The Communication department now offers a mixed slate of online, in-person, and hybrid courses each term. Our goal is to allow each student to find the balance between the benefits of in-person and remote learning depending on their learning style and life circumstances. In Communication, a hybrid course generally meets in-person once a week for about two hours and we stack our hybrid offerings so that students can consolidate their courses on a single day when they come to campus.
While online learning can be convenient for busy students, it is difficult to build social connections with peers and faculty solely through web-based courses. Coming to campus allows students to more easily collaborate with each other, build relationships with faculty members, and leverage the resources that exist at PSU and in downtown Portland. Communication’s hybrid approach gives busy students the opportunity to have the best of both worlds: the flexibility of remote learning and the intangibles that come from in-person interactions.
Though students cannot complete our major as a fully online degree, our course offerings provide considerable flexibility. Each term, students can pick from fully online or in-person courses as well as several hybrid courses with in-person meetings stacked on Wednesday/Thursday. Students can complete our full program either fully in-person, as a mix between hybrid and online courses, or through a mix courses in all three modalities.
Below is a sample of our hybrid and online courses for the 2025 Winter term:
Comm 100Z: Introduction to Communication
A survey course offering an overview of the communication discipline that emphasizes the development of best communication practices in different contexts.
Comm 111Z: Public Speaking
Employers are seeing a successful communicator. This fully online course will position you for professional success, graduate school or volunteer work. This fast-paced and intense course helps you learn to think on your feet, build a convincing argument and find evidence to support your stance. You will learn persuasive strategies to clearly relate your views and consider how humor, passion and logic influence listeners. Take the first step to skillfully creating a perspective and defend it - gather information and climb inside the head of your audience through life-long communication skills – embracing the public speaking process.
Comm 312U: Media Literacy
The modern world is filled with people working, day-in and day-out, to get inside your head. Advertisers seeking to influence your purchases, social media companies pushing to capture more of your time, politicians trying to persuade you, even non-profits striving to earn your support: everybody is using mediated communication to get a piece of you. Media Literacy is designed to facilitate a better understanding of the construction of media messages, the effects of these messages upon audiences, and the gratifications that audiences derive from such messages. The course is composed of three primary sections that cover: the relationship between the political economy of the mass media and the messages it produces; the verbal or textual construction of media messages; and, the visual construction of media messages. Altogether, the goal is to help you, the audience member, deconstruct the construction of media designed to appeal to and influence you.
Comm 313U: Communication in Groups
Focuses on communication processes in small, decision-making groups. Students examine the developmental stages of groups and group structure, as well as the communicative behaviors of group members and group member roles. Topics include leadership emergence and enactment, quality of problem-solving strategies utilized, group conflict, and the impact of diversity on small group communicative practices. Students will collaborate with a small group of peers throughout the course by identifying a problem of interest, working through a structured problem-solving process, and ending with a four-hour community service project.
Comm 314U: Persuasion
This course introduces students to key principles of persuasion. We'll consider how persuasion works when talking with others and when viewing advertising and other media. You will work to develop your own persuasive messages and consider how to adapt them to your audience. There are no prerequisites for this course. It is part of the Examining Popular Culture and Leading Social Change clusters.
Comm 316: Theory: Communication & Social Science
Introduces social science theories relating to interpersonal communication, persuasion, mass media, organizations and small groups. In this class, we learn how useful theories are, as we examine how they are developed and how to apply them to real-world problem solving. Comm 316 is recommended preparation for 400-level communication courses. Prerequisite: Comm 300
Comm 318U: Family Communication
In 318U, there will be an opportunity to look at courtship, relational development, changes in the life of families, and family roles while applying theoretical frameworks such as family systems theory, social construction theory and dialectical theory. During the lifetime of a family group, the members create, maintain, and reinforce patterns of communication through daily living, storytelling, and other forms of interaction.
Comm 398: Communication in the Workplace
This 2-credit fully online course is built on the principle that leadership is a process – an effective, productive, and collaborative communication process. You will discover and examine the connection between communication and leadership. Self-assessment will empower you to be a model for leadership, which, in turn, will guide you toward leadership positions in your circles of influence (family, friends, academia, career). You will explore dynamic concepts such as self-knowledge (Courage); communicating like a leader (Clarity); working with others (Collaboration); and decision making (Consensus) – to challenge you to make better sense of your current life situation, and transform your experiences into working knowledge. You will assess elements of influence to your communication style and ultimately empower your leadership communication and your relationships.
Comm 427: Issues in International Communication
In the 21st century, life rarely exists solely within the borders of the nation state. Rather it is the network society and the flow of globalization that comprise contemporary society. As such, this course takes the processes of globalization as a jumping off point to examine the how communication in the 21st century is inextricably connected with the concept of the global and its interplay with the local. In this course we will explore the history and development of global communication, examine and debate the role of the state, and interrogate theoretical positions from modernization theory to cosmopolitanism. We will examine attempts at soft power, international propaganda, and translocal social movements to develop a robust understanding of international communication in the 21st century.