Basic Communication Course Annual, Volume 36 (2024)

Drew T. Ashby-King, Melissa A. Lucas, and Lindsey B. Anderson focus on how students experience and use instructor feedback and the tensions that arise from students’ views of the feedback. Next, Miranda N. Rouse conducts an analysis of rubrics to highlight the ways in which public speaking assessments and curriculum have privileged normative, able-bodied, and neurotypical individuals, prompting us to consider how this positioning creates power imbalances and inequities among students and instructors. Joshua E. Young and Allison D. Brenneise challenge us to consider how using the term basic to describe the course and its students, instructors, and stakeholders has exceedingly and prolongingly limited the power of the course and its purpose. Finally, Jennifer Y. Abbott, Jordin Clark, and James Proszek offer critical engagement as a strategy for bringing civic engagement and justice to the forefront of the basic course. In continuing the forum essays, for this issue, I wanted to offer space to engage the course community in conversation about topics and issues we have been reluctant to share or question. In response to this forum, Carly Densmore and Jessica Cherry argue for increased visibility, attention, and training on grief in the classroom and use critical grief pedagogy as a frame to orient curriculum and teacher training to address the unavoidable ways grief permeates spaces of teaching and learning. Nicholas T. Tatum and Jeffrey T. Child call for increased attention to the real and pressing concern of burnout in the basic course at all levels, and they leave us with many questions to answer and address. Dious Joseph’s piece argues for a proactive approach that integrates artificial intelligence (AI) into foundation courses and shares some of the possibilities and concerns that may result. Finally, Kate Swartz considers the case for “ungrading” and how it can be practiced in the introductory course. The forums conclude with an expertly crafted critical reflection response form Kristina Ruiz-Mesa and Ana Terminel Iberri that synthesizes and elevates the arguments and possibilities set forth in the forum essays.