> Courses > 2025-2026 > Autumn 2025

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.

COMMLD 570A: Building Successful Online Communities

(

Hill

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

MCCN Elective | Meets Research Methods Requirement | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 9/30 – 12/2, 6:00 – 9:50pm | DEN 256
SLN: 13032

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.

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COMMLD 538: Storytelling & Communications for Mission-Driven Organizations

(

Melograna

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

MCCN Elective | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Thursdays 9/25 – 12/4, 1:00pm – 4:50pm | Online
Registration SLN: 13022

Course Description:

Nonprofits, NGOs, campaigns and social enterprises are driven by their desire to make the world a better place. As their storytellers, our job is to make sure their messages reach the right audiences and recruit those audiences to the cause. Keeping in mind that mission-driven organizations will often work on complex issues involving vulnerable populations, our job is to pursue this work within an ethical framework that centers the concerns and desires of the people whom our clients serve. Upon completing the course, students will be able to work with mission-driven organizations as their primary storytellers.

Jordan brings a passion for storytelling for positive change that is infectious. And that enthusiasm is grounded in vast experience that makes him a valuable guide through the complicated ethics of storytelling, with a breadth of practical resources to support powerful, community-based, media production that mission-driven organizations are in need of. Given how deeply he engages with and inspires students, it’s no wonder many of them have gone on to be his professional collaborators.  — Alex Stonehill, Associate Director, MCCN Cohort 19

Meets Law & Ethics Requirement.

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COMMLD 590A: Capstone Preparation: Research and Development

(

Porto Stockwell

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | 3 Credits
Thursdays 9/25 – 12/4, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | PCAR 297

Course Description:

This course builds a foundation in research design and practice to support the development of an impactful, and well-scoped capstone project. A range of research approaches will be introduced, including qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, and emerging modes such as futures thinking. Students will begin by exploring existing academic and professional conversations to identify gaps, opportunities, and areas of relevance. From this foundation, they will learn to frame meaningful research questions, select appropriate methodologies, and design ethical, context-aware studies. The course also includes strategies for identifying relevant participants, stakeholders, audiences  and data sources aligned with research goals.
The primary outcome of the course is a complete research plan, which will serve as the foundation for students to continue the work through the academic year, culminating in the Spring Quarter Capstone class.

A note on the Capstone: If you are an MCCL student, you will complete a Capstone project as part of the requirements for graduation. Capstone projects are a chance for you to develop a rigorous, in-depth portfolio project that demonstrates impact, whether social, organizational, community, or professional.

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COMMLD 580B: Content Design for Conversational AI

(

Bradshaw

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

MCDM Elective | 5 Credits
Mondays 9/29 – 12/1, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 230
Registration SLN: 23478

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. 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 503: Practicum: Advanced Marketing

(

Myers

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | 2 Credits
Thursdays 9/25 – 12/4, Time 4:00pm – 5:50pm | CMU 126
Application Required

Course Description

Level up your leadership. Build a real-world marketing strategy that actually gets used.

In this hands-on practicum, you’ll partner with a real client to create and deliver a strategic marketing plan—plus sample content they can start using now. You’ll assess their current outreach (social, web, posters, community engagement) and design a smarter, more integrated approach. The client will provide real-time feedback and decide what to adopt—so the stakes (and impact) are real.

This course is built for students ready to stretch: to lead through ambiguity, influence without authority, and work through the messy middle of real-world challenges. There’s no step-by-step playbook—just strong coaching, clear expectations, and support to help you grow fast.

By the end, you’ll walk away with a marketing plan, content samples, client-facing experience, and a standout project for your resume or portfolio.

Credit/No Credit only

**Since this class takes foundational concepts to the next level, students who register must have already taken any of the following courses:

• COMMLD 520: Advanced Marketing (Marr)

• COMMLD 520: Principles of Marketing

• COMMLD 520: Strategic Communications

• COMMLD 521: Digital Marketing

• COMMLD 522: Future of Marketing

Or have equivalent Marketing experience. 

Please fill out the form below 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.)

Apply here: https://forms.office.com/r/KjnNbFSCKR Form will open on Monday, June 9, at 12:00pm (noon)

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COMMLD 582: Communicating Trust and Credibility for Emerging Technologies

(

Lohmann

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

MCDM Elective | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 9/30 – 12/2, 9:00am – 1:00pm | Online
SLN: 23417

Course Description:

This course introduces students to the art of honestly advocating for emerging technologies such as AI, Big Data Analytics, and the Internet of Things. It provides a foundation to ensure students understand how to effectively inform stakeholders that these solutions are both useful, safe and align with values that prioritize the good of the community as a whole. Yet, there is 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 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? 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.

Meets Law & Ethics Requirement.

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COMMLD 525: Brand Values & Creativity

(

Howard

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 9/24 – 12/3, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 230
SLN: 13017

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 600: MC Research Project

(

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

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 593: Internship

(

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | 1-5 Credits
Application Required

Course Description:

An internship can be a useful way to give students a fundamental understanding of the industry and to accelerate one’s career path. Internships should be directly relevant to the student’s field of study (degree or specialization). Part-time jobs not related to the degree will normally not be approved for internship credit, as the purpose of an internship is to apply what you have been learning in your degree to a real world work experience. See complete details and application instructions on the Guide to Internships page.

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COMMLD 591: Independent Research

(

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | 1-5 Credits
Application Required

Course Description:

Independent Research projects are student-driven, with faculty serving in a loose advisory capacity. This option is for students with a clear project in mind who will only need minimal faculty support to accomplish their end goal. See complete details and application instructions on the Guide to Independent Research page.

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COMMLD 563: Multicultural Marketing: Creating Equitable and Inclusive Communications

(

Park

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Saturdays 10/4, 10/18, 11/01, 11/15, 12/06, 9:00am – 5:00pm | Online
Registration SLN: 13031

Course Description

This course will take a close look at the evolution of multicultural marketing, industry best practices and foundational strategies related to multicultural communications. We will explore how agencies and companies have adapted, pivoted and transformed the way brands and organizations engage with diverse audiences. You’ll learn how to build marketing campaigns that are rooted in principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. Additionally, we’ll learn how to craft campaigns that are responsive to the increasingly diverse marketplace and ever-changing marketing landscape.

Meets Law & Ethics Requirement.

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COMMLD 558: Law & Policy

(

Baker

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

MCDM Elective | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 9/30 – 12/9, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | DEN 258
Registration SLN: 13029

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 Spring, which focuses more on data usage, privacy and security, FTC regulatory issues and intellectual property issues around data and analytics.

Kraig Baker’s humorous and comprehensive lecturing style, complete with the latest trend examples, helped me demystify the law and make it less of a “black box.” I gained a framework to assess and manage legal, ethical, and structural risks, tools to determine if I had a legal issue and insights on whether I needed a lawyer and how to communicate these legal issues effectively.—Aster Li, MCDM alum cohort ‘22 alumni

Meets Law & Ethics Requirement.

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COMMLD 544A/B: Professional Short-Form Writing

(

Shaban

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | Meets Professional Writing Requirement | 3 or 5 Credits
Wednesdays 9/24 – 12/3, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | CMU 126
3-credit 544A Registration SLN: 13025
5-credit 544B Registration SLN: 23358

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.

Students can choose between a 3-credit and 5 credit option:

• Section A will be 3 Credits and meet the Professional Writing Requirement. It meets 6-8:20. 

• Section B will be 5 Credits and also meet the Professional Writing Requirement. It will meet for a longer period from 6-9:50 and include additional short form assignments over the course of the quarter. 

Meets Professional Writing Requirement.

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COMMLD 541: Crisis Communication

(

Visneski

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | Meets Law & Ethics Requirement | 5 Credits
Wednesdays 9/24 – 12/3, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Online
Registration SLN: 13024

Course Description:

Nothing is more dramatic than a crisis. When an organization, company, industry, or individual in the public eye is in a crisis, communication is one of the crucial routes back to normalcy. Oftentimes, organizations find themselves unprepared when a crisis hits and only then think “Oh goodness, we should get a crisis communications plan in place!” Trying to “spin” a bad situation can both be unethical, and ineffective, damaging reputation, and subsequently business.

This course will teach you how to be rapidly responsive, responsible, and to avoid common pitfalls in crisis comms. We will examine how organizations attempt to anticipate and recover from crises, how the broadcast and print media cover different types of crises, how crisis communications fails, and how it succeeds.

Meets Law and Ethics Requirement.

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COMMLD 540A: The Power of Revision

(

Baltus

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | Meets Professional Writing Requirement | 3 Credits
Mondays 9/29 – 12/1, 6:00pm – 8:20pm | CMU 242
Registration SLN: 13023

Course Description

No matter what kind of writing you do, editing skills are essential to producing your best work. In this course, experienced writers will learn a rigorous, methodical approach to revision that transforms a rough draft into a compelling finished piece. You’ll gain the awareness and control you need to diagnose and address problems, develop ideas and themes, create structure, and craft a story. You’ll also hone your ability at the line level, learning ways to make your writing clearer and more precise by eliminating clichés, clunky phrases, and extraneous words. As an editing workshop, this course emphasizes the importance of giving and receiving kind, productive feedback. It focuses on longer-form texts for public audiences, such as blog posts, executive op-eds, and news releases, though its principles are applicable to all forms of writing and creative iteration.

Editing IS Writing! Leah Baltus approaches her craft with precision and clarity, and her mission is to pass on her knowledge to students in a highly structured way, with loads of productive feedback. Several students from this class have had their work published in professional/ trade outlets. If you want a surefire way to improve your writing effectiveness, this class is for you!–Gretchen Ludwig, Associate Director

Meets Professional Writing Requirement.

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COMMLD 535: Foundations of Audio Storytelling (e.g. Podcasting)

(

Partnow

)

- 2025-2026 | Autumn 2025

Track Neutral | 5 Credits
Tuesdays 9/30 – 12/2, 6:00pm – 9:50pm | Room TBD
Registration SLN: 13021

Course Description

The podcasting industry has surged in recent years, with podcasts also becoming an increasingly important part of marketing and communication campaigns. Since it is the only medium that audiences can consume while engaged in a multitude of other activities, audio storytelling has a unique advantage to inform, entertain and call to action.

This course will teach you how to use audio to tell a powerful story. You will learn how to create your own short sound-rich, nonfiction audio story driven by characters and scenes. You will move through the process of research, reporting, interviewing, writing, editing, and mixing an audio story, as well as pitching a story for radio or podcast. By the end of the class you will have a working knowledge of the basics of audio storytelling and production. You will feel more confident about how to support visual storytelling with audio, as well as how to work with a larger production team on audio projects.

This course is a good match for students who:

• Are seeking an individualized, project-based course

• Want foundational storytelling and editing skills that can translate into any medium

• Would like to learn how audio can elevate and transform storytelling

This class greatly elevated my ability to concisely tell stories!—Jacob Christensen, Foundations of Video and Advanced Video Practicum Instructor, and MCDM cohort ‘15 alumni

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© Copyright 2025 Department of Communication. University of Washington

© Copyright 2025 Department of Communication. University of Washington