Archives: Courses - Page 15 - Communication Leadership

Classes

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.

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COMMLD 510 C: User Interface & Visual Design

(

Gordon

)

- Current Quarter | 2024-2025 | Spring 2025

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 4/2 – 6/4, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 230
SLN: 21706

Course Description

Design encompasses a variety of interconnected concepts. User Interface Design (UI ) is concerned with how navigational components are organized within a system interface to ensure the layout is intuitive and helps users achieve their goals. Visual Design emphasizes aesthetics and the strategic use of communication elements, such as images, colors, fonts, and other graphic components, to create visually appealing layouts that achieve a business purpose.

Some of the topics we’ll cover are research, mood board creation, testing, user flows, Figma essentials, component libraries, general layout and design, wireframing, prototyping, microcopy, and more. At the end of this course, students will know how to create impactful UI designs and have knowledge of the tools to bring designs to fruition.

This class is a good match for students who:

• want the fundamentals of human perception and cognition that inform effective interaction design;

• want to understand how UI and Visual Design complement each other;

• want to learn the essential steps, tools and knowledge that inform effective UI & Visual Design workflows

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COMMLD 511: Intro to User Centered Design

(

Gordon

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Mondays 9/29 – 12/1, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | DEN 258

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COMMLD 540: Professional Short-Form Writing

(

Tomasic

)

- 2020-2021 | Autumn

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Wednesdays 9/30-12/9, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | Online

Course Description:

This collaborative hands-on course explores the kind of short-form writing that dominates today’s rapidly evolving professional communications space — the digital space where lines between content and form increasingly blur and where always-on media feeds deliver a mix of advertising, marketing, public relations, human resources, personal brand-building and journalistic reporting and research. It’s a space that presents new writing challenges every day: professional emails, office memos, newsletters, website copy, funding proposals, executive summaries, op-eds, tweets, blurbs, blogs. Much of this material is badly done. Most of it is mediocre. The best of it, though, sings out and demands our attention, demonstrating mastery in the kind of critical thinking and dedicated practice that delivers copy sharply focused and sure in matching voice and material with form and audience. This course is part professional-communications criticism class and part writing workshop. It’s about learning how to identify good writing; it’s about understanding the process that produces good writing; and it’s about practicing that process yourself.

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COMMLD 541: Crisis Communication

(

Visneski

)

- 2021-2022 | Winter 2022

Track Neutral Elective | Meets Law and Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 1/4 – 3/8, 6:00PM – 9:50PM | CMU 302 | Hybrid
Registration SLN: 22038

Course Description:

The 24-hour news cycle, social media, and online reporting fundamentally changed how institutional leaders, executives, celebrities, politicians, and organizations address crises big and small; internal and external; local, national, and international. Effectively managing a crisis means not just employing PR strategies, but developing a comprehensive communications plan that disseminates actionable content and engages all stakeholders with equal focus across multiple and diverse networks. This course will address how the tools of communication influence crisis communication strategies. In addition, it will identify the key issues that must be addressed during an organizational crisis (real or imagined) from a communications perspective. It will examine implementation strategies to engage traditional and social media; digital networks; federal, state and local lawmakers; external and internal stakeholders; and consumers or constituents. As important, it will deconstruct and reinforce the personal ethics and behavior required by professionals in a crisis situation. This class uses current events, interactive discussions, real-time exercises, and engaging guest lectures to provide practical insight about effective techniques and lessons learned.

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COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

(

Levine

)

- 2022-2023 | Autumn 2022

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 09/28-12/07, 6:00PM – 9:50PM | CMU 104
Registration SLN: 23379

Course Description:

This course focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces from a usability perspective. The aim of the class is to study the concepts, methods, and techniques of usability engineering, with a focus on the artifacts where user experience is essential. Historically, usability has covered aspects of efficiency, learnability, and ease of use. Today, a large number of other measures for success rely on elements such as playability, engagement, entertainment, immersion, and aesthetics.

The above concepts will be detailed with the expectation that by the end of the quarter, students will recognize the aspects of each of the following deliverables within Interface Design and User Research. At the completion of this course, students will have portfolio-ready, end-to-end work examples. The work examples are designed for students to demonstrate they can: understand basic principles of user interface design, implementation, and evaluation, design and conduct usability studies, select an appropriate evaluation method and articulate its advantages and disadvantages, establish useful test objectives, and prepare reports and presenting results.

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 523: Foundations of Branding: Social Media Communications and Strategy

(

Tang

)

- 2021-2022 | Spring 2022

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Saturdays 4/9, 4/23, 5/7, 5/21, 6/4 9:00AM – 5:00PM | Online
Registration SLN: 21453

Course Description

Communication on digital platforms and networks will be the forever norm of our society and human experience. In this course, we will learn, practice and investigate the fundamental principles of communication through digital platforms such as social media. We’ll identify strategies used by social media platforms to maximize their key metrics and apply them to business metrics that brands and organizations use to fulfill their objectives and goals. At the end of this course, you’ll be able to identify areas of opportunity on social media platforms to create interesting campaigns, analyze emerging social trends to stay ahead of the curve, and use the tools and best practices of the world’s most powerful brands to engage audiences.

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COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

(

Porter

)

- 2022-2023 | Winter 2023

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Thursdays 1/5 – 3/9, 6:00PM – 9:50PM | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 12776

Course Description:

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

(

Levine

)

- 2023-2024 | Autumn 2023

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Mondays 10/2-12/4, 6:00PM – 9:50PM | DEN 213
Registration SLN: 13001

Course Description

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

(

Levine

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Mondays 9/30 – 12/9, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 104
Registration SLN: 13050

Course Description

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 512: User Research & UX Strategies

(

Levine

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Mondays 9/29 – 12/1, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 104

Course Description

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COMMLD 558: Law and Policy

(

Baker

)

- 2020-2021 | Autumn

MCDM Elective | Meets Law and Ethics Requirement
Tuesdays 10/6-12/8, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Online

Course Description:

This course looks at how the law of digital media, interactive media and social media has facilitated the growth of multimedia storytelling, interactivity, and the explosion of collaborative consumption. Understanding when and how one can remix, reuse, republish, and remake content is critical to any organization’s successful advertising, content creation, distribution, and publication. This course will explore the legal issues surrounding free expression, content production and publication, intellectual property (with a special emphasis on copyright and fair use), and advertising. This course is designed both as a stand-alone course to satisfy the law and policy requirement of the program and as a companion to the data security and privacy law course offered in the Fall, which focuses more on data usage, privacy and security, FTC regulatory issues and intellectual property issues around data and analytics.

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COMMLD 550: Ethical Questions of Big Data

(

Lohmann

)

- 2020-2021 | Winter

MCDM Elective | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Saturdays/Sundays 1/16-1/17, 1/30-1/31, 2/27-2/28, 3/13-3/14 | 9:00am – 1:00pm | Online

Course Description:

Big Data: Cure or Curse? This course will provide you with an overview of the benefits and challenges of the use of big data and encourage you to apply the Communication Leadership core declaration tenets for its ethical use. The class will provide a basic understanding of the use of big data in analytics, predicting crises, on social media, behavior tracking, and even in marketing. This course provides an overview on the new regulations and conversations around secure data, intellectual property, and the challenge of data privacy. It also examines the benefits of some uses of anonymous big data for research and health innovation and cures. By the end of the class, students will understand how big data contributes to tracking pandemics, creating health cures, predicting crises, behavior tracking and targeted messaging on social media and in marketing. They will know how to research, market, and innovate with big data in a way that honors the values of integrity, accountability and transparency, and builds community. They will also be able to reflect on how they can make an impact with big data in a way that demands and honors diversity, takes responsibility, is aware of bias and does not amplify inequity.

Student Testimonial:

“I just wanted to pass on the current gratitude I’m feeling for your class. I’m taking a few more data-centric classes and yours set a solid foundation of what to consider with big data, and has made me a little less intimidated by it.”

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COMMLD 540 A: Building Teams and Community

(

Baltus

)

- 2021-2022 | Autumn 2021

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Mondays 10/04-12/06, 6:00PM – 8:20PM PDT | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 13057

Course Description:

Building meaningful community around your work begins with your team. This course focuses on cultivating community from the inside out, in a series of concentric and overlapping circles. First it addresses ways to bring people together within the workplace and make sure they feel valued through rewarding opportunities to brainstorm, collaborate and critique. Then it explores what it means to set communication norms within an organization and how those norms affect an organization’s culture and identity. Finally, it provides a methodology for deepening connections with external audiences, conducting credible outreach, building load-bearing bridges and inviting widespread engagement that leads to social impact.

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COMMLD 525: Brand Values and Creativity

(

Howard

)

- 2021-2022 | Spring 2022

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 3/29 – 5/31 6:00PM – 9:50PM | DEN 213 | Partially In-Person
Registration SLN: 12605

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 512: User Research and UX Strategies

(

Porter

)

- 2024-2025 | Winter 2025

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Thursdays 1/9 – 3/13, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Online
Registration SLN: 12706

Course Description:

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 560: Communicating Across Power and Identities

(

Ross

)

- 2020-2021 | Autumn

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Tuesdays 10/6-12/8, 6:00pm – 7:50pm | Online

Course Description:

This course provides a primer on concepts of identity, power, privilege, and systems of oppression. Through reflective writing and facilitated discussions of curated readings students explore how their personal and professional identities impact their effectiveness in communicating across interpersonal difference. Designed to welcome those who may have previously avoided discussing uncomfortable topics, this introductory course empowers students with modes of inquiry that enable their essential self-examination and self-preparation for any future equity-related organizational collaborations.

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COMMLD 510 C: User Interface & Visual Design

COMMLD 511: Intro to User Centered Design

COMMLD 540: Professional Short-Form Writing

COMMLD 541: Crisis Communication

COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

COMMLD 523: Foundations of Branding: Social Media Communications and Strategy

COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

COMMLD 512: User Research & UX Strategies

COMMLD 558: Law and Policy

COMMLD 550: Ethical Questions of Big Data

COMMLD 540 A: Building Teams and Community

COMMLD 525: Brand Values and Creativity

COMMLD 512: User Research and UX Strategies

COMMLD 560: Communicating Across Power and Identities

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