Interpersonal communication can be defined as a selective, systematic, and on going process in which individuals interact to reflect and build personal knowledge about each other and to create meaning in their relationships (Wood, 2002). Research in the field of out-of-class communication is relevant to interpersonal communication because it can be related to the ideas of identity scripts, communication competence, and misunderstandings between gendered speech communities. Examples of interpersonal communication can be associated to the research through real life situations. My own experiences with out-of-class communication are an illustration of this. Education is dependent on communication between professors and students in the classroom but it is also contingent on out-of-class communication. A study of how the roles of student gender and professor gender relate to out-of class communication was conducted based on this theory. Student perception of the credibility and empathy of their instructor was also explored in this study.
The research on out-of-class (OOC) communication has been sparsely conducted in the past. What research has been done in the field supports the value of OOC communication to interpersonal relationships between students and professors even though OOC contact is not as extensive as it was previously thought to be (Nadler and Nadler, 2001). College students that stayed in school generally had more OOC contact with their professors than students that dropped out (Nadler and Nadler, 2001). Also the importance of gender plays into the different roles of students and professors and how they communicate with each other. The idea of a "chilly" climate for woman in and out of the classroom has been proven in past studies. This perception that women hold of their professors and the situations they are involved in comes from the difference in the way students view male and female faculty (Nadler and Nadler, 2001).