How Can a Speech Class Be Online?

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Almost every degree program requires students to take a class in speech communication. Why? Because colleges recognize that these courses teach students important skills they will need in almost every career field. But how is it possible to take a speech class if you’re an online student? On the surface, the whole idea seems impossible. Isn’t the whole purpose of a speech course to stand up in front of a group of real human beings and deliver a speech? Online speech courses have a unique way of bringing public speaking to life even while instruction is delivered entirely over the Internet.

For one, many speech communication courses are offered as hybrid courses, or a combination of online class time and face-to-face class time. Hybrid courses divide a student’s time between a physical campus and an online learning environment. This means your speech professor will post lectures online for all the material you are to learn in class, but will require you to deliver required speeches in front of a class in a traditional classroom environment. For instance, the public speaking course at Arapahoe Community College is offered as a hybrid course, requiring a student’s presence both online and in the classroom. Students in this class must deliver speeches in front of their peers in a physical classroom five or six times a semester; all other work is done online.

Then there are the fully online speech classes, like Lansing Community College’s Dynamics of Communication course. In courses like these, the course instructor sets up an on-campus presentation day for the public speaking portion of the course for students who live in a reasonable distance of the campus. Those who live further out can apply for an exception and have their speech video recorded and sent to their professor. The catch is, the online student must gather a group of at least eight people to listen to the speech as it is being recorded, according to Lansing Community College’ Procedure Statement for its fully online speech course. The video must pan the audience so the instructor can clearly see that at least eight people are present listening to the speech and the speech must be recorded in a formal setting, such as a workplace conference room or community center.

In conclusion, don’t expect to get out of public speaking by taking an online course. Whether you video record the delivery of your speech in front of your own hand-picked audience of 8 to 10 people, or whether you are required to show up to a physical campus every now and then to present a speech, it’s not very likely that you’ll be able to weasel your way out of public speaking, even as an online student.

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