Abstract
Ethics is a concern within the field of communication (Canary, 2007; Cheney, 2008), and ultimately, the spiritual intent of oral communications at a Christian university is for students to relate biblically with other people. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine if change in content order improved integration of Biblical ethics into student knowledge and understanding in an oral communication course.
The hypothesis for this study was as follows: There is a difference in the ability to integrate Biblical ethics into knowledge and understanding in an oral communication course between those students who are taught using content focused on ethical communication and those students who are taught using traditional content order.
In order to determine the efficacy of the altered structure of the class, a ten-question multiple choice pretest/posttest were created and administered to both groups. A two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied to the data, with the independent variables being question number and content order, while the dependent variable was the change in ethical communication choices.
The results from the ANOVA indicated that there existed significant mean differences between the groups for both Content Order and Question Number. However, there was no significant interaction effect between Content Order and Question Number. The total mean scores for percent change from pretest to posttest for classes using the experimental content order were significantly higher than those classes using the traditional content order.
Based upon the analysis of the current data, it appears that the experimental content order was more effective in teaching the students Biblical ethics than the traditional content order, but the order in which the material is taught is less important than the instructor, or perhaps more accurately, the intentionality of the instructor.
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Recommended Citation
Gallagher, R., Miller, M. L., & Roso, C. (2016). Effectiveness of content order in improving ethical communication choices in oral communications. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for Christians in Higher Education, 7(1), 11-25. https://doi.org/10.31380/sotlched.7.1.11
