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.
How It Works
- Each term, pick either a Wednesday or a Thursday schedule.
- Select from a variety of hybrid courses + fully online courses.
- Come to campus on either Wednesday or Thursday to meet with your classes.
- Repeat each term. All Comm major requirements can be completed within two years.
- Graduate with a BA or BS in Communication.
Why Hybrid?
Online learning can be convenient for busy students, but it is difficult to build social connections with peers and faculty solely through web-based courses. 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. Coming to campus allows students to:
- Collaborate more easily with each other
- Build relationships with faculty members
- Better leverage the resources that exist at PSU and in downtown Portland
Click here to apply to Portland State.
Have a question about the hybrid program? Email the Department of Communication.
Hybrid and online courses scheduled for the 2025-26 academic year:
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 218Z: Interpersonal Communication
Study of communication concepts, processes, and practices in interpersonal contexts with application of principles and concepts to actual interpersonal communication situations. Includes situational management and behavioral repertoire development, verbal/nonverbal code features structuring conversation and relationships, characteristics of functional relational systems, intercultural/inter-ethnic factors.
Comm 300: Principles of Communication
COMM 300 broadly explores the discipline of Communication, introduces you to key concepts and debates, and develops some of the basic skills necessary to move throughout the major.
This course is a prerequisite for the remainder of the Communication core: 311, 316, and 326.
Comm 311: Research Methods
Whether they are getting a baseline of public opinion or tailoring communication efforts for different audiences, professional communicators depend on their ability to collect and understand social science data. Research Methods in Communication will equip you with the skills you need to ask research-relevant questions, collect data from human participants, and analyze the data you collect. The topics we cover will also help you better understand and interpret research papers you will encounter throughout your college career.
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 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 337U: Communication & Gender
The study of gender development and gender expression underpinned by a theoretical framework. Examination of communication and gender topics include: the rhetorical shaping of gender; gendered verbal and nonverbal communication; the process of becoming gendered through the influences of family, culture, and society; gendered close relationships; gendered power and violence; and gendered media.
Comm 345: New Media and Society
This course will interrogate how the social, political, economic, and cultural landscape is changing in relation to digital media and information technologies. We will develop critical resources to better understand the history of these technologies and emerging communicative forms; the economics and politics behind them; the sociocultural moments from which they have emerged; and the shifts they have engendered. Once equipped with these tools, we will ask deeper questions about their impact on society.
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 410: Entertainment Education
Entertainment-education is a field in which we include educational, social change messages in entertaining media. In other words, we use stories and soap operas to promote health and justice. In this class, we will review the most recent developments in how communication professionals create and evaluate entertainment-education. The primary readings will be from this book available as a free download: https://link-springer-com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-63614-2. During the course, you will have the opportunity to develop your own story templates for social change communication.
Comm 437: Urban Communication
Cities are the greatest public creation of civilization: each one, the product of generations of people, working together to build homes and produce shared prosperity. Cities are much more than their physical attributes: they are the embodiment of ongoing cooperation and collaboration. Through communication, separate individuals come together to create a whole much greater than its parts. Urban Communication considers the myriad contributions of communication to the urban environment. The course surveys both physical and mass-mediated communication in cities, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative perspectives as appropriate. How does the physical design of a street shape its utilization? How, in turn, do different types of leisure and commercial activities relate to citizens’ well-being and a city’s economic prospects? Meanwhile, how does the transition from local, analog media to distal, digital media affect citizens’ relationship with their communities and neighbors? Throughout the term, students will explore questions like these in the context of cities in general and Portland in particular.
Comm 448: Science & Environmental Controversies
Environmental problems are surrounded by a variety of different voices and perspectives, from corporations to politicians to environmental NGOs. With a special emphasis on environmental extremes and controversies, this course covers the latest theoretical and practical approaches to environmental communication, the makeup of environmental controversies, and the different factors that shape public opinion on those controversies within the United States. Students have the opportunity to examine the perspectives of scientists, social scientists, media outlets, policymakers, and public groups. They will apply what they learn to create a public engagement strategy for an environmental issue they are passionate about.