1. Students who graduate college should be prepared with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in their selected profession. One necessary skill is the ability to communicate effectively with others. Interpersonal communication skills are important to both personal and professional development. These skills are often transferable from one context to another, benefiting the communicator in multiple ways. The ability to communicate ideas and feelings effectively may assist in job seeking, conflict resolution as well as providing clarity in everyday communication. Students enrolled in an Interpersonal Commination Skills course demonstrated those necessary skills through a role play assignment. Students displayed proficiency in many areas including paraphrasing, speaking, and non-verbal behavior. The results complement existing information which identifies behavioral modeling as an effective learning procedure. The refinement over several semesters, along with strong reliability and validity statistics, indicate that the assignment and assessment rubric are effective measurement tools of student learning. Limitations Students were presented with low stakes (see handout) rather than high stakes scenarios. Future research may want to investigate if students can apply skills to risker scenarios than those enacted in the course. Although students displayed proficiency in skills, it is difficult to provide a measure of student improvement because a pre-post research design was not implemented. It is also difficult to determine whether improvement from one semester to the next is a result of assessment modifications, improvements in students’ communication skills or both. Development and Validation of an Interpersonal Communications Assignment T. Rice, J. Sailors, Ph.D., & R. Bubb, M.S. Auburn University The need to assess and document student learning is a growing trend among colleges and universities (Suskie, 2009). Additionally, valid course assignments are necessary for students to become competent professionals in psychology-related fields. Developed in fall of 2011 and implemented in spring of 2012, the current study focuses on the development of an interpersonal communication assignment based on behavior modeling principles and a corresponding assessment rubric. Derived from Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (1977), behavioral modeling proposes that learning is most effective when behaviors are identified, practiced, and evaluated (Hultman, 1986). The model suggests that students learn ideal behavior through observation and role-play participation (Aamodt, 2013). Following this model, an interpersonal communication assignment was developed to teach and assess effective communication skills to human development and family studies majors. Students learned “generic skills within the context of specific situations,” an approach considered most effective when used with behavioral modeling techniques (Hultman, 1986). Behavioral modeling can be used to teach a variety of skills and was integrated into this course assignment with the intent that the communication skills learned by students would transfer to real life situations (Taylor, Russ-Eft, & Chan, 2005). The assignment includes three important skills identified for successful interpersonal communication. These skills include listening, speaking, and non- verbal behavior. Aspects of listening include the students’ ability to paraphrase the speaker, provide prompts and ask open-ended questions. Speaking consists of whether students express a whole message containing facts, opinions, needs and feelings. Finally, non-verbal behavior involves a demonstration of key aspects of SOLER: squarely facing their partners, maintaining an open body position, leaning toward their partner, maintaining eye contact, and maintaining a relaxed demeanor (Egan, 1998). The expectations for this study are to develop a valid interpersonal communication assessment that can be used by other courses, to improve communication skills in students, and to transfer students’ communication skills to multiple contexts. Introduction Methods Results Participants: Seventy-six (N = 76) undergraduate students enrolled in an interpersonal skills course during the Spring 2013 semester at Auburn University Procedure: Instructors provided lectures on effective interpersonal communication skills to students Students practiced skills through in-class written assignments Students received feedback to identify gaps in their skillsets Students were randomly assigned role-play partners. Each pair then selected a role-play scenario Instructor reviewed assessment requirements and grading rubric prior to students completing the assignment Assessment Each student pair created 4-6 minutes videos to demonstrate their oral communication exchange. Each student was required to demonstrate key skills at least twice in the video. Students submitted the recording for assessment Students peer-evaluated the role-play videos of other classmates Role play videos were assessed for oral communication skills by two instructors and the students’ peers Listening Paraphrasing proficiency: 97.37% in content 93.09% in feeling 91.78% in both feeling and content Providing appropriate prompts to convey listening 46.05% always or almost always 26.97% sometimes, never, or almost never Asking questions 97.7% proficient in asking open-ended questions 21.05% still included closed-ended questions Non-verbal proficiency 100% in squarely facing partner 92.11% in maintaining an open body position 88.82% in maintaining a relaxed demeanor 74.27% in maintaining eye contact 65.79% in leaning toward their partner Assignment Validation Instructors demonstrated excellent inter-rater reliability when using the assignment grading rubric (ICC(3,2) =.83) The assignment demonstrated concurrent validity with remaining course grades (r(74) =.283, p = 0.013) Discussion Course Results by Semester Student Verbal Results References Aamodt, M. G. (2013). Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An applied approach (5 th ed.). Thomson-Wadsworth: Belmont, CA. Egan, G. (1998). The skilled helper: A problem-management communication during the emergency department care and approach to helping (6th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks. Hultman, K. E. (1986). Behavior Modeling for Results. Training and Development Journal, Vol. 40(12), 60-63. Suskie, L. (2009). Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Approach (2 nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Taylor, P. J., Russ-Eft, D. F., & Chan, D. W. L. (2005). A meta-analytic review of behavior modeling training. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 692-709.