CCOG for COMM 218 Winter 2025
- Course Number:
- COMM 218
- Course Title:
- Interpersonal Communication (COMM214=COMM218=COMM218Z)
- Credit Hours:
- 4
- Lecture Hours:
- 40
- Lecture/Lab Hours:
- 0
- Lab Hours:
- 0
Course Description
Intended Outcomes for the course
Upon successful completion students should be able to:
1. Describe how culture, identity, perception, biases, and power influence the communication process.
2. Recognize and analyze interpersonal communication concepts (e.g., ethics, verbal and nonverbal communication, listening, emotions, and conflict).
3. Assess one’s own interpersonal skills to become more competent in a variety of relational contexts.
4. Apply foundational concepts and theories to interpersonal communication.
Integrative Learning
Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.
General education philosophy statement
Communication is essential to being human. Communication courses inherently provide a foundation for understanding human interaction. While all humans use some form of communication to navigate the societies in which we live, each culture has its own set of ethical and social communicative norms. This course examines those norms by teaching students how to organize and make meaning of their own and others’ experiences and meet personal goals in a variety of communication styles and settings.
Course Activities and Design
Course outcomes and objectives are met in the face-to-face and online modalities with a combination of: lectures, online modules, in-class application activities, out of class experiential learning activities, reflection journals, group projects (role plays of course skills), discussion, discussion posts, exercises, interpersonal skill manuals, exams and service learning projects.
NOTE: In order for the course to fulfill the Oral Communication outcome (outcome 4), instructors need to choose multiple assignments (at least 3) across the term that require synchronous, face-to-face oral communication activities.
Outcome Assessment Strategies
The forms of assessment will be determined by the individual instructor.
Assessment strategies may include:
- Qualitative examinations
- Essays
- Research papers
- Portfolios
- Oral presentations
- Community Based Learning
- Quantitative examinations
- Journals
- In-class participation
- Projects
- Group work
- Dyadic exercises
Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)
Themes, Concepts, and Issues:
- Identity
- Perception
- Self-Disclosure
- Interpersonal Communication theories
- Language
- Relational Development
- Active listening
- Conflict Styles and Management
- Nonverbal communication
- Cultural context
- Communication climate
Competencies and Skills:
Students will:
- Be able to analyze dyadic conversations in terms of interpersonal communication theory.
- Be able to explain communication models.
- Be able to analyze the effectiveness of their own, as well as others’, communication choices in a variety of contexts.
- Be able to explain how nonverbal behaviors influence the communication process.
- Be able to see how the nature of language influences the communication process.
- Be able to demonstrate effective listening.
- Be able to identify a range of potentially useful conflict resolution behaviors.
A textbook is required. Suggested texts. Alternative texts need Dept. or SAC chair approval.
Interpersonal Communication: Competence & Contexts, Lane; Pearson
Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters, Wood
Interpersonal Communication, Floyd
Interpersonal Communication, Trenholm
Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others, Beebe, Beebe & Redmond
The Interpersonal Communication Book, DeVito
Reflect and Relate, McCornack, 3rd ed., Bedford/St. Martins
Interplay: The Process of Interpersonal Communication, Adler, Rosenfeld, Proctor. Oxford University Press
Just Relationships: Living Out Social Justice as Mentor, Family, Friend, and Lover, Douglas L. Kelley