Laughter and Love

I continue to be amazed at the classroom potential of so much of the stuff that appears in these dating and personals sites. This is just one example.
MSN Dating & Personals - Does laughter equal love?

Psychology Today Website

For anyone not familiar with this website, take a look. There is definitely something here for everyone. We need something like this for communication.
Psychology Today: relationships & (communication listening 'non-verbal communication')

Empathy Website

I thought there was lots of interesting stuff here. Lots of good examples for the classroom.
Empathy, Listening Skills, and Relationships

Mentoring

A recent USAToday graphic depicts the impact of mentoring--based on a survey of 4561 respondents from 42 different countries--46% thought the impact of mentoring on their career was "great", 45% said "moderate," 8% said "small" and 1% said "little" or "none"--a pretty big impact and yet, oddly enough, we don't do much with it in communication. There are no books that I'm aware of that focus on communication and mentoring.

Dating Rules

Depending on your class, this might prove very interesting.
MSN Dating & Personals - The rules of dating around

Communication in the Workplace

The recent Time magazine (3/20/06, p. 80) article, “Why your boss may start sweating the small stuff,” by Julie Rawe is interesting not only for pointing out new directions in business but for reiterating guidelines for interpersonal communication that have appeared in textbooks over the last 10 or 20 years. For example and to use the examples used in the article, when you check your messages while talking with a colleague, it “devalues the speaker’s time and thus the speaker.” We would say it’s a good example of disconfirmation. Ditto for greeting one person with a handshake and others with a much friendlier gesture; it makes the handshake seem disapproving and disconfirms the other person.

Paglia on Academia

Take a look at Camille Paglia’s op-ed piece, “Academic, Heal Thyself” (New York Times, 3/6/06, p. A21). As with all Paglia’s writings, you may agree, you may disagree, but you’re not likely to be neutral.

Leadership

According to a USAToday snapshot (3/6/06), 89 percent of the 150 executives surveyed believe it’s more challenging to be a company leader—which I take to be largely though not exclusively a communication skill--today than five years ago. Only 1 percent thought it was less challenging. BTW, both Marist College in NY and Temple University in PA both have interesting programs on communication and leadership.

Community Colleges

I thought this article on community colleges might be of interest to some.
MSN Encarta - Career Training

Romance Quiz

In communication research, there are conflicting findings on whether men or women are more romantic. Here's a little quiz that might get discussion going.

Male Myths

This looks like it will make an interesting addition to the discussion of gender and communication.
Relationships � Article � MSN Lifestyle