Online Communities and Resources for Business Communication Instructors

Online Communities and Resources for Business Communication Instructors1

Online Communities and Resources for Business Communication Instructors

As you grapple with large class sizes and heavy advising loads, we are constantly on the lookout for ways that we can help you spend less time preparing lectures and activities and more time teaching and working one-on-one with your students. We invite you to explore the unmatched array of resources the Bovée & Thill team offers for business communication instructors.

INSTRUCTOR BLOGS

We publish two blogs for instructors:

Business Communication Headline Newsdelivers late-breaking news stories, interesting blog posts from other communication professionals, and other information you can use to enhance lectures and class discussions. See page 6for more details.
Bovée & Thill’s Business Communication Blog offers original insights and commentary from the authors, including fresh examples of good and bad business communication.

ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Connect with business communication instructors and professionals from around the world in the Bovée & Thill online communities on Facebook and LinkedIn:

Facebook: Teaching Business Communication Group.Share your opinions about issues important to instructors of business communication, ask peers questions, and offer best practices for instruction.
Facebook: Bovée and Thill's Inner Circle for Business Communication. Devoted exclusively to college and university instructors who are adopters of textbooks by Courtland Bovée or John Thill.
Facebook:Social Media and Electronic Communication Workshop. Learn about electronic communication and social media quickly and easily. Members can receive one-on-one mentoring, as requested, as well as opportunities for group chat and webinars.
LinkedIn: Teaching Business Communication group.This group is a discussion and resource-sharing forum exploring all aspects of teaching business communication.
LinkedIn: Bovee & Thill’s Inner Circle for Business Communication.Thisgroup is also devoted exclusively to college and university instructors who are adopters of textbooks by Courtland Bovée or John Thill.

FREE CONTENT UPDATING SERVICE

Bovée & Thill’s Real-Time Updates service offers a wealth of material we have personally selected for instructors and students, sorted by media type and textbook chapter. See page 9for more details.

The latest business communication news, delivered free to your desktop

Stay on top of new technologies, important trends, and hot topics with Business Communication Headline News. This free service deliver late-breaking news in headlines withconcise summaries. You can scan incoming items in a matter of seconds, then simply click through to read the full articles that interest you.

How it will help you

This service offers instructors a variety of important advantages:

Keep current with the latest information and trends in the field
Easily update your lecture notes with fresh material
Create visuals for your classroom presentations
Supplement your lectures with cutting-edge handouts
Enhance your research projects with the newest data
Compare best practices from other instructors
Improve the quality and effectiveness of your teaching by reading about new teaching tips and techniques

This comprehensive website, developed and published by the authors, offers an array of unique tools:

Business Communication Web Search, featuring a revolutionary approach to searching developed by Bovée and Thill that preformats more than 325 types of searches using the web’s most powerful search engines. The tool uses a simple, attractive, and intuitive interface engineered to help business communication instructors find precisely what they want, whether it’s PowerPoint files, Adobe Acrobat PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, Excel files, videos, or podcasts.
Real-Time Updates are newsfeeds and content updates tied directly to specific points throughout the text. Each content update is classified by the type of media featured: article, video, podcast, PowerPoint, or PDF. Additional sections on the site include Instructor Messages, Instructor Media (both password-protected), Student Messages, and Student Assignments. The “Most Popular” updates are listed by title in the margin of each chapter on the site.

How you can get started

Visit and choose whatever delivery method best fits your Internet usage habits:

View the headlines in your e-mail. Under “Subscribe for Free,” enter your e-mail address in the subscription box.
View the headlines on a web-based newsreader.Click the link under “By RSS Feed” and select your preferred newsreader.
View the headlines on a PC-based newsreader. Click the link under “More Subscription Options” and follow the option for Windows, Macintosh, or Linux software.
View the headlines on your cell phone. Click the link under “More Subscription Options” and follow the option for subscribing via cell phone.
View the headlines on Twitter. Go to
View the headlines on Facebook. Go to or search on Facebook for Business Communication Headline News.

In addition to automated delivery, you can always view the headlines at . The headlines are categorized by subject and are fully searchable. And since this is a blog, readers can add their comments about any of the headlines that have been posted.

Visit the website today so you don’t miss any of the late-breaking information in the field of business communication!

How to Use Bovée & Thill’s Web Search Tool

Web Search is an online search tool developed by Bovée & Thill that enables instructors to have 334 search engines at their fingertips for quick, comprehensive searching online.

The tool uses a simple, attractive, intuitive interface, engineered to help instructors find precisely what they want, whether it’s PowerPoint files, Adobe Acrobat PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, or Excel files.

Users can also search for academic content or instructional assistance, or search online libraries, news sites, newspapers and magazines, newsletters, blogsites, the blogosphere, forums and groups, wikis, reference, government, information about people, social bookmarking sites, press releases, company information, photographs, videos, videoblogs, podcasts, or RSS newsfeeds.

The tool also includes major search, metasearch, visible search, invisible web search, and social bookmarking search engines.

Go to Web Search() and run your cursor over the various icons. Note that each icon represents a different type of search engine. When you click on an icon, all of the search engines relating to that icon will be displayed.

Here are several situations that will help you understand how to use Web Search.

Situation 1

You’re going to be teaching about blogging, and you’d like to see a list of the Microsoft PowerPoint programs available for this topic.

Go to the search tool, enter “blogging” in the search box, click on the “File Type” icon (first icon, first row), and you’ll see a drop-down menu of search engines. Click on “Google: Microsoft PowerPoint.” The result will be a list of all of the Microsoft PowerPoint programs currently available on the web on the topic of “blogging.”

You can drag and drop the program files of your choice from the search page onto your desktop.

Situation 2

You’re teaching about podcasting, and you’d like a list of online videos.

Go to the search tool, enter “podcasting” in the search box, click on the “Videos” icon, and you’ll see a drop-down menu of video search engines. Click on the search engine of your choice. The result will be a list of the online videos about podcasting. If you don’t find what you’re seeking with the first search engine you selected, choose another search engine until you’ve found the video that suits your needs.

You can drag and drop the online video files of your choice from the search page onto your desktop.

Situation 3

As you begin the report-writing section of your textbook, you want your students to learn how to do research about companies. Your assignment to them is to have them select a publicly traded company and write a one-page paper about the company. You should ask your students to do the following:

Go to the search tool, enter the query (such as “Xerox”) in the search box, click on the icon, “Companies.” A drop-down menu will show search engines for locating company information. Students should click on the search engine of their choice. The result will be information about Xerox. For additional information about Xerox, students should use the remaining search engines.

Students can drag and drop the files of their choice from the search page onto their desktops.

reinforce learning and keep content fresh throughout your entire course

You no longer need to spend hours of your limited prep time searching for current examples, discussion materials, and classroom media.

Business Communication Essentials’ “Real-Time Updates” solves the age-old problems of maintaining the currency of textbook content and providing to you a steady stream of new examples, lecture materials, and media to enliven your classes. This unique suite of web technologies, developed by the authors, automatically provides daily content updates during the school year, including podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, online videos, PDFs, and articles. Simply visit the website whenever you need material—or get new items delivered to your desktop automatically via RSS newsreader.

Visit to take advantage of this unique resource, including media items available only to adopters of Business Communication Essentials, Fifth Edition.