Darrin J. Griffin

Teacher Leadership and Intellectual Stimulation: Improving Students' Approaches to Studying through Intrinsic Motivation

Teachers provide leadership in college classrooms, and the behaviors they exhibit as leaders impact a variety of student outcomes (Bolkan & Goodboy, 2009, 2010; Pounder, 2008). Specifically, transformational leadership (Bass, 1985) has been shown to be an important predictor of student learning (Bolkan & Goodboy, 2009). This study examined a specific component of transformational leadership to investigate how communicating intellectual stimulation transforms the nature of the classroom by encouraging student motivation and, subsequently, students’ approaches to their studying. Results suggest that when teachers influence students’ intrinsic motivation through the use of intellectually stimulating behaviors, students approach their learning in deep and strategic ways, and are less likely to adopt a surface-level approach to their studies.

The Role of Instructor Humor and Students’ Educational Orientations inStudent Learning, Extra Effort, Participation, and Out-of-Class Communication

This study used instructional humor processing theory to examine how instructors’ humor enhanced students’ learning outcomes (i.e., cognitive learning, extra effort) and communication practices both inside (i.e., participation) and outside (i.e., out-of-class communication) the college classroom. These relationships were examined while controlling for students’ educational orientations (i.e., learning orientation, grade orientation), which are known to influence students’ learning and motivation in their coursework. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that learning orientation was a positive predictor of students’ cognitive learning, extra effort, participation, and out-of-class communication, whereas grade orientation was a negative predictor of participation and out-of-class communication. Results also indicated that after controlling for variance explained by students’ learning and grade orientations, instructor humor remained a positive predictor of students’ cognitive learning, extra effort, participation, and out-of-class communication.

Prolific Scholarship in Communication Studies: Five Years in Review

The purpose of this study was to ascertain who the most prolific scholars (top one percent) in Communication Studies were as a function of their publication rates in 24 journals for the last five years. In addition, we sought to determine the most prolific scholars in a subset of journals considered to be most central to our discipline. Results indicated that 30 individuals could be considered prolific scholars for the years spanning 2007–2011 for the list of 24 journals, and six individuals could be considered prolific in the central journals. It took nine and eight articles within the five-year period to make each list, respectively. We also report the top 25 most prolific and active researchers since 1915. Results are discussed as they pertain to trends in the discipline.

Students’ use of cell phones in class for off-task behaviors: the indirect impact of instructors’ teaching behaviors through boredom and students’ attitudes

ABSTRACT This study was conducted to determine how various teaching behaviors influence students’ emotional and cognitive experiences in class, and how these experiences relate to students’ use of cell phones while considering contextual factors that might influence this outcome. Two hundred and seventy-four students responded to questions regarding their instructors’ teaching behaviors, their experiences of boredom in class, and their attitudes toward using cell phones for off-task activities. Results indicated that, after controlling for students’ general cell phone involvement and course policies regarding cell phone use in class, students’ decisions to engage with their cell phones during course lessons were influenced by their attitudes toward using these devices. Importantly, our results indicated that students’ attitudes regarding using their cell phones for off-task activities in class were a function of their instructors’ teaching behaviors and the experiences of boredom these behaviors produced.

Academic Dishonesty Beyond Cheating and Plagiarism: Students’ Interpersonal Deception in the College Classroom

The purpose of this study was to examine student deception in the college classroom. Participants were 256 undergraduate students who responded to an open-ended questionnaire to determine (a) the ways students deceive their instructors, (b) their motives for deception, (c) their methods used to accomplish deception, and (d) their rate of success in obtaining their desired goals. Results revealed that most students (a) deceived their instructors by engaging in academic misconduct and lying or making up excuses for late work and attendance issues, (b) were motivated to deceive because of grade issues, and to a lesser extent, impression management issues, (c) preferred using falsification and concealment as their methods of deception, and (d) perceived that they were successful through their deceptive acts.

Communicating Consumer Complaints: Message Content and its Perceived Effectiveness

Consumers sometimes experience discontent when they interact with companies and may complain to communicate their dissatisfaction. To date, most researchers have focused on what organizations do to remedy consumer dissatisfaction without examining the content of the complaint messages. This is regrettable considering the degree to which organizations comply with complaints may be a function of what consumers say. Using Garners (2009) typology of organizational influence and dissent as a theoretical guide, we created a measure of consumer complaining to determine what people say when they complain to companies and what messages they perceive to be effective in gaining compliance.

Catch and hold: instructional interventions and their differential impact on student interest, attention, and autonomous motivation

ABSTRACT In this study, we investigated how various teaching behaviors influence student interest as a situational variable. Specifically, we studied how behaviors related to catch interest (i.e., ephemeral aspects of the learning environment such as instructor humor, nonverbal immediacy, intellectual stimulation) and hold interest (i.e., features of the environment that empower students to reach their personal goals including content relevance and meaningfulness) predicted students’ sustained attention and autonomous motivation. As anticipated, results of a structural regression model indicated that catch interest was linked to students’ sustained attention in class. Conversely, hold interest was related to students’ autonomous motivation. Our results suggest that if teachers want to ensure they maximize student motivation inside the classroom and beyond, they might consider diversifying their teaching behaviors to target both the catch and hold aspects of students’ situational interest.

Is the Door-in-the-Face a Concession?

The Door-in-the-Face (DITF) sequential message strategy was investigated in a three-study analysis of existing experimental findings. The current study predicted there would be a positive relationship between concession size and compliance rates in DITF studies. Study 1 included 25 comparisons where size of concession was quantifiable as measured by percentage reduction from initial to target request in the DITF condition. Study 2 data relied on a panel of undergraduate students to provide an index of concession size in 12 additional observations. A third study validated the panel procedure of rating concession size and also provided 9 additional independent observations from the pool of published studies on DITF. Results from each study indicated a positive relationship between concession size and effect size (r = 0.35, 0.55, 0.68, respectively). Study findings provide support for reciprocal concessions explanation for DITF effects.

Information Sharing during the University of Texas at Austin Active Shooter/Suicide Event.

Emergency response systems can be improved by investigating the motives and manner in which people share information during an active shooter crisis. This article analyzed survey data collected from undergraduate participants at The University of Texas at Austin who were enrolled during the fall of 2010 when an active shooter event occurred on campus. Our findings indicated that distance from a threat predicts an individual’s perception of message credibility. Additional findings suggested innovativeness is a strong driving factor in individuals’ reliance on social and personal media to contact others who need safety updates. Finally, perceptions of mortality and experience to negative media portrayals were positively related to active information sharing during this event. Limitations and suggestions for future research are offered.

Analyzing Language in Suicide Notes and Legacy Tokens.

BACKGROUND Identifying precursors that will aid in the discovery of individuals who may harm themselves or others has long been a focus of scholarly research. AIM This work set out to determine if it is possible to use the legacy tokens of active shooters and notes left from individuals who completed suicide to uncover signals that foreshadow their behavior. METHOD A total of 25 suicide notes and 21 legacy tokens were compared with a sample of over 20,000 student writings for a preliminary computer-assisted text analysis to determine what differences can be coded with existing computer software to better identify students who may commit self-harm or harm to others. RESULTS The results support that text analysis techniques with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) tool are effective for identifying suicidal or homicidal writings as distinct from each other and from a variety of student writings in an automated fashion. CONCLUSION Findings indicate support for automated identification of writings that were associated with harm to self, harm to others, and various other student writing products. This work begins to uncover the viability or larger scale, low cost methods of automatic detection for individuals suffering from harmful ideation.