COM 632: Theories and Concepts of Small Group Communication Hi, I'm Gloria Galanes and I'm your professor for COM 632 Small Group Communication which will be taught over the Internet. This is the second time that I've taught that course over the Internet. The first time through two years ago, I didn't lose anybody. Everybody who started the course with me also finished. I'm hoping to maintain that same kind of record this time through. I have two major goals for you for this course. One is theoretical and one is practical. To serve the theoretical ends, the textbook I've selected is a pretty challenging one and I think it's really going to stretch you. It talks about the various aspects of communication where they currently stand in the field and what some new directions are that those areas might be taking. And as I said, I think that the textbook is going to challenge you. To server the practical end, we have a couple of assignments that you'll be completing, and two other textbooks that deal with what make for effective teams and how does one go about building an effective team. I know that many of you work and I suspect that some of your goals for the course are practical rather than theoretical ones. But we'll be working on both things this semester. Let me talk a little bit about the workload for the course. Students have told us in the past that they find the Internet courses to consume more time than regular classroom-based classes, and I think that perception is accurate. We tell our undergraduate students to expect to spend at least two hours outside of class for every hour that they're spending in class. So that means for a three-credit-hour class, you can expect to spend about nine hours of work on that course. That's for an undergraduate class. The graduate classes, students should expect to spend even more time than that. I think you can plan on spending a minimum of nine hours on this course-that will average out to nine hours a week. Some weeks there maybe more, some weeks there might be less. Now that you have some idea about what the expectations for the course are, let me welcome you again to the Small Group course and I think we'll have a wonderful semester together. |