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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.

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COMMLD 503: Practicum in Marketing Campaign Strategy and Creative Assets

(

Baltus

)

- 2022-2023 | Winter 2023

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Mondays 1/9 – 3/6, 6:00PM – 8:20PM | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 12773

Course Description:

In this practicum, students will design and deliver a marketing campaign strategy with creative assets for a real client: Meditation for Actors [meditationsforactors.com](MFA), an app “where wellness meets tech for the benefit of performing artists.” The purpose of the marketing campaign strategy is to help MFA be less ad hoc and more strategic in growing and engaging potential audiences. Students will map current outreach approaches, learn from some marketing research currently underway, and proactively identify and work through the process of understanding the needs of the client, who will provide real-time feedback. By the end of this practicum students will develop a pitch deck for the client with some potential creative assets.

About Communication and Leadership Practicum:

Communication and Leadership Practicum courses give you the opportunity to engage in contemporary professional practice by addressing the challenges of real-life organizations. Each section is matched with a client organization or group of client organizations, and focuses on a distinct professional skill or practice that is deemed essential across a variety of professional fields. Students can choose their section based on their interests and needs.

Designed to mirror a professional setting, our Practicum offer you the opportunity to work at a higher level and with greater responsibility than what you might encounter in an internship or in entry-level work. In the span of a quarter, you will enhance highly-desirable professional skills, produce work that you can include in your own professional portfolios, and most importantly, leave with a story–your story – of what you did in this project to create value for your client.

Credit/No Credit Only

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COMMLD 503B: Practicum: UX Design in Action

(

Gordon

)

- 2022-2023 | Spring 2023

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Mondays 3/27 – 6/5, 6:00PM – 7:50PM | CMU 230
Application Required – See Description

Course Description

In this practicum, students will work on a real-world design problem—forming a partnership among design students, instructor, and a client. Students will work in a team-based context and apply their design-thinking skills to improve a business’ website by reducing user frustrations and helping the business reach its goals.

The final deliverable will be a client presentation highlighting what frustrations were discovered through research and testing, how the design thinking process was applied to maximize user and business needs, and will include a prototype to visually express the proposed solution incorporating the totality of the evaluation.

Credit/No Credit Only.

**Since this class takes foundational concepts to the next level, students who register must have either already taken COMMLD 510: Introduction to Information Architecture, one of our intro courses (511 or 512), or Content Marketing (513) or have equivalent UX experience. Please fill out this form to the best of your ability. If your form is approved, you will receive an add code to register for the course. (Note: applications will be time stamped, and qualified applicants will be added to remaining class spots on an equitable basis determined by time of application and remaining time in the program. The application can be found here: https://forms.office.com/r/SCLBjnYa2w

About 503 Communication and Leadership Practicum

Communication and Leadership Practicum courses give students an opportunity to engage with and understand the uses of course concepts in contemporary professional practice by addressing the challenges of real-life organizations.

Each section of the Comm Lead Practicum focuses on a distinct professional skill or practice that is deemed essential across a variety of professional fields. Students can choose their section based on their interests and needs. Each section is matched with a client organization or group of client organizations who are interested in partnering with Communication Leadership students.

In the span of a quarter, students analyze the issues faced by the client organization(s), collaborate and brainstorm collectively in small teams, and with the support of their faculty mentor create a deliverable for the client organization(s) that relates to the specific practice. Students may also create creative samples as part of the project. In doing so, students can develop and enhance skills, build foundations of practice, and produce work that they can include in their own professional portfolios.

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COMMLD 510: Leveraging Diverse Perspectives in Product Content Design

(

Joslyn

)

- 2023-2024 | Autumn 2023

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Mondays 10/2-12/4, 6:00PM – 8:20PM | CMU 242
Registration SLN: 23615

Course Description:

This course will guide students through a variety of techniques and processes to building experiences that are inclusive, and designed to directly serve their intended audience. This includes a lightweight look at understanding and defining your audience, testing for a variety of accessibility challenges, designing for inclusion, and an overview of ways to get feedback from your audience.Students will then be able to leverage these techniques to evaluate experiences to identify opportunities to improve.

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COMMLD 503: Practicum: Search Engine Optimization

(

Long

)

- 2024-2025 | Autumn 2024

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Thursdays 9/26 – 12/5, 6:00pm – 7:50pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 13042

Course Description

In this practicum, students will work on a real-world Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy—forming a partnership among SEO students, instructor, and a client. Students will work in a team-based context and apply their SEO skills to be able to give the client an SEO strategy recommendation for their website to help them improve their keyword rankings in Google.

The final deliverable will be a client presentation highlighting keywords that the client should target based on the use of various analytics tools resourced with help from the instructor. Students will also deliver a sample of a page that has been optimized on the client’s website as an example, with resources the client can use to further optimize their site. By the end of the Practicum, students will have a sample for their portfolio to demonstrate their knowledge of SEO.

About Communication and Leadership Practicum:
Communication and Leadership Practicum courses give you the opportunity to engage in contemporary professional practice by addressing the challenges of real-life organizations. Each section is matched with a client organization or group of client organizations, and focuses on a distinct professional skill or practice that is deemed essential across a variety of professional fields.

Credit/No Credit Only

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COMMLD 503A: Practicum: Building Community Through Livestreaming

(

McLean

)

- 2024-2025 | Winter 2025

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Mondays 1/6 – 3/10, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 12701

Course Description:

In this practicum course, students will learn to design live streams that bring people together and create a genuine sense of belonging.

By experimenting with strategies that invite participation and make audiences feel seen and heard, students will develop skills to produce live streams that integrate seamlessly into a broader communications strategy. Throughout the quarter students will have multiple opportunities to work on live stream projects related to their own interests, current job roles, or other areas within the Comm Lead department. With this practice and knowledge, students will work together on a culminating challenge: to produce a live stream for Comm Lead’s annual Connects conference.

By the end, students will have a strong foundation to lead live stream projects in real-world settings, with principles that are relevant for everything from simple webcam setups to large-scale productions with professional crews and equipment.

Note: This is not a video production course. The focus is on content design and project leadership for marketing and communications professionals, using accessible, web-based tools that are easy to adopt in any communications role.

About Communication and Leadership Practicum:
Communication and Leadership Practicum courses can be taken at any time in your Comm Lead Journey. They give you the opportunity to engage in contemporary professional practice by addressing the challenges of real-life organizations. Each section is matched with a client organization or group of client organizations, and focuses on a distinct professional skill or practice that is deemed essential across a variety of professional fields.

Credit/No Credit Only

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COM 573: Advanced User Research and UX Strategies

(

Morrill-McClure

)

- 2016-2017 | Winter

MCDM Elective, Meets Research Methods Core Requirement
Wednesdays, 6:00-9:50pm | CMU 126

Course Description:

What makes interactive experiences compelling and how are they designed? This course analyzes existing interfaces, discussing what makes them effective, and provides an overview of tools and theories that guide user experience designers in their practice. Students will be introduced to information architecture (wireframes, sitemaps), information design (information graphics) and visual design (composition, typography, composition, color) and encouraged to apply their learning towards practical design assignments. Our focus is on computer interfaces but is not limited to its traditional “keyboard/mouse/monitor” triangle, as we will also discuss innovative consumer products such as Kinect. The course “Foundational User Centered Design” will provide good foundation for discussion in this class but is not required. A basic understanding of Adobe Creative Suite software, CSS or Visio is helpful, but not necessary for success in this course.

Student Testimonial:

From this course, I learnt theories and tools help UX designers in their practice. I have applied different UX research methods, such as creating personas, designing wireframes, etc. Moreover, this course gave me a concrete idea of how to become a UX designer and what I should pursue more in the future.

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COM 597: Advanced Content Strategy and the Future of Communication

(

Holmberg

)

- 2016-2017 | Spring

MCDM Elective, Meets Research Methods Core Requirement
Mondays, 3/27/17-6/5/17, 6-9:50pm | COM 126

Course Description:

This course will focus on advanced content strategy, in two senses of “advanced”: both as the next level of the skills taught in the intro courses, and as next wave content strategy as it relates to the advancement of emerging technologies. We will therefore build off of skills learned in the foundational content strategy courses, while looking simultaneously toward the future of the discipline and the hypothetical technologies of tomorrow.

For the advanced skills, we will take deeper dives into some of the core content strategy skills, including journey mapping, information architecture, and teardowns. Our goal with these tools will be to focus on the strategy which informs how we build products that solve real user problems.

We will also look “beyond the screen” to apply these content strategy tools to the Internet of Things, VR, AR, and more future technologies. But to understand the opportunities and challenges these new technologies bring, we will peer into to the future through the lens of science fiction. Science fiction both predicts and influences future technology; for example, in the 1960s Star Trek communicators foreshadowed the flip phones of the 1990s, and video chat existed in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey long before Skype in the 2000s. Because sci-fi explores the human side of technological advancements—especially how people live and interact with these technologies—looking at several science fiction examples will help us think through tomorrow’s user challenges today.

This course will assume you have a basic understanding and familiarity with content strategy principles, so previous experience with content strategy, such as the completion of either COM 585: Multi-platform Content Strategy: A Practical Approach to Immersive & Responsive Content or COM 597: Design + Content: Introduction to UX Content Strategy is recommended (but not required).

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COM 597: Community Data Science: Programming and Data Science for Social Media

(

Guy

)

- 2016-2017 | Spring

MCDM Elective, Meets Research Methods Requirement
Thursdays, 6:00-9:50pm | CMU 126

Course Description:

This course will introduce basic programming and data science tools to give students the skills to find, access, and synthesize data into information. We will cover the basics of the Python programming language, web APIs including APIs from Wikipedia and Twitter, and basic tools for statistical hypothesis testing, data manipulation, and visualization. Students will be encouraged to bring questions and problems from their own area of interest and apply Python and Data Science to those problems through an independent project. Our target audience is students with no previous programming experience. There will be two major additions to the material we teach in the Community Data Science Workshop. First is a capstone independent data research project where students will be expected to practice what they’ve learned by sourcing, cleaning, and analyzing a data set that is relevant to their interests. Second will be special topics from the world of online social media analysis including A/B testing and measuring online success.

Student Testimonial:

“This course was intense and fast-paced, but it was an absolute blast! I took this course because I had taught myself a little bit of HTML, CSS, and C++ before, but I really wanted a more structured environment in which to better learn coding principles. Learning how to code is like learning another language; it takes a lot of practice and effort but you learn a lot of actionable info in a short period of time. From the beginning Professor Guy set the expectation that we weren’t going to become expert Python coders in 10 weeks, but we were going to learn the basic coding logic and syntax, how to pull and manipulate social media data, how to derive meaningful analysis, and how to speak about our technical coding methods in a clear and effective manner. He really made sure the course was as practical and applicable as possible. During the class we had weekly challenge problems where we learned how to manipulate data and then how to access it from website APIs. We got a lot of class time to work together and tackle these problems. These exercises gave us the skills to access and analyze data that we would eventually use for our final project, which we got full autonomy over. We learned basic skills for the first 6 weeks or so, and then had the rest of the classes to work on our final projects and ask Guy questions. He is incredibly enthusiastic and an insanely skilled programmer. This class made me feel that coding was much for accessible and gave me some skills that I could fall back on if I need to do some heavy data analysis in the future. I would highly recommend this course if you are curious about programming and up for a little bit of a fun challenge!”

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COM 597: Strategic Communication for Responsible Leaders

(

Keyes

)

- 2016-2017 | Summer 2017

MCDM Elective
Wednesdays, 6/21-8/16, 6:00-9:50pm | CMU 126

Course Description:

Honesty, integrity and high moral standards top the list of qualities expected of a leader, whether they are running a country, inspiring a global team or launching a new product. The challenge comes in knowing how to harness these attributes to inform and fuel communication that’s authentic and effective. This course will examine the concept of leadership, explore a range of leadership styles and discuss the role strategic communication plays in creating and maintaining positions of power and influence. Concepts including cultural intelligence and personal branding will be applied to tools and techniques from executive speeches to social media channels. As a responsible leader, the art of storytelling is critical for everything from inspiring a vision to managing a reputation during a time of crisis to connecting with communities. This course uses real-world scenarios, current events, interactive discussions, in-class exercises, and a variety of guest lectures to provide practical insight, relevant theory and memorable learning.

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COM 583: Multimedia Storytelling: Digital Distribution and the Story

(

Keller

)

- 2017-2018 | Winter

MCDM Elective
Mondays, Jan 8th-March 5th, 6:00-9:50pm, one class on January 27th | CMU 242

Course Description:

The landscape of web-distributed video can be broadly divided into three motifs: Entertainment, Newsgathering, and Business Communication. From YouTube to Vimeo, Netflix to Hulu, 12seconds.tv to Facebook, online video is a storytelling revolution. Or is it? How do storytelling choices affect message reception? Storytelling has been part of the human experience since the formation of language. Today, the technology that surrounds the “tell” of a story (the modes and channels of communication) directly shape the immersive experience felt by the viewer, while leveraging the lessons of narrative and myth. This course focuses on the decisions we make when we tell our stories. This course is both theoretical and practical. Students will be afforded the skills to create and distribute video stories. Additionally, students will be expected to display critical thinking around point of view, audience targeting, ROI success criteria, methodology, and production standards. Students are expected to exercise the craft of content creation while at the same time critically evaluating and deconstructing content they see in the marketplace.

Student Testimonial:

“Drew Keller’s Multimedia Storytelling class deftly weaves in the interconnected components of effective multimedia communication. Whether you are a novice or expert videographer, this class takes you to the next level by covering video syndication, platform selection, and monetization. In addition to perfectly balancing theory, guest lectures and hands on work, Drew went above and beyond by providing weekend tutorials on video composition, shooting and editing. He even provided 1:1 help during work!”

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COM 597: Connecting Through Words: The Art & Science of Text-Based Marketing

(

Schiller

)

- 2017-2018 | Spring

Track Neutral, 3 Credits
Saturdays, April 21, May 5, 19, 9-5pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 12416

Course Description:

This advanced marketing writing class is designed for students who can already write well, but want formal training in persuasive copywriting techniques – the kind that drive people to call, buy, join, or sign-‐up. If you’ve ever agonized over finding just the right words to achieve your goals, this class is designed to get you there faster. It introduces some of the most effective and well-‐tested methods used by professional storytellers to outsell and outrun the constantly changing market. Students will learn how to use techniques based in psychological research to get measurable lift in subject line open rates, landing page conversion rates, app store downloads, and more. Using a combination of readings, case studies and practical writing assignments students will learn the art and science of creating top-‐performing marketing text.

Student Testimonial:

“This course was one of the most valuable classes I’ve taken while in the program. Carol ensured that the readings and assignments were directly applicable to our own careers and the ideas I brought back to my boss made me look great at work. I wondered if a full-day class about copywriting would be too long, but Carol’s lessons were lively and interesting, and I found that the day moved along very quickly. In short, I found this class to have tremendous value and I highly recommend it.”

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COM 597: Distributed and Diverse Teams: Leading and Communicating with Impact

(

Chang

)

- 2017-2018 | Summer

Track Neutral
Saturdays 6/23, 6/30, 8/4, 8/11 I 9:00am-5:00pm | CMU 302
Registration SLN: 14484

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 inter-connectedness 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 ther field of communications. And yet opportunities to sharpen those nuanced skills remain less than optimal. Enrolled 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 Hackathon. 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.

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COMMLD 570: Communication and Teams in Organizations: Leading with Impact

(

Chang

)

- 2018-2019 | Autumn 2018

Track Neutral
Thursdays, 9/27-11/15 (8 sessions) | 6:00-9:50pm | CMU 302
Registration SLN: 23728

Course Description:

The workplace is increasingly connected and diverse, where teams and leaders work face to face, virtually or in hybrid teams with multiple audiences, clients, customers or suppliers. In this complex setting, responsive and adaptable leadership and communication skills are core competencies to create business and team effectiveness, not just from the organizationally designated “leader” but for anyone involved. And yet the technical skill building and conceptual internalization required to build –and demonstrate — those competencies can feel elusive and difficult to learn, articulate and track. This course is for anyone who says: “I want to become a better leader and communicate more effectively in this diversifying workplace.” In this course, students will advance their ability to generate clear technical communication results, team effectiveness and thought leadership through improved leadership communication competencies. They will do this by using a very practical, hands-on approach to applying various approaches, projects and tools to the workplace, diving into better understanding their own worldviews that shape how they engage with and react to teams, and bringing more explicit articulation to their leadership competencies. By the end of this course, students will be better equipped to provide leadership to and within teams, to articulate and measure their leadership growth and competencies, and to translate it all into a clear and compelling narrative.

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

(

Kessler

)

- 2018-2019 | Winter

Track Neutral
Saturdays, 1/12, 1/19, 2/2, 2/16, 3/2 | 9:00am-5:00pm | CMU 126
Registration SLN: 22049

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.

Student Testimonial:

“Storytelling is THE foundational skill every student must have a deep understanding of in order to succeed in the Comm. Lead program. Take this course if you want to learn how to craft a captivating story, if you want to be challenged, and if you want to improve as a writer, researcher, and interviewer. Thinking Story shows students how much thought is required to create an entertaining, purposeful, and persuasive story. The assigned reading, viewing, and listening materials are a combination of interesting examples of storytelling and long form nonfiction, intended to introduce students to the idea that humans are “wired for story.” Each assignment builds on the next, leading up to the final deliverable, a storyboard of the narrative you researched and developed all quarter. Professor Kessler asks her students to choose topics that are important and of interest to them. The work you will produce in Thinking Story feels more like a passion project rather than tasks you must complete. I recommend this class for all students in the program!”

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COMMLD 510: Product Content Strategy

(

Magwire

)

- 2018-2019 | Spring

MCDM, Meets Research Methods Core Requirement
Tuesdays, 4/2/19-6/4/19 | 6:00-9:50pm | CMU 232
Registration SLN: 12426

Course Description:

The goal of this course is to provide a strong foundational knowledge of product content strategy as a function within a user experience design team. Skill areas include responsive content strategy, inclusive design, content auditing, performance auditing and more. Specific focus is also given to understanding the perspectives of partner roles, building skills around collaborating and communicating with each role type. You should walk away ready to join a real team and get to work. You’ll also gain real work examples by working with brands from around the region.

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COMMLD 511: Introduction to User Centered Design

(

Holmberg

)

- 2019-2020 | Autumn

MCDM Elective | Meets Research Methods Core Requirement
Mondays, 9/30-12/2 | 6:00-9:50pm | CMU 230
Note: Due to the holiday the final class will be Monday, December 9.

Course Description:

This course focuses on the fundamentals of user experience design, focusing on the skills and concepts needed to successfully design products and services for humans. We will learn the principles of design thinking so that students come away from the class with a framework for understanding how to identify real user problems, design solutions for how to solve those problems, and then test those solutions with real people.

Student Testimonial:

“From class activities to assignments to even the class slides, Dave crafts an optimal user experience for the student. He takes the time to provide useful, in-depth feedback on all assignments which enhances the learning experience considerably. The UX Content Strategy Playbook we created was an incredible way to learn the specifics of UX exercises we studied in class; I’m sure I’ll use it for years to come. The books Dave selected for class will serve as excellent resources down the road as well. This was definitely one of the best classes I’ve taken in the Comm Lead program.”

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COMMLD 503: Practicum in Marketing Campaign Strategy and Creative Assets

COMMLD 503B: Practicum: UX Design in Action

COMMLD 510: Leveraging Diverse Perspectives in Product Content Design

COMMLD 503: Practicum: Search Engine Optimization

COMMLD 503A: Practicum: Building Community Through Livestreaming

COM 573: Advanced User Research and UX Strategies

COM 597: Advanced Content Strategy and the Future of Communication

COM 597: Community Data Science: Programming and Data Science for Social Media

COM 597: Strategic Communication for Responsible Leaders

COM 583: Multimedia Storytelling: Digital Distribution and the Story

COM 597: Connecting Through Words: The Art & Science of Text-Based Marketing

COM 597: Distributed and Diverse Teams: Leading and Communicating with Impact

COMMLD 570: Communication and Teams in Organizations: Leading with Impact

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

COMMLD 510: Product Content Strategy

COMMLD 511: Introduction to User Centered Design

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