syllabus

For every chapter in the text book you will take a short quiz before you come to class. These quizzes are available on Blackboard and must be taken by an hour before class on class days. The quizzes are timed – and you should set aside an hour to take the quizzes. Most quizzes are allotted only 30 minutes by Blackboard, however on some days you will need to take two quizzes, and in a few cases, the quizzes will be longer. Note that while I have no problem with you using your book for these quizzes, they are timed. This means that you will not have time to look up answers as you go. Be sure to prepare in advance. Also note that you will not be able to go back and change your answers as the quizzes progress.

If, for some reason, you have trouble with your computer and you are locked out of a quiz, please let me know immediately via email so that I may reset your quiz. There are rarely problems, but sometimes these things happen so be sure to take your quiz early (don’t push it to the deadline), and let me know immediately if there is a problem. If you wait too long to contact me, or if you wait until too close to class time to take your quizzes, you will have to forfeit your quiz score

General Vocabulary Application

Discussion Board Assignment description: Each student is expected to participate in an online discussion of interpersonal communication situations on Blackboard. There is a discussion forum set up under the Discussion Board tab (and I have posted a sample there). There are two ways that students can earn points. Students can post a personal experience that s/he has analyzed or students can respond to other students’ self-analyses. Posts where a student writes an evaluation of his/her experience will be graded out of 10 points. These posts should use appropriate and accurate interpersonal communication vocabulary. These analytical posts should be in the range of 2-5 paragraphs. Responses to another student's analysis thread with the appropriate vocabulary and theoretical perspectives will be graded out of 5 points (so responders will have to respond twice). Responses should range from 1-2 paragraphs. Obviously, each student will need to decide if s/he is going to start a discussion or respond to one, but the main goal is to share and evaluate experiences using interpersonal communication theory. These experiences and responses can be about personal interactions or real-world observations, both are acceptable. All posts should be respectful and thoughtful and employ appropriate terminology

Extra Credit Assignment

This project is worth up to 10 points of extra credit.  Each student may turn in only one extra credit sample.  The goal of this assignment is for me to see you in action and to hear your response to your communication.  To do so, there are 5 steps to this assignment:

•    Vide record yourself communicating with a conversation partner.  This conversation can be staged or organic.  It’s up to you. 

•    Select a segment (short), no more than 30 seconds, that you want to analyze.

•    Transcribe this segment.

•    Annotate this segment (what was done effectively, what was not done effectively, how can it have been improved).

•    Email the transcript with the annotations and a link to the recorded segment to Dr. Berkland at mkberkland@noctrl.edu by the due date on the syllabus