Critical Media Theories | Spring 2025

📜 Course Description

Expands students' professional and team communication skills and strategies in technical contexts. Integrates writing, speaking and group communication by developing and presenting technical information to different audiences. Written assignments focus on creating professional technical documents, such as proposals, memos, abstracts, reports and letters. Presentation assignments emphasize planning, preparing and delivering dynamic, informative and persuasive presentations.

Instructor: David Rheams

Office hours: By Appointment

Email: [email protected]

Class Website: Critical Media Theory | Spring 2025

Course Schedule: Link

Credit Hours: 3

University Policies

Learning Objectives

1. Ability to enhance credibility through communication that adheres to professional and ethical norms.
2. Ability to adapt to different purposes, constraints, and audiences.
3. Ability to develop arguments with front loaded claims and appropriate evidence.
4. Ability to use visual rhetoric to enhance message effectiveness.
5. Ability to collaborate in a team to research, plan, and present information.
6. Ability to research, draft, and edit documents that adhere to technical and professional standards.

Ability to prepare organized speeches and present them with appropriate verbal and nonverbal delivery.

🧰 What You'll Get Out of This Class

General Core Area 010 Communication

Description:  Courses in this category focus on developing ideas and expressing them clearly, considering the effect of the message, fostering understanding, and building the skills needed to communicate persuasively. Courses involve the command of oral, aural, written, and visual literacy skills that enable people to exchange messages appropriate to the subject, occasion, and audience.

• **Core Objectives: Critical Thinking (CT)–**to include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, and analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information
• **Communication (COM)-**to include effective development, interpretation, and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication
• **Teamwork (TW)-**to include the ability to consider different points of view and to work effectively with others to support a shared purpose or goal
• **Personal Responsibility (PR)-**to include the ability to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision-making

💡Helpful Tools

These are the writing and organization tools I will mention during the semester. They all have a free option. I’ll add to this list as we go through the semester.