Archives: Courses - Page 26 - 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 570B: Leadership at All Levels

(

Myers

)

- 2023-2024 | Autumn 2023

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Wednesdays 9/27-12/6, 6:00PM – 8:20PM | DEN 212
Registration SLN: 13023

Course Description

Leadership shows up everywhere, every day–and it is open to us all. Building on the Comm Lead leadership coursework, this course will take the theoretical development of one’s leadership style and bring it into practice with one’s work style. Classes will focus on mini-workshops around the following topics: decision-making processes, presentation skills, practical communications, how-to be a team player (including how-to run a meeting, how-to write an email), and drafting your optimum work experience. Students will complete the class knowing how to address bias and success inhibitors within any organization; develop skills for collaborative and successful leadership at any level; and understand how to empower their workplace for everyone. Guest speakers will share stories from leadership perspectives at different companies and how they approach their own development and empowerment.

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COMMLD 570B: Understanding Online Communities and their Data

(

Hansen

)

- 2023-2024 | Spring 2024

Track Neutral | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 3/27 – 5/29, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 242
Registration SLN: 12574

Course Description

Navigating online communities constitutes a large portion of what we experience as “the internet,” and yet understanding these communities is not always a straightforward or easy task. This course will explore the nature of online communities, different ways we can come to learn about them, and how we should think about handling the data we collect (and indeed, whether to collect it at all). Students will gain a basic social scientific foundation for thinking about communities and the affordances of computer mediated communication before surveying several established approaches to collecting and analyzing data produced by and about specific communities, including surveys, web scraping, and social listening/monitoring.

Throughout, we will consider the ethical implications and demands of our work as researchers and professionals, emphasizing such values as respect for persons, prevention of harm, and beneficence. Students will conclude the course by developing group research projects using one or more of the methods we’ve learned together to answer a clearly defined research question and presenting their findings within a professional context.

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 570C: Cross-Sector Collaboration for Social Change

(

Foot

)

- 2023-2024 | Spring 2024

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Mondays 3/25 – 5/20, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 21560

Course Description

Social change requires organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors to collaborate well. However, organizational leaders face many challenges in doing so. Cross-sector collaboration is a complex communicative process that underlies every aspect of societal change, at multiple levels and across many kinds of difference. In this course, students will employ concepts from several fields to analyze and practice real-world instances of cross-sector collaboration, and develop the communication skills essential for interorganizational interactions that foster social change.

The centerpiece of the course is a 5-week simulation of collaborative decision-making conducted during class sessions. In the simulation, each student has a role in a (mock) multi-sector task force– situated in a fictional mountain town– that negotiates the creation of a wildfire mitigation safety plan. Through the simulation, students will apply knowledge gained from course readings, and develop skills in assessing other stakeholders’ needs and motives, building alliances, communicating constructively through disagreements, and negotiating multilateral agreements for the collective good.

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COMMLD 570D: Media Entrepreneurship

(

Anand, Briggs

)

- 2023-2024 | Autumn 2023

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Tuesdays 10/3-12/5, 6:00PM – 8:20PM | DEN 213
Registration SLN: 23354

Course Description

This course is for anyone who wants to learn what it takes to build something from scratch, from user research, to creating buy-in to launching your idea. We’ll cover product development frameworks, operational thinking and crucial leadership skills to develop a new product, service or program as a standalone business or within an existing organization. We’ll practice how to define and verify a problem to solve for your users, test your assumptions, create buy-in and collaborative structures among leadership and design a strategic and operating plan to ensure sustainability. By the end of the class, you’ll have developed, at minimum, a user-facing signup page, a 30-second and five-minute elevator pitch and basic strategic and operating plans.

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COMMLD 570 D: Online Community Data Research

(

Hansen

)

- Current Quarter | 2024-2025 | Spring 2025

Track Neutral | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Mondays 3/31 – 6/9, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 230
SLN: 12593

Course Description

Meets Research Methods Requirement.

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COMMLD 573: Listening and Leadership for Participatory Design Skills

(

Crofts

)

- Current Quarter | 2024-2025 | Spring 2025

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Wednesdays 4/2 – 6/4, 6:00pm – 7:50pm | Online
SLN: 12594

Course Description:

While there are many skills that contribute to being an effective leader at any level of any organization, you would be hard-pressed to find a list that didn’t include listening up at the top. Across the field of professional communication, teams collaborate to design things every day—from a strategic communications plan to a new app. Participatory design centers the voices of end-users in the design process, with a goal to create products or services that thereby better meet the priorities of the user by listening carefully to their insights, observations, and feedback. (Other terms for participatory design include cooperative design, co-design, or community design.) One could argue that strong leadership and strong participatory design share a common feature when it comes to listening: both your colleagues and your clients thrive when you actively listen and learn from them.

This class takes an applied approach to listening skill development by inviting students to become keen observers of their listening habits, as well as active participants in strengthening this crucial skill set. We will explore listening as it relates to participatory design, from UX research to community development, and from listening across differences on diverse teams to advocacy movements.

Throughout the quarter, we were able to learn about various listening styles and how we can apply them in our personal and professional lives. To this day, I still reference the material and course reading that we learned and reviewed in class.–AK Sterling, MCCN cohort ‘19 alumni

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COMMLD 580: Scenario Planning: Crafting Stories to Communicate the Future

(

Rasmus

)

- 2022-2023 | Spring 2023

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 3/29 – 5/31, 6:00PM – 9:50PM | CMU 230
SLN: 21368

Course Description

This course explores techniques for exploring possible futures and how to apply those futures to create business narratives. The class will work through a complete cycle of scenario planning. Learners will gather and document uncertainties related to the future of work with an emphasis on communications. The class will then build rich narratives that explore how the future may unfold under different social, technological, economic, environmental, and political circumstances. The course will also explore how to use scenarios to inform strategic choices and drive content development. Students will be expected to demonstrate their mastery of scenario planning through individual work and team presentations. Team presentations will focus on the future of work and its implications for communications. Individual stories will feature multimedia presentations that describe the learner living in one of the futures.

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COMMLD 580: Communicating the Future with Scenario Planning

(

Rasmus

)

- 2023-2024 | Autumn 2023

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 9/27-12/6, 6:00PM – 9:50PM | CMU 230
Registration SLN: 13025

Course Description

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COMMLD 520A: Communications in the Age of AI

(

Schiller

)

- 2023-2024 | Winter 2024

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Sundays 1/7, 1/21, 2/4, 9:00am – 5:00pm | CMU 230
Registration SLN: 12625

Course Description

This class will teach frameworks for thinking about AI’s impact on communications work across enterprise organizations, and practical applications for integrating it into daily work. Students will learn how to use AI strategically – to increase agility and accelerate work – while protecting key objectives of clarity, authenticity, security, and employee engagement.

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COMMLD 580A: Content Design for Conversational AI

(

Bradshaw

)

- 2023-2024 | Spring 2024

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 3/26 – 5/28, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | DEM 112
Registration SLN: 12575

Course Description

Conversational AI has significantly reshaped human interactions, impacting how we connect, purchase, work, learn, and live our lives in the 21st century. This course delves into Conversational AI, exploring its intricate relationship with communication and media theory. Students will delve into the intricate interplay between human interaction and AI, including the foundational groundwork required for constructing dialogues, and explore generative AI’s potential and limitations. By immersing ourselves in critical questions such as the necessity of bots and avatars, and their roles in mimicking human discourse, we embark on a journey to uncover the underlying motives. We will focus on real-world case studies from business and education, enabling us to paint a holistic portrait of the vast Conversational AI landscape.

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COMMLD 600: MC Research Project

(

)

- 2023-2024 | Summer 2024

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Application Required

Course Description:

After completion of a minimum of 50% of Comm Lead course work, students can choose to conduct a scholarly research project. An MC Research Project is roughly the equivalent of a master’s thesis in scope and rigor, and requires the student form a committee of at least two faculty members to evaluate the work, as well as give a public presentation of the final deliverable. See complete details and application instructions on the Guide to MC Research Project page.

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COMMLD 580A: Communicating the Future with Scenario Planning

(

Rasmus

)

- 2024-2025 | Winter 2025

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Thursdays 1/9 – 3/13, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 230
Registration SLN: 12723

Course Description

I went into Scenario Planning as a marketer and left as a strategic storyteller. Dan taught us to look into the future and fashion a whole story out of it, in scenarios and contexts I otherwise wouldn’t have imagined. It also trains you to think of the future beyond just a linear eventuality to help prepare for it in the best way possible. Personally, the application of what I learned was beyond a business context, and I can say this – it helped all of us look at everything in a more multi-dimensional manner.—Matthew Joseph, MCDM cohort ‘22 alumni

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COMMLD 580 B: Content Design for Conversational AI

(

Bradshaw

)

- Current Quarter | 2024-2025 | Spring 2025

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 4/2 – 6/4, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 126
SLN: 21712

Course Description

We will focus on real-world case studies from business and education, enabling us to paint a holistic portrait of the vast Conversational AI landscape. In your final project, your team will present a prototype for a conversational AI solution for an existing company or new product.

Professor Bradshaw’s Content Design for Conversational AI class came at the perfect time in my career. The hands-on experience enabled me to transform our agency’s workflow with custom GPTs and other bleeding-edge AI tools, sparking rich discussions with my mentor about AI’s potential in our industry. When she later co-founded an AI-focused agency, the strategic understanding and technical confidence I gained in this class, combined with our years of trusted professional collaboration, made me the natural choice for Director of Content Strategy. The course’s practical approach continues to shape how we help clients create more personalized, engaging content experiences at scale.— Jakob Picciotto, MCDM Student

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COMMLD 583: Communications for Emerging Web Technologies

(

Tang

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Saturdays 9:00am – 5:00pm, 9/28, 10/12, 10/26, 11/9, 11/23 | Online
Registration SLN: 13081

Course Description

This course examines emerging forms of communication arising from the development of artificial intelligence tools, deep neural networks, web 3 technologies, interactive digital spaces, and online communities connected via social media platforms. We’ll lay out a framework to understand the emerging use cases of web 3 technologies such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized apps, trustless/permissionless environments, and smart contracts. The course also investigates the use of interactive digital spaces such as massively multiplayer online games by users and the concept of the metaverse to create new standards of communication. We’ll use the evolution of online communities and social media platforms to examine the fundamental ways people communicate online. Last, the course explores the use of AI tools to generate content and its impact on communication standards. We’ll discuss how businesses, organizations, governments and individuals would leverage these emerging technologies to achieve communications goals.

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COMMLD 582: Communicating Trust and Credibility for Emerging Technologies

(

Lohmann

)

- 2023-2024 | Autumn 2023

MCDM Elective | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Sundays, 10/8 9am-5pm In-Person, 10/22, 11/5, 11/19 9am-1pm Online, 12/3 9am-5pm In-Person | CMU 302
Registration SLN: 23545

This course introduces students to the art of honestly advocating for emerging technologies that an organization has decided to adopt and deploy. It provides a foundation to ensure students understand how to effectively inform stakeholders that these new solutions are both useful, safe and align with values that prioritize the good of the community as a whole. Yet, there’s a fine line between storytelling and propaganda, especially when it comes to making the case around these powerful innovations. What are the ethics of effective advocacy?
How can propaganda be differentiated from honest storytelling? How do we most effectively champion appropriate technologies to our employees, customers, clients or constituents?

We will also examine questions about the platforms and technology themselves: What reference should we use to recognize that emerging technologies are serving as trustful conduits and not propagating misinformation or disinformation? What communications methods, platforms and amplifiers are being used to spread propaganda and fake news, and how does this impact democracy? By learning how to critically think about such questions, students will learn how to communicate clearly and ethically in favor of the use of nascent technology solutions that might impact an organization or community.

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COMMLD 583: Communications for Emerging Web Technologies

(

Tang

)

- 2023-2024 | Autumn 2023

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Saturdays 09/30, 10/14, 10/28, 11/18, 12/02, 9:00AM – 5:00PM | Online
Registration SLN: 23349

Course Description

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COMMLD 570B: Leadership at All Levels

COMMLD 570B: Understanding Online Communities and their Data

COMMLD 570C: Cross-Sector Collaboration for Social Change

COMMLD 570D: Media Entrepreneurship

COMMLD 570 D: Online Community Data Research

COMMLD 573: Listening and Leadership for Participatory Design Skills

COMMLD 580: Scenario Planning: Crafting Stories to Communicate the Future

COMMLD 580: Communicating the Future with Scenario Planning

COMMLD 520A: Communications in the Age of AI

COMMLD 580A: Content Design for Conversational AI

COMMLD 600: MC Research Project

COMMLD 580A: Communicating the Future with Scenario Planning

COMMLD 580 B: Content Design for Conversational AI

COMMLD 583: Communications for Emerging Web Technologies

COMMLD 582: Communicating Trust and Credibility for Emerging Technologies

COMMLD 583: Communications for Emerging Web Technologies

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