Overview:
Syllabus:
Forums:

 

Course Description

Most of management is communication. You communicate to get information that will be the basis of decisions, coordinate activity, to provide a vision for the people who work for and with you, to and to sell yourself and your work. The goal of this course is to identify communication challenges within work groups and organizations and ways to overcome them. To do this requires that we know how communication normally works, what parts are difficult, and how to fix it when it goes wrong.

The focus of this course is on providing you with a broad understanding of the way communication operates within dyads, work groups, and organizations. The intent is to give you theoretical and empirical underpinnings for the communication you will undoubtedly participate in when you move to a work environment, and strategies for improving communication within your groups. Because technology is changing communication patterns and outcomes both in organizations and more broadly in society, the course examines these technological changes. Readings come primarily from the empirical research literatur.

Required Texts

Cialdini, Robert B. (2000) Influence: Science and practice (4rd Edition). Talman Co.

Snook, S. (2000). Friendly fire. Princeton NJ: University of Princeton Press.

Most articles are available as hyperlinks from the course syllabus. If there is an error, please let me know as soon as possible, so that I can correct the link. In addition, most are also available directly from the CMU Library's website. You will need to use CMU's Virtual Private Network.

· 1: go to the library web page (http://www.library.cmu.edu/)

· 2: click on Cameo

· 3: click on the button on top marked course reserves.

· 4: Type in 88341 and click course

· 6: Click on "View" on any item you wish to access.

· 7: Click on the URL to download the PDF version of the article.

Because the library will not have all the required articles available on e-reserve by the first day of class, some articles are contained in a stopgap website -- http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kraut/articles--until the library catches up. Articles are listed by first author's name and date.. This archive is password-protected. The userid and password will be distributed to registered students by email and is also available from the course website.

 

Course Objectives

After completing this course you should be able to:

• Better understand what makes communication within and between groups more or less effective.
• Better evaluate claims about groups in terms of empirical evidence.
• Apply principles from research to make the groups you work in more effective.
• Apply data gathering and analysis techniques to diagnosing problems in workgroups.

Course Requirements

Assignment	Due	Percent of grade
Attendance and in-class participation	Daily	7.5%
On-line course discussion	Weekly	7.5%
Pop quizzes	Approximately bi-weekly	17.5%
Technology and common ground	Jan 29	10%
Team conflict self-reflection	Mar 3	10%
Self-presentation assignment	Mar 31	10%
Persuasion in a charitable campaign	Apr 23	10%
Social networks assignment	Cancelled	10%
Final exam	Thur, May 7, 8:30AM	17.5%