instructor will introduce a variety of obstacles to communication using each technology, which may inhibit students’ creative processes. Following the activity, the class will discuss these challenges, participants’ responses, and the range of experiences with different collaborative processes and technologies.