Communication Center Journal - Volume 5:1 - 2019 Practicing what we preach - Assessing communication center client and staff perspectives of positive communication conferencing practices

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by kopisore

2019 Communication Center Journal Volume 5:1 paper evaluates positive communication conferencing practices by comparing how communication center staff and clients assess valued communicative behaviors in tutoring sessions. The work distinguishes knowing from doing in communication competence and examines whether training practices adequately prepare staff to enact the behaviors they help others develop. The article outlines relevant literature, introduces a conferencing training framework grounded in Mirivel’s Positive Communication Model (PCM), describes case context and methodology, and then reports findings plus implications for the usefulness of the approach.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Literature Review

Communication Centers

Conferencing behaviors

Communication Center Journal 3 Volume 5:1, 2019 Practicing what we preach: Assessing communication center client and staff perspectives of positive communication conferencing practices Alexandria Spadaro University of Kansas It can often be difficult, meta-level reflective work in our communication centers to provide guidance on improving others’ communication competence through our own understanding of communication knowledge and skill enactment. Few disciplines come with the same kind of scrutiny that we often experience as communication scholars, tutors, and students. We are often called to task as to whether or not we practice what we preach when it comes to effective, ethical communication behaviors. While knowing and doing are vitally different things when it comes to communication competence, there is value in reflecting on how well our communication center training practices prepare our staff to enact the very behaviors they are often helping others develop. For this reason, our communication center set out to explore how both our staff and clients assessed the positive communicative behaviors we value in conferencing situations. In the following paper, we first overview the relevant literature related to communication center conferencing behaviors. Second, introduce our conferencing training framework, Mirivel’s (2014) Positive Communication Model followed by, third, our case context and project methodology. Fourth, we share our findings and, fifth, we explore the implications and usefulness of what we discovered. Literature Review In this section, we overview literature related to communication center Kristen McIntyre University of Arkansas at Little Rock conferencing behaviors and client perceptions of services. We also introduce the Positive Communication Movement and take a more in depth look at Mirivel’s (2014) Positive Communication Model (PCM), which serves as the theoretical frame for our center staff conferencing protocol training and we argue is a useful model for encompassing and promoting effective conferencing behaviors. Communication Centers Communication centers offer tutoring for a variety of outcomes such as discussions, presentations, debates and interviews in addition to supporting the basic course (McCall, Harrison, & Murphy, 2017) . The success of communication centers to foster learning and inspire repeat client visits is supported clearly in the literature (e.g. Davis, Linvill, & Jacobs, 2017; Jones, Hunt, Simonds, Comadena, & Baldwin, 2004; Kangas Dwyer & Davidson, 2012; LeFebvre, LeFebvre, & Anderson, 2017) . For this reason, it is important to understand how communication centers build the behaviors necessary to interact effectively with clients as well as how clients are perceiving the effectiveness of those behaviors. Conferencing behaviors. Bell and Mladenovic (2015) advocate that tutors, in general, should be prepared to work with clients through a framework of situated learning where tutors experience real teaching situations, reflective practice where tutors are able to build skills through relevant activities, and conceptual expansion where tutors are encouraged to move away Communication Center Journal 4 Volume 5:1, 2019 from focusing on themselves and instead embrace student/client-centered learning. Weissbach and Pflueger (2018), in their piece about cross-training writing tutors to work with engineering students, argue for the importance of content-specific training for tutors to better equip them with the knowledge they need to navigate genrespecific writing. Similarly, emphasizing the importance of adaptive content training, Yook, Rao, and Wilde (2012) outline the important role communication centers play in supporting Communication Across the Curriculum initiatives and advocate that tutors develop adaptive strategies to better navigate the discipline-specific communication genres they might encounter. Hobgood (2014) more specifically asserts that

FAQs

What problem does the paper address about communication centers?

It examines how communication center staff can be guided to improve others’ communication competence through their own understanding and enacted behaviors, while questioning whether they truly practice what they teach.

What is the focus of the study regarding conferencing practices?

The study explores how both staff and clients assess the positive communicative behaviors valued in conferencing situations.

How is Mirivel’s Positive Communication Model used?

Mirivel’s (2014) Positive Communication Model (PCM) provides the theoretical framework for the center staff’s conferencing protocol training.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by kopisore