Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
University of Northern Iowa--Students--Attitudes; University of Northern Iowa; Grading and marking (Students)--Iowa--Cedar Falls; Classroom environment--Psychological aspects; Grading and marking (Students); Students--Attitudes; Iowa--Cedar Falls; Academic theses;
Abstract
This study is an ethnographic examination of a performance-based basic communication course, Oral Communication, at the University of Northern Iowa. During the Fall 2002 semester, I stayed in a lab section as a participant observer. After the semester was over, I conducted in-depth interviews with the selected students and the instructor. I looked at the classroom from an interpersonal perspective. Specifically, I focused on two major topics: students' uncertainty reduction in the classroom and their perceptions of the instructor's written feedback. Through this examination, I found that several important factors affected students' uncertainty reduction and their perceptions. Regarding written feedback, I found that it helped the students reduce their uncertainty by the instructor communicating grading policy and expectations. In addition, it informed the students what they could do to improve their subsequent speech performances. However, written feedback may increase students' uncertainty if they find unexpected or new information in the feedback. The findings of this study suggest a supportive classroom climate helps students feel comfortable in the classroom, and, as a result, it leads to students' positive perceptions as well as reduction of their uncertainty. Specifically, several communication variables were found as effective for creating a supportive climate ( e.g., self-disclosure, humor, sufficient interactions at the initial stages of the class). This study also suggests the importance of examining classroom context. Throughout this study, I found that something important for the development of classroom culture happened in the classroom and in one's mind every day. These events affected students' interpretations of previous events and the enacting of future behaviors. In order to describe the findings along with the classroom context, I took a unique approach in Chapter IV: a chronological writing style. It helped create the context of the classroom by providing interdependence between events that took place in the classroom. In this chapter, I incorporated participants' perspective and my perspective to describe what happened inside the classroom as well as inside the participants, including the students, the instructor, and myself. This study also indicates several implications for the fields of communication education and instructional communication.
Year of Submission
2003
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Communication Studies
First Advisor
April Chatham-Carpenter
Second Advisor
Paul Turman
Third Advisor
Leah White
Date Original
2003
Object Description
1 PDF file (147 leaves)
Copyright
©2003 Naoki Kambe
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Kambe, Naoki, "Students’ Perceptions of Instructor’s Written Feedback: Uncertainty Reduction in the Basic Communication Course" (2003). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 3114.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/3114
Comments
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