Courses:

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This advanced course both builds on the basic oral and written managerial communication skills, and goes well beyond them. The goals of this class are to provide opportunities for you to continue polishing your communication skills in different contexts, and particularly to provide practice in and feedback on the interactive communication skills essential to successful managers.

Students will give various types of presentations, including impromptu presentations and a longer (15-20 minute) presentation. In addition, we will practice interactive communication (e.g., role play with hostile client, interactive presentation to a hostile audience) and communication in groups (e.g., running meetings, participating in group decision making). Writing assignments include self-analyses (including two individual self-analyses and one team self-analysis of your team project) and one short business document (see discussion of individual project, below).

The course will be highly participative, with most class time being spent in hands-on communication exercises. Readings are from the course packet. You may also want to refer to:

Munter, Mary. Guide to Managerial Communication: Effective Business Writing and Speaking. Prentice Hall, 2002. ISBN: 0130462162.

It was used in Communication for Managers (15.280). If you did not take 15.280, you may want to purchase this book.

Team Project: Team-led Class and Team Self-analysis

The class sessions designated "Team-led classes" on the syllabus will focus on communication topics chosen by teams of students and will be organized by members of the teams. An in-depth discussion of this exercise can be found on the projects page.

Individual Project: Presentation and Executive Summary

The individual project for the course culminates in a long presentation and an accompanying one-page executive summary on a topic of the student's choosing. See the projects page for more information.

Grading

Assignments in the course will be weighted as follows: