Assessing Goal 4 Communication Skills for Psychology Across Audience, Purpose, and Context

The challenge of teaching communication skills outlined in Goal 4 of the APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major is that it occurs in many contexts and the communicator must adapt the form to match both context and purpose. We created a taxonomy of dimensions and kinds of communication...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTeaching of psychology Vol. 47; no. 4; pp. 296 - 304
Main Authors Chew, Stephen L., Neufeld, Garth, Hamill, Sharon, Taylor, Annette, Macias, Salvador
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.10.2020
Subjects
Assignments
Communication Skills
Evaluation Methods
Goal Orientation
Interpersonal Competence
Psychology
Scoring Rubrics
Skill Development
Student Evaluation
Undergraduate Students
assessment
rubrics
teaching
communication
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Summary:The challenge of teaching communication skills outlined in Goal 4 of the APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major is that it occurs in many contexts and the communicator must adapt the form to match both context and purpose. We created a taxonomy of dimensions and kinds of communication that represents the various contexts in communication assignments in psychology classes. We propose a curricular-level solution to assessing the development of communication skill, including multiple assessment opportunities in both course and curriculum with progressively higher standards. We discuss how different forms of rubrics can be used to assess communication and created a “common” rubric that can be adapted and used to assess communication across many different contexts. Finally, since social media have increased the frequency of exposure to often engaging, but misleading or inaccurate communication, we discuss the value of being able to judge the validity of received communications and the importance of teaching students how to evaluate messages critically.
ISSN:0098-6283
1532-8023
DOI:10.1177/0098628320945120