Using Real-World Standards to Enhance Students' Presentation Skills (Innovative Assignments‪)‬

IN COUNTLESS SURVEYS, employers, graduate students, academicians, and others continue to list oral and written communication among the most critical skills needed by business students today (Hynes & Bhatia, 1996; Maes, Weldy, & Icenogle, 1997; Plutsky, 1996; Wardrope, 2002). The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International (2004) continues to recognize the importance nf communication skills in its latest standards. Not surprisingly, Wardrope (2002) found that a communication course was required at 76% of the institutions surveyed. Now the debate is not about the value of a business communication course but about its effectiveness. It seems critical to decipher how best to teach the necessary communication skills to business students to meet real-world standards (Dorn, 1999; Muir, 1996; Wolff, 1996). This article describes the efforts of a small, Midwest university to enhance the effectiveness of its business communication course by adopting such standards to gauge the oral presentation skill mastery of its students. A COMPETENCY-BASED CURRICULUM