The Needs Assessment: Using Community Consulting Projects to Teach Business Communication (Innovative Assignments‪)‬

THE NEEDS ASSESSMENT, a popular tool for helping businesses determine what they need to do to improve their operations, services, and products (Reviere, Berkowitz, Carter, & Ferguson, 1996), can serve as an excellent vehicle for meeting many of the objectives in an introductory business communication course. A needs assessment is a "systematic exploration" (Rouda & Kusy, 1996) designed to "identify the gaps" between "what is" and "what ought to be" (Swist, 2001). It is the tool of choice of consultants because it provides a means of discovering what clients, consumers, and customers perceive as their needs. (See Appendix A for additional information on needs assessments.) ADVANTAGES OF A NEEDS ASSESSMENT PROJECT