The corporate migration activity is designed to help students connect practical concepts of how language creates power within organizational structures. By engaging in this activity, students will demonstrate and observe how unclear language, (in)effective communication, and disorganization (re)create and sustain power within an organization. This…

Critical health communication (CHC) explores how meanings and enactments of health are linked to power dynamics and systemic inequalities by centering the body in research and practice. When teaching CHC in a postsecondary classroom, it is imperative to provide students with an opportunity to engage in embodied learning to think critically about…

We describe how a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) "enrolling" educational institution can transform its practices to embrace and include student voices and become HSI "affirming and thriving" by focusing on the introductory semester-long public-speaking course as a site for liberatory learning outcomes and by using digital…

This activity elucidates a critical and pragmatic means by which students and instructors can examine the practice of labor exploitation by neoliberal corporations. By employing critical communication pedagogy (CCP), instructors and students can learn about the ways that corporations actively steal wages from their employees and communicatively…

Courses: Professional Speaking, Business and Professional Communication, Environmental Communication, or any course covering topics related to neoliberalism and the environment. Objectives: In this single-class activity, students will first examine the possible environmental effects of fracking near the Bakken Oil Formation in North Dakota.…

Courses: News Reporting, Advertising, Strategic Communication, Media Studies, Introduction to Communication, Intercultural and Interracial Communication, Business Communication, and Hybrid Public Speaking. Objectives: This module facilitates a process for students to interrogate how they relate to the public and to understand the profound…

Courses: Communication Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism, Introduction to Rhetoric, Introduction to Communication, Media Studies, and Persuasion courses. Objective: The aim of this activity is to introduce and explain the method of ideological criticism through commonplace advertising.

Courses: Media Criticism, Media and Society, and Media and Gender. Objectives: Students will gain a better understanding of how hegemony operates through culturally accepted norms that allow oppressive practices to endure in society. Students will then develop their own "culture jam" campaign to show them how counterhegemonic discourse…

As Barry Brummett (1984) has argued, the purpose of rhetorical theory is pedagogical--providing students with resources for understanding the rhetorical transactions that they encounter every day. An understanding of the implications of ideology is necessary for advanced communication students. Kellner and Share (2005) contend that this is…

One of the methods used to enhance students' ability not only to identify different cultures but also to describe their own cultures with proper analytical vocabulary is to teach students how to play the role of an outsider of their culture and de-familiarize their everyday practice so that they can distinguish cultural patterns and…

This article describes an activity in which students of instructional communication (1) learn about hegemony in the classroom; and (2) analyze the pedagogical behavior of a cinematic teacher in the movie "Half Nelson." Through this analysis, students will gain a heightened awareness of hegemony and will identify avenues for praxis. Doing so will…

Understanding and conducting research is a complex, integral skill that needs to be mastered by both undergraduate and graduate students. Yet many students are reluctant and often somewhat apprehensive about undertaking research and understanding the underlying statistical methods used to evaluate research (Dauphinee, Schau, & Stevens, 1997).…

This article presents an activity in which students will demonstrate the relationship between the nonverbal concept of space and the flow of verbal communication. Most courses in interpersonal, intercultural, small group, and family communication discuss types of nonverbal communication, including kinesics, haptics, paralanguage, proxemics, and…

In this activity, students will be able to apply the concepts of stories and rituals to an analysis of the ritual in the short story "Harvest Home" by David Bradley, gaining understanding of how stories and rituals affect and reflect family values, power structures and identities. "Harvest Home" talks about the rituals involved in a…

The objective of the assignment described here is to allow students to reflect upon and articulate how they have been shaped by their "standpoints" in life. Many times, students are not aware of others' views and cultural upbringing (other than surface-level issues). By examining how Standpoint Theory shapes one's perceptions of their privileges…