Category Archives: Resources for Instructors

Free Video for Classroom Use: Balancing Emotional and Logical Appeals for Persuasive Messages

Here is the fourth video in our new series that addresses a variety of specific communication challenges and offers practical advice that students can apply now in their coursework and take with them on the job. This video helps students understand how to find the optimum balance of emotional and logical appeals when crafting persuasive messages. […]

Free Video for Classroom Use: Do Your Visuals Tell the Truth?

Here is the third video in our new series that addresses a variety of specific communication challenges and offers practical advice that students can apply now in their coursework and take with them on the job. This video helps students understand the nuances of visual ethics and gives them a framework for making ethical choices when […]

Free Video for Classroom Use: The Three-Step Solution to Three Intimidating Challenges in Business Communication

Here is the second video in our new series that addresses a variety of specific communication challenges and offers practical advice that students can apply now in their coursework and take with them on the job. This video helps students tackle three challenges that all students and all business professionals face: Making every message and […]

Free Video for Classroom Use: Sharing Negative Information Without Being Negative

We're excited to launch a new series of brief videos that you can use to supplement your lectures. These videos address specific communication challenges and offer practical advice that students can apply now in their coursework and take with them on the job. We're producing two versions of each video. The instructor version concludes with […]

Dr. Holly Littlefield’s Epic Collection of Social Media Failures

If you were fortunate enough to attend Holly Littlefield's presentation at the ABC convention in Seattle this past week, you were treated to an entertaining and highly instructive selection of social media failures. Her talk, "Audience, Brand, Channel: Using Social Media Cases to Teach Communications Concepts," offered a taste of everything from cringe-worthy image choices […]

Free Resource for Adopters: Bovée and Thill’s Guide to Business Communication Videos

Bovée and Thill's Guide to Videos for Business Communication is now available free to all adopters of Bovée and Thill business communication texts. The guide, prepared by Dr. Maria Schellhase of the College of Southern Nevada, has links to nearly 50 online videos in 27 subject categories. The guide includes discussion questions for each video […]

A Bumper Crop of Corporate Crises: Discussion Resources for Your Classroom

Between network security breaches and random corporate blunders, it's been a rough few months for GM, Target, Neiman Marcus, Adobe, Michaels, Lululemon, SeaWorld, US Airways, Yahoo, and about half the population of the Internet, thanks to the Heartbleed glitch. Their grief is our good fortune, however—at least in terms of providing discussion material for business […]

Hall of Fame: GamesRadar.com’s Use of Twitter for Content Teasers (with PowerPoint Slide for Classroom Use)

One of the most effective business uses of Twitter is as a "headline-announcement service," alerting readers to new blog posts, new pieces in online magazines, and other fresh content. However, writing effective Twitter teasers for any given target audience is a bit of an artform. The videogame review site GamesRadar.com does a good job of […]

Hall of Fame: Creative Commons’s Effective Use of Plain Language (with PowerPoint Slide for Classroom Use)

The ability to explain complex topics in clear terms is one of the most important skills a business communicator can have. This example from the Creative Commons website, explaining three levels of content licensing, demonstrates the power of plain language. Bovee and Thill blog – Hall of Fame – Creative Commons website