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The purpose of this essay is more of an intellectual exercise than an attempt at a pragmatic redesign of the basic course. Essentially, I submit that we as a discipline have lost sight of what the phrase "public speaking" actually means and erroneously and dangerously equated it with simply delivering formal presentations. When the term is broken down into its component parts of "public" and "speaking" it is understood as something much broader, and thus allows for the curricular flexibility forwarded by Hess (2012), West (2012), Valenzano (2013) and Wallace (2015), to name a few. In this essay, I offer various ways of defining "public" and "speaking" as a way of arguing that even courses titled as "Public Speaking" need not rely solely on presentational speaking assignments and instruction in their courses. In other words, "public speaking" should be a more liberating, than restrictive course title, and should shift our attention from specific assignments to communication outcomes the course is designed to achieve.

Changes to general education curricula are taking place across the globe. From the Bologna Process in Europe to the Liberal Education and America's Promise initiative in the United States, colleges and universities are reforming what constitutes general education for their students. At the University of Dayton, such reforms took the shape of a massive overhaul of general education to the new, student learning-driven Common Academic Program. The Department of Communication at the University of Dayton was forced to fundamentally change its basic course in communication, formerly delivered in three separate one-credit modules, to a three-credit course with a different focus. This article details the story of how the Common Academic Program unfolded, what effect it had on the Department of Communication, and what process of reform was undertaken by the department to ensure that the new course remained a core aspect of the new Common Academic Program. This experience offers lessons to departments and administrators at institutions everywhere on how to effectively reform a general education course to accommodate a student learning focus, fit to university mission, and address the needs of the campus.

The basic communication course, with its roots in classical Greece and Rome, is frequently a required course in general education. The course often serves as our "front porch," welcoming new students to the Communication discipline. This essay first outlines early traditions in oral communication instruction and their influence on future iterations of the course. In addition, because fundamental changes in higher education in more modern times affected emphases and delivery of the course, we focus on the relationship between general education and the basic course and the significant curricular changes to the course during the latter part of the 20th century. Finally, we discuss ramifications of the evolution of the basic course, as the discipline moves forward into the 21st century.

Communication is, by its nature, inherently interdisciplinary. In no other subfield of the discipline is this truer than instructional communication. To that end, instructional communication scholars contribute to the understanding of classroom dynamics and effective methods for facilitating learning. A close examination of that work highlights two opportunities related to its interdisciplinary reach that have yet to be tackled in a meaningful way. The first opportunity lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of studies explore questions in traditional classroom settings or some version of online course delivery, and yet there are many other methods than these employed in other disciplines. The second opportunity is the profession's ability to export instructional communication research to other disciplines. The authors of this article argue that the most critical need for instructional communication research in the next five years and beyond is that it begins to take advantage of these opportunities within the work of communication educators. Higher education today is more dynamic than ever, and the authors believe that the influence of their discipline is self limiting if instructional communication educators limit themselves by focusing mainly on traditional classrooms as a format for research. They argue that higher education is moving away from the "one size fits all" models of the past, so instructional communication research should shift with it.