We explore how improvisation training enhances persons’ communication abilities on group discussion. We firstly design a 50-minitue improvisation communication training program based on major features of group discussion and existing practices of conventional improvisation training. We then conduct a study for 8-person groups. We compare two improvisation conditions, with and without improvisation training and two order conditions, before and after training (or break in without improvisation condition) in both of subjective and quantitative measurements. Results suggest that the improvisation training program designed in this work increases member’s expressiveness, assertiveness, and group satisfaction. They also suggest that the training program tends to increase total speaking time and gestures during the group discussions. Based on the results, we discuss limitations and future work towards establishing improvisation-based communication training method.
