Outreach within: applying instructional communication to the landscape of higher education

Abstract

Instructional communication researchers have long argued for the application of our work to extend beyond the classroom (see Kearney, 2008). While applying our work outside of higher education is important, the opportunity to solve problems, translate research, facilitate change, and evaluate programs may be as simple as walking across campus. As scholars of communication and instruction, we reside at the nexus of communication studies, pedagogy, and educational psychology (Mottet & Beebe, 2006). We have explored, at length, issues related to classroom instruction across contexts to better understand not only how learning occurs but what environments, relationships, and practices best support the facilitation of that learning (Myers et al., 2016). Certainly, our work can translate beyond the classroom and academia at large. However, instructional communication researchers can make a meaningful impact in our own institutions if we just work to engage more thoroughly with wider audiences within our campus communities. Specifically, our outreach to enhance higher education should focus on two specific areas: student retention and faculty development. First, our work must reach beyond learning and begin speaking more directly to issues of persistence and retention. Across a lifetime, a college degree can lead to increased earning potential, social mobility, and other benefits (Andrade et al., 2022), and yet, many students still fail to achieve degree completion (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2020). Instructional communication has largely overlooked persistence as an outcome of interest; this, despite the importance of persistence in student success, its prevalence in related disciplines, its integration into the administration of higher education, and even its fiscal significance to an institution (see Cueso, 2010). Given that many retention frameworks and best practices involve the importance of relationships, a key component of communication research at large, we are well suited to speak to and address these issues within the academy. Therefore, instructional communication researchers should work with colleges and universities to explore best practices related to retention at a variety of levels including student-to-student (e.g., mentoring programs, support facilitation), student-to-teacher (e.g., teaching students in first-year experience courses how to talk to and engage with instructors), teacher-to-student (e.g., working with teachers to identify and engage with students in danger of early departure), and even teacher-to-teacher and teacher-to-administrator (e.g., working to create programs that engage various stakeholders from across the academy to support student persistence