Abstract
This research examines whether having students privately watch their own videotaped speeches impacts their self‐reported levels of communication competence and speaker apprehension. Based on a naturally occurring experiment, results indicated that: a) students’ reported levels of apprehension about meetings decreased significantly in sections with videotape feedback; b) students reported significant increases in competency and decreases in apprehension across work and social settings but reported the largest improvements in the classroom setting; and c) the videotape feedback had a limited differential impact on students’ perceived improvements based on their initial levels of competence and apprehension. Results suggest the need to further evaluate use of videotapes in the basic course.