This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

Communication Course Hybrid and Asynchronous Syllabi

This semester is flying by! How is it late October already? We are entering week 10 here at Shepherd University. I promised several weeks ago to share my syllabi for this semester. As the saying goes, “better late than never.” 🙂

Below, you will find 2 syllabi from courses I have discussed previously on this blog. You will also find a brand new syllabus for a class that I have never shared on this blog before: COMM 203 Communication & New Media. This is a course that is commonly called Introduction to Mass Communication or similarly titled at other universities.

Social Media Syllabus and Strategic Campaigns Syllabi for Hybrid Teaching in a COVID-19 World

This semester I am teaching 2 courses in a hybrid model where I meet with students in person 1 day a week and online 1 day a week. I am also teaching an introductory course for our major, called COMM 203 Communication & New Media, asynchronously online.

We are all finding ourselves having to balance several course modalities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is my first time teaching a hybrid course since I first taught a social media class about 10 years ago while I was on faculty at Utah Valley University. I have been teaching the COMM 203 class online asynchronously for a few years now.

The online portion of my hybrid classes is conducted over Zoom.  So, in a sense, these classes are half of how I used to teach in person pre-pandemic and half of how I was teaching online last year. Still, it can be a bit disjointing going from seeing everyone in person to then trying to manage lecture and group work online when students are disconnected physically.

As I have worked to reduce overloading students this academic year, both syllabi reflect some changes.

The social media syllabus reflects, among other things, the transition to using the Stukent social media simulator (which I wrote about in a blog post series) that I used last year. It also reflects a choice I gave students this semester to either complete the Hootsuite University program or the Facebook Blueprint essentials. The syllabus is below. If you are looking for an in-person syllabus, you can see an in person syllabus for the social media class from 2019 here.

The Strategic Campaigns syllabus reflects, among other things, an adjustment to the Bateman Case Study assignment that I have been running in this class for several years. The adjustment allows students to complete the assignment as a video they submit to me. The syllabus also reflects an adjustment to the Made to Stick assignment which I have assigned, in one version or another, for the last few years in this class. I have not written about either of these assignments on this blog, but hope to find time to do so sometime this academic year. The syllabus is below. If you are looking for an in-person, you can find a strategic campaigns in person syllabus here.

Social Media Syllabus

Strategic Campaigns Syllabus

Communication & New Media Syllabus Asynchronous Online (OLA)

The third and final syllabus I am sharing is for a course I teach that is the introductory course for all majors in my department. The course, COMM 203 Communication & New Media, is also in the university’s core curriculum and so we get students from all majors across the university enrolled in the course.

I have taught this course off and on since I designed a new syllabus for it upon my arrival at Shepherd University in 2012. More recently, I have taught the course OLA during the summer these past few years. Last year I taught the course OLA due to COVID-19 and chose to do so again this fall. I also oversee this course for the department as it is taught by several faculty.

I have never discussed this course on this blog because I viewed it as falling outside of the focus of the blog on social media, public relations, and related courses. However, given how many of us are teaching online or in hybrid and OLA models, I have decided to share it in case this syllabus and course are of benefit to any readers.

The course description from the university course catalog for COMM 203 Communication & New Media reads as follows:

“New media are changing the ways we live and work. Communication professionals must be fluent across media platforms and ready to embrace perpetual change. Communication and New Media is a course that examines media technologies and their cultural implications. The course is designed to provide students with a survey of the field and an introduction to digital media production and media literacy.”

The textbook used in the course is Introduction to Mass Communication by Stanley Baran.

I teach online asynchronous courses using the following format.

• Each week, the lessons and assignments are released to all students at 12:05am Monday. This allows students to work at their own pace on all materials for that week, so long as they meet the assignment deadlines.
• There are two days of material for each week, just as if the course was taught two days a week in person. Each weekday includes some combination of recorded lectures, online videos, assignments and activities, and lab guides for working on projects. Again, students can access and work through them any day so long as they meet the deadlines.
• Assignments are due on either Tuesdays or Thursdays at 11:55pm.

There are two hands-on projects in this class. The first project is a podcast about a social issue where students write, record, edit and turn into me a 5-7 minute podcast episode that focuses on an issue in sound (e.g., music, radio) or journalism. In this project, students learn to use Audacity to record and edit their podcast episode. The second project asks students to conduct an investigation into a career in communication that interests them and produce an Adobe Spark website and video about the career. Each project has sub-assignment ‘check ins’ linked to it where students share their progress with me.

My online asynchronous Communication & New Media syllabus is below. I also added a link in the menu on this blog to it for future reference. Enjoy!

Communication & New Media Syllabus

I hope your semester is going well.

Be Well!

-Matt