AALHE 2018 Annual Conference

What if there were a formative assessment that helped you to foresee and master explaining those areas that likely cause your students the most confusion? This session guides instructors and presenters on how to use explanatory speaking to assess their listeners' comprehension. While explanatory speaking traditionally involves teachers explaining concepts to students, new approaches to using this method assess student learning by putting ourselves in the students' position. In turn, we use student explanations of terms that involve difficult language or concepts that are hard to picture or believe, in order to identify gaps in their understanding. In recent years, communication programs have begun applying this method, based on Rowan's (1995) pedagogy for explanatory public speaking, to their textbooks and curriculum; however, this approach is not limited to the communication discipline or relevant areas. To explain the power of this method, the presenter will use an interactive demonstration involving critical and often misunderstood concepts in a communication course. Attendees will be able to apply this knowledge to various course subjects, formats, and contexts, including webinars, traditional, online, or hybrid courses, undergraduate or graduate courses, synchronous or asynchronous discussions, written or spoken assignments, course readings, and more.