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Classes are designed to challenge your thinking and develop your professional skills. You’ll leave each class with a unique set of tools to approach new communications challenges.

Tailor your experience to your career goals by focusing on one of eight areas of specialization. Use the search widget below to sort classes by quarter, specialization, instructor and degree track for each quarter. Get a comprehensive view of the full academic year in our Course Guide.

View the University of Washington Academic Calendar for important dates, including quarter start and end dates, registration dates and deadlines, and campus holidays.

Registration numbers (SLNs) are located on the Time Schedule. Please read the Department’s statement on internet resource requirements for access to courses.

COMMLD 570: Building Successful Online Communities

(

Hill

)

- 2020-2021 | Spring

MCCN Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 3/30 – 6/1, 6:00PM – 9:50PM PST | Online

Course Description:

Before Wikipedia was created, there were seven very similar attempts to build online collaborative encyclopedias. Before Facebook, there were dozens of very similar social networks. Why did Wikipedia and Facebook take off when so many similar sites struggled? Why do some attempts to build communities online lead to large thriving communities while most struggle to attract even a small group of users?

This class will begin with an introduction to several decades of research on computer-mediated communication and online communities to try and understand the building blocks of successful online communities. With this theoretical background in hand, every student will then apply this new understanding by helping to design, build, and improve a real online community.

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 560: Multicultural Marketing: Creative Equitable and Inclusive Communications

(

Park

)

- 2020-2021 | Spring

MCCN Elective | 5 Credits
Saturdays 4/3, 4/17, 5/1, 5/15, 5/29, 9:00AM PST – 5:00PM PST | Online

Course Description:

This course will take a close look at the evolution of multicultural marketing. We will explore how agencies and companies have adapted, pivoted and transformed how we engage with diverse audiences. You’ll learn how to build marketing campaigns that is rooted in principles of diversity, equity and inclusion and is responsive to the increasingly diverse marketplace.

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COMMLD 542: Distributed and Diverse Teams

(

Chang

)

- 2020-2021 | Spring

Track Neutral Elective | 5 Credits
Saturdays/Sundays 4/10, 4/11, 4/24, 5/23, 9:00AM PST – 5:00PM PST | Online

Course Description:

Through this practical and applied course, students will build their leadership and communication effectiveness to work in distributed teams at the global, national, or local levels. With increasing interconnectedness that builds larger and more complex teams and also reduces face/face time of those teams, competencies in distributed leadership are a rapidly evolving must-have set in any professional context but especially in the field of communications. And yet opportunities to sharpen those nuanced skills remain less than optimal. Students will embark on a full-immersion experience by working in distributed teams using a combination of relevant practical materials and readings, ongoing team and individual assignments, personal self-reflection and improved self-awareness and the planning and execution of a class-wise exercise such as a strategy retreat or other learning event. Topics covered will include project planning, goal setting, managing through direct and indirect influence and communicating with impact over the e-highways. Distributed team technology will anchor the students together as they move through coursework that will help them to stretch, struggle, and succeed. By the end of the course, students will be able to not only recognize their progression but will also be able to more effectively articulate the related competencies using terminology and language relevant for professional pursuits. Please note that this course models distributed team leadership in that students will have a weekly distributed leadership team call and work in addition to the 4 on-site classes; this applied approach to the course offers deeper leadership transformation as well as practical skill development.

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COMMLD 540: Mastering the Marketing Mix: Thinking Like a Chief Marketing & Communications Officer

(

McCarthy

)

- 2020-2021 | Spring

MCCN Elective | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 3/31-6/2, 6:00PM PST – 9:50PM PST | Online

Course Description:

This course will provide necessary background on the many disciplines in the communications and marketing mix, identify areas of convergence and divergence between these disciplines, and learn how to use these tools help an organization achieve its objectives or business goals. The course will teach participants to anticipate the communications needs of a company or organization’s leadership and include a range of assignments that ask students to apply course teachings to real-world scenarios with strategic thinking, brand development, and compelling storytelling.

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COMMLD 525: Brand Values and Creativity

(

Howard

)

- 2020-2021 | Spring

Track Neutral Elective | 5 Credits
Mondays 3/29-6/7, 6:00PM PST – 9:50PM PST | Online

Course Description:

This course will take a close up look at corporate brand values in marketing communications today. Brand values should be timeless and unchanging, but in a constantly fluctuating business environment, is this goal even possible? While high volume video advertising and A/B testing is exploding, paradoxically, messaging of corporate brand values is oftentimes minimized. Marketing today is composed of ever-changing algorithms, transactional communications, and confusing narratives. Should creativity play a bigger role in storytelling in today’s marketplace? Do customers even know what the companies they make purchases from actually stand for values-wise? Does it matter? How can companies still connect emotionally with consumers? Students will ideate a marketing film for a company or nonprofit of their choice. All the while, they’ll be considering deeply how emotion, story, and marketing message function in a project that resonates with the consumer while also reinforcing an organization’s belief system.

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COMMLD 513: Content Marketing

(

Weaver

)

- 2020-2021 | Spring

MCCN Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Saturdays 4/10, 4/24, 5/8, 5/22, 6/5 | 9:00AM PST – 5:00AM PST | Online

Course Description:

This course focuses on the approach and implementation of marketing programs that encourage community building and engagement. The course starts with how to build a content strategy that supports the organization and its audiences as a foundation for content marketing. Building from strategy, we’ll explore best practices and tactics to create impactful campaigns and adaptable content for a variety of channels and platforms. Class work focuses on building brand storytelling, effective messaging, and models for optimizing and measuring digital marketing.

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 502: Narratives and Networks

(

Yasin

)

- 2020-2021 | Spring

Track Neutral | Core Requirement | 3 Credits
Thursdays 04/01-06/03 | 8:00PM – 9:50PM PST | Online

Course Description:

Introduces students to key discussions on communication and organizational narratives facilitated by digital media and emerging technologies and explores methods of creating powerful communication networked tools for organizations. At the end of the quarter students create their own communication projects. Credit/no-credit only.

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COMMLD 560: Communication Strategies for Inclusion and Equity

(

Burey

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

5 Credits | MCCN Elective
Tuesdays 1/5-3/9 | 6:00PM – 9:50PM PST | Online

Course Description

We are in the midst of a national reckoning with the presence and impact of institutionalized anti-Black racism in our lives. Politicians, business leaders and everyday people all across the country are asking what it means to stand for Black lives. To do so requires committing beyond surface level diversity and inclusion practices and digging deeper into how we make meaning with our choices for the images and narratives we use to create culture. Knowing how we engage in meaning-making as communicators is foundational to reimagining what meaning we can make to push our companies and cultures towards the vision of racial equity. In this course, we will examine case studies of meaning making across professional sectors including studies of entertainment, fashion, and politics. We will connect this to our interpersonal interactions across race in our professional lives, as well as in our work as communication leaders. By the end of the course, students will be able to more effectively articulate cultural messages and develop skills to help them create new narratives grounded in inclusion, belonging and racial equity.

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COMMLD 570: Digital Cross-Cultural Storytelling for Leadership and Global Networking

(

Wang

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

MCCN Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Thursdays 01/07-03/11 | 6:00PM – 9:50PM PST | Online

Course Description

Evolving multinational working relationships provide a rich source of information, products, and business opportunities. With this global interaction, however, comes the challenge of effectively communicating across cultures. But both verbal and nonverbal communication norms differ among the organizationally diverse workforce today, as do the differences between individualistic and collective cultures. This course aims to deepen students’ understanding of the robustness of this new global networking by applying the organizational diversity continuum, a visualization of the many layers of diversity that an organization encounters each day, internally and externally, to examining successful and failed cases in cross-cultural context. The purpose of this course is to introduce Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT), especially digital storytelling, as one important communication technique in addressing organizational diversity communication challenge as well as building cross-cultural leadership. 

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 501: Leadership and Communities

(

Crofts

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

Track Neutral | Core Requirement | 2 Credits
Mondays 01/04-03/08, 6:00pm – 7:50pm | Online

Course Description:

This foundational class considers leadership development through the two lenses of story and community. Sustained community engagement in the service of a more equitable and just world requires strong leadership models. Personal history and cultural context influence leadership styles, so using cross-sector profiles and guest speakers, we will carefully consider a range of leaders, their life stories, communication styles, and how they connect meaningfully to customers, colleagues, and constituents. Credit/No Credit only.

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COMMLD 570: Institutional Imperative, Communication, and Stakeholder Mindset

(

Howard

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

Track Neutral Elective | 3 Credits
Tuesdays 1/5-3/9 | 6:00pm – 7:50pm | Online

Course Description:

Investor Warren Buffett describes the concept of institutional imperative as “the tendency of executives to mindlessly imitate the behavior of their peers, no matter how foolish it may be to do so.” He added, “I then thought that decent, intelligent and experienced managers would automatically make rational business decisions. But I learned over time that isn’t so. Instead, rationality frequently wilts when the institutional imperative comes into play.”

This unseen force has stifled innovation in businesses while focusing solely on short term financial gains for shareholders only. And covering up for this behavior through dubious communication practices has only complicated things. What role will marketing communication professionals have in expanding companies’ messaging beyond just shareholders going forward? Is change truly afoot, or will there be more of the same?

From the Boeing 737 MAX fiasco to the ever-changing excuses of Facebook to the anti-trust actions against Google, we’ll examine why the communication practices of honesty, trust and admiration will always emerge victorious over institutional imperative. During the quarter we will discuss evolving public and private sector stakeholder communications including, Shareholders, Board Members, and Funders, Communities, Employees, Suppliers, and Customers.”

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COMMLD 540: Human Centered Design for Change Leadership

(

Cioffi

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

MCCN Elective | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 1/6-3/10 | 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Online

Course Description:

Effective change leadership requires broad community engagement and clear communication about the process. Collaborative practices can address individual and group resistance to change. In organizations of many sizes, across multiple sectors, urgent questions about core mission, internal structures, and products and services must be newly addressed given the shifting contexts at every fundamental level. In many sectors, entire infrastructure change is being openly discussed and requested. Leading strategic organizational change, or providing communications support for that leadership, relies on pivotal human-centered design tools (HCD) and their application to achieve measurable success.

In this course we will examine case studies at varying stages of a HCD process. Students will manage research and incubation, communicate it effectively to stakeholders, and deliver a creative agency-level proposal for a client facing organizational change. Students will learn to manage a complex project proposal from start to finish and work effectively in teams to communicate a proposed prototype process using HCD principles and practices. The client relationship will be offered by the instructor or students will be able to propose their own client relationship.

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COMMLD 573: Listening and Leadership

(

Crofts

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

Track Neutral Elective | 2 Credits
Wednesdays, 1/6-3/10 | 6:00pm – 7:50pm | Online

Course Description:

This course considers listening skills as a key leadership attribute when it comes to effective communication. The behaviors of a good listener are considered through a range of texts related to leadership, but with additional emphasis on audio programs showcasing the interview format where an interviewer’s ability to listen closely and empathically solicits strong connection and memorable storytelling. Foundations in Audio Story is the production course geared toward audiophiles at Comm Lead, whereas Listening and Leadership is for all Comm Lead students who are keen to hone their ability to listen as a critical career skill.

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COMMLD 562: Communication for Advocacy

(

Parikh

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

MCCN Elective | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Thursdays 1/7-3/11 | 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Online

Course Description:

This course is focused on”integrated advocacy,” which is a strategy of communicating one’s advocacy efforts through multiple channels – like the marriage equality movement, net neutrality efforts by Google, Facebook and Netflix, and the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. You will develop part of an integrated advocacy campaign working for a client in this class. Real-life challenges and advocacy needs of our clients will allow us to use integrated advocacy model in an applied sense. We will build stories around goals and solutions. We will come up with advocacy tactics and create an advocacy campaign that will ignite change. This is a hands-on course. The course will help you develop immersive storytelling skills, and practice community organizing. You will learn persuasive communication and engagement methods, and how to pack a punch with a campaign aimed at making change. Guest speakers and mentors with experience spearheading campaigns will serve as guides throughout the quarter. The course will culminate with a short advocacy pitch session.

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COMMLD 537: Principles of Storytelling for Organizations, Business, and Movements

(

Kessler

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

Track Neutral Elective | 5 Credits
Saturdays 1/9, 1/23, 2/6, 2/20, 3/6 | 9:00am – 5:00pm | Online

Course Description:

Thinking Story is a foundational class that focuses on the art and craft of nonfiction storytelling to communicate ideas and emotion, build relationships and community, promote change and inspire action. The class reflects the need in all sectors for superb storytelling. The class explores, investigates and discusses the elements of narrative — what makes a story a story – and looks at examples of nonfiction storytelling across media (text, sound, still image, moving image and multimedia combinations). This platform-agnostic, birds-eye view of story is about learning how to reframe/ reconceptualize “information” and “report” as story, how to locate the small story that illuminates the larger issue, and what it takes to produce such work. At its heart, the class is about learning how to conceptualize issues, topics, brands, and ideas as narratives. Students will learn to “think story,” to pinpoint, pitch and gather material for the production of original, compelling and persuasive content.

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COMMLD 535: Foundations of Audio Storytelling

(

Partnow

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

Track Neutral Elective | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 1/5-3/9 | 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Online

Course Description: 

Whether gathered around a radio in a living room or walking plugged in with headphones, the medium of audio storytelling has always offered the opportunity to build mindset-shifting community around content. This course traces the evolution of audio storytelling from radio to podcasting that links to communities for various purposes: to educate, to entertain, and to inspire action — and the new golden age of podcasting that we find ourselves in means that audio storytelling has the potential for broad reach and powerful impact. Consideration is given to the core characteristics of strong storytelling, observed through an auditory filter. Class materials are twinned with a selection of cross-sector guest speakers who bring their own craft perspective. Students will experiment with designing their own short audio pieces.

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© Copyright 2025 Department of Communication. University of Washington

© Copyright 2025 Department of Communication. University of Washington