Required Texts:

• Eisenberg, E. & Goodall, H. L. (2001). Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint (3rd edition).
• Reading Materials Online (downloadable articles in PDF or html format.  (click here for the free Adobe PDF reader)

Overview and Objectives:

This course provides an overview of historical and contemporary theories and concepts used to study organizational structures and communication. 
This is a theory course, not a skill building course.  Students will learn theories that help us understand better these claims:

• Organizations are constructed within political and economic social contexts.
• Communication structures organizations.
• We are both enabled and constrained by organizational structures and practices.
• Individuals, organizations, and culture are significantly interconnected.

While students will not engage in activities which build effective communication skills in organizational settings, they will benefit greatly from their enhanced knowledge of theoretical concepts.  In turn, this enhanced knowledge will improve students’ abilities to communicate effectively in various organizational environments. The goal is to provide students with the opportunity to enhance their creative and critical thinking skills. Each student has the choice to embrace or to reject this opportunity

Grading and Evaluation

You will earn points toward completion of the course on the following items:

Internet Components of the Course

The internet will be used frequently as a medium of interaction for this course. All students must have a computer and internet access or contact the professor for alternatives.

• Website: Blackboard contains the syllabus, policies, schedule of topics, readings, and links to useful research materials and guidelines. Assignments and guidelines are posted here.  Announcements and changes to the schedule are also posted on this website and participants must check for these in order to stay up to date. Participants in this course are expected to check the website at least three times weekly as a regular part of enrollment in this course.   Particular elements to be familiar with:
1. Announcements:  This is the first page you will see.  Read these!
2. Schedule:  Be certain you are always using the updated version of the schedule.
3. Dropbox:  Be certain you know how to use this feature.  You must make sure you SEND assignments to the professor.  Be sure you have retained copies of all work submitted.
4. Discussion Board: Certain assignments require online discussion with your team outside class time.  All participants should become familiar with tools available.  More information about these sessions will be provided on the course website.
5. Communication:  You have the capacity to email each other, chat in virtual classrooms, share files, etc.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help from your classmates!
• Listserv: Important announcements will be sent via email to the class.  All participants will be subscribed to an email list for this course.  You will be subscribed under your UIC Net ID.  If you wish to be subscribed with a different email address you must ask the professor for this privilege via email request within the first week of classes.

A Matter of Choice

As in any situation, students have the choice to obtain success, failure or something somewhere ‘in-between’ in this course. Simply put, a student will get out of this course exactly what s/he puts into it.

Expectations for Reading Assignments

In this class, you will be required to read and understand the assigned readings prior to class.  We will discuss issues raised by the readings during class.  This is not a lecture course, wherein the textbook material is explained or summarized for you in class. 

If you have questions about the readings, you must actively ask these questions.  Otherwise, it will be assumed that you have fully comprehended the reading.

The textbook is an advanced book and must be read carefully and slowly for full comprehension.

Online readings may be accessible only through the university library databases.  This may require you to log in using your UIC netID.  Be sure you know how to find and access articles.

Expectations for Classroom Behavior

Active participation is expected.  Why?  Because you’ll learn more from a situation you’re actively engaged in.  For you or your classmates, active participation may be unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable.  However, shifting your habits now will be easier than when you’re in your first job.  Remember, you are not the only one.  Remember, your ideas count but must be voiced to be heard.

During class, we will respect and honor all positions or viewpoints, as long as these positions are supported with evidence and reasoning, including but not limited to materials from the textbook.

Make-up quizzes and exams do not exist. If you are absent or late, you earn a zero for that quiz or exam.

Expectations for Assignment Submission

All assignments are optional.  Figure out what you are willing to achieve during the semester to calculate your highest possible grade.

Assignments will be given full consideration when they are completed and submitted prior to the set deadlines.  For each 12 hours an assignment is submitted after the deadline, it will be automatically deducted 10%.

Always keep a copy (hard copy or backup copy) of all assignments. You will earn zero (0) points for missing papers, regardless of circumstances.

Any electronic documents that are not received will not earn points.  If you want to prove you have submitted an electronic document, be certain you have an electronic paper trail. (set your email program options to keep copies of all outgoing mail).

All written work submitted for a grade should be word processed and saved as Microsoft Word Documents (.doc) or Rich Text Format documents (.rtf), use reasonable margins (1-1.25 inch), be double-spaced, include your name and page numbers, include citations and bibliography where necessary, and otherwise adhere to APA or MLA current standards.  If you have questions, please ask before submitting documents.

All submitted work should be proofread for major grammatical errors.  Each spelling error or major grammar error will result in a 1% deduction from your score for the assignment.

Notice on Plagiarism

Your adherence to ethical practices will be strictly enforced in this course. All assignments submitted must be completed by you alone, and are considered graded work.  All work on exams must be your own.  Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated.

Carefully document your sources. Thoroughly review the following information about plagiarism to familiarize yourself with possible problems. If you are unsure what constitutes plagiarism, you are responsible for talking to the instructor for clarification.  PLEASE DO NOT GUESS . . . ASK!

 Plagiarism is a serious university offense. Plagiarism may take many forms, each of which is unacceptable:

Any written and oral work you present as your own for this class should be completely your own; content, organization, language choices, visuals, and ideas, UNLESS you CITE THE SOURCES from which you have borrowed ideas, phrases, visual, etc.

For written and oral assignments, plagiarism includes, but is not limited to:

• intentionally or unintentionally using someone else's words, phrases, or ideas as if they were your own,
• quoting material from a source without enclosing it in quotation marks and/or providing the exact source,
• paraphrasing material from a source without giving credit and providing a citation for the source,
• quoting material from a source in an oral presentation without giving credit to the source,
• paraphrasing material from a source in an oral presentation without giving credit to the source.

Plagiarism in any form will result in failure of the course--regardless of reason/excuse.  In addition to failure of the course, your actions will be reported to university authorities and may result in expulsion from the university.

Assignment Descriptions

Reading Response Exercises
The goal of this assignment is for students to link the concepts in the current week’s reading to real life or hypothetical situations.  Format may be quiz, essay, or other. The essay is described below:

Quiz:  Students may be asked to complete a quiz in class or complete a take home quiz-type exercise.

Essay: Each student should write a well formulated argument which demonstrates a detailed understanding of the reading. At the upper division, analysis and argument is required (rather than just summary).

Essay should make three separate and well  formulated arguments/points which:
A) demonstrate solid comprehension of the concepts in the reading,
B) illustrate that the student has read and understood the entire reading assignment, and
C) Link concepts in a meaningful way to other concepts/theories or to real/hypothetical situations.

Each argument will be worth 10 points (total points for each assignment = 30).

Students might like to use the PREP formula for developing their arguments until they are comfortable with this exercise:
Point (state your point clearly and concisely),
Reasoning (provide the reasons, perhaps answering the hypothetical questions, "Why?" or "So what?"),
Evidence (provide specific examples from the readings, examples from the workplace, etc to help support your point),
Point (wrap up the argument, tie it together, and otherwise give the reader the "Therefore...." statements that conclude your argument).

To aid in the overall development of these Reader Response Essays, those essays receiving full points may be made available for viewing (without name) on the website.

• Submit this essay to the student dropbox before midnight Monday. 
• Required format of document title:  name, assignment, assignment number

  Examples of correctly named documents:
  For a Reader Response Essay:   SmithRR4.doc
  For a Quiz:   SmithQ2.doc
  For a Current Events Essay:  SmithCE2.doc
  For a Film Criticism Essay:  Smith FC3.doc

• Required subject line (title) in dropbox:  name, assignment, assignment number, and purpose of message: 

  Examples of correctly titled subject lines (called "title" in dropbox):
  Gonzales Quiz 1 submission
  Gonzales Frankenstein Film Criticism submission
  Gonzales CAElection Coverage essay submission

Small Group Online Discussions

At certain junctures of the semester, your team may be assigned a question, issue, or case study to discuss.  Using the readings from class as well as external sources, your team will address this question in depth, using the online communication tools.  To track your contributions to the discussion, as well as provide an overall log of your discussion (to submit for evaluation and credit), each team will use either the Blackboard discussion board or virtual classroom.  This tool will also allow members to contribute whenever it’s convenient (rather than being required to find a mutually agreeable meeting time outside of class). 

Your goal during these team discussions is to build your understanding of an issue, using all the skills and abilities you have built prior to (and during) this class.  Your team goal is not to simply summarize the readings, or answer the question in a simplistic manner.  You should discuss the implications of the given question; strive to enhance our understanding of organizational communication concepts and issues, using your given question as a catalyst. In short, do not sell yourselves short in this assignment.  You earn credit by stretching your limits, pushing you’re your current intellectual boundaries.  You don’t earn credit for working at the surface or remaining where you already are, intellectually speaking.

Graded Exercises based on Outside Learning Materials

Real life offers many illustrations of organizational communication theories and concepts, as does popular culture Therefore, we will utilize other learning materials during the semester.  These three categories give you an idea of the possible outside learning materials: 

Film Criticism

During the semester, you may be asked to view particular films on your own time and receive credit on graded exercises in which you critically analyze these films.  This means you will have to find these films at your local movie stores or libraries.  You may be asked to participate in an online group discussion about the film, write short response essays linking the film to concepts in the class, and answer exam questions based on material from these films.

Organizational Artifacts Analysis

You may be asked to collect material from an organization that will help you study the structure or practices within that organization.  This might include internal documents which are publicly available, such as pamphlets, brochures, press releases, and annual reports, or external documents, such as news coverage and information gleaned from observation.  The collection of this material will be your individual responsibility.  You may be required to bring materials to class, discuss materials in a group, write short essays analyzing these materials according to an organizational communication theory or concept, and answer exam questions based on your collected materials.

Current Events Analysis

You may be asked to follow certain current events to analyze the organizational communication practices or theories operating.  You may be required to read newspaper and magazine articles and discuss these in small groups or in essays.  You may be required to respond to quiz or exam questions that assume you have a solid grounding in a particular current event.

Fiction, Poetry, Lyrics, Art

The world is filled with artists who document and archive culture.  You may be given the opportunity to consider how songs, poetry, and fiction help us understand organizational communication issues or theories.  You may be required to find and read certain works assigned to you, or to investigate a particular genre (art, poetry, fiction) to find materials that help support or explain a certain concept or theory.

Exams
Two exams during the semester will test your comprehension of the materials and your ability to analyze specific case studies using the concepts from the course.  These exams do not simply test your memorization skills but require more complex understanding of the material.

Exams will include one or more of the following categories of questions:  multiple choice, true/false, short answer questions and essay questions.

Other notable issues

If you have any documented disabilities which influence your test taking, please contact me for accommodation.  If you believe you have trouble with time based exams but have not been tested, check out this page and also contact the UIC Disability services at 312-413-2183.  They can help in many ways and will serve as your advocate to make certain your learning needs are being appropriately accommodated. 

If you will miss class for religious reasons, you must notify the professor of these dates within the first week of classes. You will receive accommodations for your absence.

To improve your writing skills and receive free tutoring, contact the UIC Writing Center
To improve your study skills, contact the Academic Center for Excellence

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