Communications (COMM) 329

Overview

COMM 329: Mediated Interpersonal Communication is a three-credit, senior-level undergraduate communication course. It introduces you to interpersonal and business communication practices in social media and examines these from several perspectives.

Course lessons will teach you key interpersonal and business concepts and skills related to issues relevant to today’s social media world. Lesson readings and activities will ask you to consider and make sense of key terms by relating these to your own experience using social media communication.

Commentary activities will challenge you to discuss these concepts, skills, and issues with other students in ongoing online forums. You will be asked to relate these important key terms to contemporary news events where social media and business communication figure prominently. You will learn from one another’s insight about and experience with social media events and thus help build social and “learning” capital in a virtual group.

Assignments and the Final Examination will challenge you to assess how effectively you and other users communicate with social media. As well, you will be asked to reflect more broadly on the social, cultural, business, and ethical implications of using social media by thinking about how they influence your daily life.

In COMM 329 you will relate the concepts you learn from the course readings to your personal online experience and observations. You will examine how effectively users communicate and behave online, to what ends, and with what outcomes.

Outline

• Lesson 1: A Review of Social Media Networks and Characteristics
• Lesson 2: Listening, Committing to, and Engaging with Others Online
• Lesson 3: Engaging Customers and Maintaining Online Relationships
• Lesson 4: Value Presentations and Impression Management
• Lesson 5: Building Stakeholder Support and Managing Privacy
• Lesson 6: Embracing What You Can’t Control and Engaging in Self-Disclosure
• Lesson 7: Building Customer Confidence with Communication Competence
• Lesson 8: Building Consumer Trust Rather than Antisocial Behaviour
• Lesson 9: Leveraging Social Media and Compensating for Non-Verbal Communication
• Lesson 10: Delivering Excitement and Helping Online Users Through Support Groups

Evaluation

To receive credit for COMM 329, you must complete both assignments, all 4 commentaries, achieve a minimum grade of D (50%) on the final examination, and achieve an overall grade of at least D (50 percent) in the entire course. The distribution of marks for the various credit activities is listed below:

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.

Course Materials

Textbook

eTextbook

Registration in this course includes an electronic textbook. For more information on electronic textbooks, please refer to our eText Initiative site.

A print version of the eText may be available for purchase from the publisher through a direct-to-student link provided on the course website; you can also acquire the textbook on your own if you wish.

Other Resources

Students access all other course materials online at the course website.

Challenge for Credit Overview

The Challenge for Credit process allows you to demonstrate that you have acquired a command of the general subject matter, knowledge, intellectual and/or other skills that would normally be found in a university-level course.

Full information about Challenge for Credit can be found in the Undergraduate Calendar.

Challenge Evaluation

To receive credit for the COMM 329 challenge registration, you must achieve a grade of at least D (50 percent) on the examination.

Online Exam

Undergraduate Challenge for Credit Course Registration Form

• Challenge for Credit Form