I’m Chris Adam, your instructor for this course. My pronouns are she/her/hers.

You can find me in 1841 Old Main. My student hours are 1:00-4:00 on Wednesdays, but I can meet at other times that work for you.

The best way to reach me is by email – cadam@tru.ca. I try to respond to emails within 24 hours, but I do protect my weekends for recharging and family. You’re always welcome to email at a time that works for you; just know that you might wait until Monday for a response to an email sent between Friday evening and Sunday.

What is this course about?

This course is primarily an applied skills course, providing an opportunity to enhance your strategic communication techniques through a progressive project. As you engage the steps of the course scenario, you are guided to build skills in planning and implementing a variety of communication projects, mindful of the importance of strategic goals, audience engagement and effective writing and document design.

In this course we explore a variety of advanced, strategically orientated, forms of professional writing, using theories of rhetoric, analysis of communities of interest, and multimodal design. The course is framed as a progressive project. You will be supported through this progression by the unit content, journal tasks, and the assignments.

Navigating the Course

This course encourages students to be active learners. In each Unit, you will learn new concepts and develop practical communication skills, supported by a variety of examples and learning activities. In professional communication, practice matters; you can read all day about how to communicate, but you won’t really get good at it until you develop you own skills. You are encouraged to engage with the activities and project journal tasks throughout the course.

In each unit you will find:

  • Topic content. Each topic covers a key concept or skill, with supporting learning material.
  • Practice activities. These informal activities help with understanding and developing applied skills. Complete these to develop your skills.
  • Unit Journal tasks. These more structured writing tasks are designed to help you prepare for the larger Unit Project.
  • Unit Project. Each unit has a final project; once you’ve worked through the unit material, you will be ready to finish the project.

Course Topics

  • Entry Sequence (Sept 10 – Sept 24): Students survey their starting point in professional communication, explore the changing professional communications landscape in groups, and set personal learning goals. Track selection occurs in Week 3.
    • Submission: Entry diagnostic + goal-setting document.
  • Unit 1 – Audit (Sept 29 – Oct 15): Students apply the eight-question rhetorical framework to analyze a professional communication artifact.
    • Key concepts: exigence, audience, purpose, discourse community, rhetorical appeals, content, structure, design.
    • Submission: Communications Audit.
  • Unit 2 – Plan Presentation (Oct 20 – Nov 10): Students develop a communications plan responding to their audit findings and present it in a small panel.
    • Key concepts: strategic communication, oral argument, presentation delivery.
    • Submission: Communications Plan Presentation.
  • Unit 3 – Package + Defense (Nov 17 – Dec 1): Students produce communication deliverables drawn from their plan and defend their content, structure, and design choices in a panel.
    • Key concepts: content, structure, and design as production decisions.
    • Submission: Communications Package + Defense (Group 1, Dec 1).
  • Buffer / Wrap (Dec 3 – Dec 8): Remaining students defend in Group 2, followed by a course wrap session connecting back to the entry goal-setting freewrite.
    • Submission: Communications Package + Defense (Group 2, Dec 3).

Moodle site for this course
(all assignments will be submitted through Moodle)

Credit and my deep appreciation to Dr. Shannon Smyrl, Thompson Rivers University for permission to use these materials. These course materials are largely drawn from her open educational resource (OER).