Course Description
Focuses on the practice of communication for students' success in their academic and professional careers. Specific communication skills will be practiced within the following contexts: public speaking/presentations, managing conflict, and business writing.
Athena Title
Comm for Business Effective
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in BUSN 4900, BUSN 4900W
Non-Traditional Format
This course will be taught 95% or more online.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- This course is designed to help each student – regardless of skill level or prior knowledge – acquire and improve communication skills over his/her academic and work careers. Research strongly supports a positive correlation between adept student communication behaviors (clear, concise, persuasive, inclusive language), top skills sought by employers, and quality job offers. Moreover, employers consistently report that communication skills are lacking in a significant number of hires across the country.
- The goal of this course is to assist each student in the development of his/her communication skills, including opportunities that call for public speaking, resolving interpersonal conflict, and crafting effective written communiques.
Topical Outline
- Topics for oral presentations
-Audience analysis
-Message content and design
-Preparing for resistance
-Storytelling with data; importance of logic and emotional balance for call to action
-Choosing media
-Thinking like a designer
-Practice
- Topics for Conflict Management
-Conflict as bacteria: We need it; how to tell the productive from the unproductive
-Various conflict “styles” as tendencies or habits
-How to discern a potentially “crucial” or critical conflict that needs attention, intervention – and who owns it
-Mastering the power of dialogue
- Topics for Business Writing
-Why are you writing? (Importance of/when to use various communication channels)
-Using the MACJ model for reports – madman, architect, carpenter, judge
-5 C’s: clarity, conciseness, continuity, completeness, clean (error-free) – these work together as career accelerators or limiters
-How to organize material
-Tone/voice – your writing is part of your identity
-Writing assignments include group and individual reflections, a business writing portfolio, group contracts, discussion posts, one pagers, leadership profiles, Slidedocs, and presentations
