Analysis of teaching communicative skill and action guidelines. Attract attention talking: a challenge for university teaching

Abstract

From the university educational field it is undoubted that communication represents, today more than ever, a theme of great importance. The fact that educational quality is largely based on an Effective Communication is an unavoidable reality (Barrio and Borragán., 2005). In the context of the EHEA, the teacher must assume a series of substantial changes in the teaching-learning methodology, as well as in the skills and competences that must be developed inside and outside the classroom, as in the incorporation of new pedagogical models in relation to communication in class (Barrio and Borragán, 2011).
We know a lot about some of the important issues for effective communication. However, do we know the most effective indicators and the precise guidelines for the work of this skill among teachers? It seems that the development of instruments for the analysis of this skill is still appropriate. In this sense, the Loupe of the Aula de Oratoria of the University of Cantabria, that has been used in this work, (an instrument for the Analysis of the Communicative Teaching Skill) includes nine basic dimensions in the communicative ability of the teaching function: message; attention, understanding and feedback; language; speech, voice and body language; action and experimentation; induction to work, to study and to the next class session; participation of students; personality, empathy, seduction and optimism; and teacher’s relations with the student.
We have counted on the collaboration of 156 university teachers from different disciplines, through completion of the tool. The results analyzed in this article allow us to continue working to  offer increasingly specific action guidelines in relation to improving the communicative ability of the university teacher.