Dakota's Portfolio

Dr. Dakota Horn is a student-centered, innovative teacher with a reputation for professionalism and high standards in the classroom, training, and invited talks. As the Oral Communication Process Course Director, Associate Professor, and Associate Dean at Bradley University, Dakota has a wide-ranging skillset. Dakota specializes in curriculum and instruction as well as a variety of communication research. He is a “utility” player and can be put in most situations. Dakota specializes in running workshops related to effective messages, communication anxiety, imposter syndrome, increasing engagement in training, public speaking, and instructional design. Dakota created an Instructional Design Certificate for area professionals, and a Presentation Assistance Center to support university  students who need additional help in public speaking. As the Bradley Core Curriculum Assessment Coordinator, he created the assessment plan that now guides the core curriculum and he has become one of the university leaders in assessment. Dakota receives exceptionally positive evaluations from his students, workshop participants, and invitied talk audience members. These quotes reflect an engaged teacher who is regularly praised for his preparation, knowledge, and sincere dedication to his students. 

 

Dakota  has published a textbook, multiple peer-reviewed articles and multiple peer-reviewed book chapters. Dakota's scholarship contains rigor, is well-focused and certainly has a main connection to communication. Dakota's scholarship is centered on pedagogy. His research agenda is focused on effective teaching and learning within communication courses. Dr. Horn was hired to direct the basic speech course and holds a doctorate in communication education (with a bachelors and masters in communication). In other words, his research is perfectly consistent with both his current role and his academic credentials. Dakota  is responsible for the content and delivery of a course taken by every student at Bradley University, and his expertise in this area is valuable to the department, college and university. This was especially evident in Dakota's handling of oral communication course during the Covid-19 pandemic. Coordinating multiple sections of public speaking to accommodate large course enrollments, limited classroom capacity due to social distancing, and the challenges of simulating public speaking via the Internet, required a pivot that most of us thankfully did not experience. It is worth noting that Dr. Horn transitioned the entire course during the summer, without additional compensation, and yet did so without compromising the educational value to students. Arguably, only someone with his expertise could have navigated Com 103 through the pandemic. 

 

Dakota has proven to be a highly effective award-winning teacher, a productive scholar and the consummate department and university citizen who meets and exceeds the expectations for tenure and promotion. 

 

Dakota is the director of the Oral Communication Program, director of the newly

formed Presentation Assistance Center, and program coordinator of the Instructional Design

certificate program in partnership with the Office of Continuing Education at Bradley University.

He recently published the 21 st edition of the textbook Principles of Public Speaking with

Routledge. His research interests focus on how to best create and deliver instructional

messages, how to facilitate the most effective public speaking course, addressing accessibility in

education, supporting student learning, and helping students approach speech anxiety. Dakota

helped co-found the Communication Anxiety and Apprehension division of the National

Communication Association. He serves as the program planner for the 2024 academic

conference for that division.

 

Before joining Bradley University, he worked in government, with a

Fortune 100 company, and with K- 12 schools on curriculum and policy.  Dakota earned the

2023 Outstanding Teacher Award from the nationally recognized Central States Communication

Association.