Interpersonal Communication

Catalog description

Credits 3. 3 Lecture Hours. COURSE OVERVIEW. Examines key concepts and theories for understanding how people create, maintain and sometimes challenge relationships through communication. Considers person-to-person and online interaction, including perception, attraction, self-disclosure, listening and/or conflict management. Explores communication across interpersonal differences such as professional and social roles, class, age, ability, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality and religion. Examines practices for analyzing interpersonal communication through research and theory. Course materials may include consideration of diverse perspectives and examples of communication as both productive and destructive, in face-to-face and online contexts. RELEVANCE AND APPLICATION. Builds skills for effective interaction in personal, professional and civic settings. Develops tools for effective listening, conflict management and resolution and adapting to others from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Supports understanding of how interpersonal communication influences health, well-being and quality of life. Builds academic preparation for advanced study and workforce preparation for careers requiring teamwork, leadership and strong relational and collaborative competence. DEEPENING UNDERSTANDINGS. Highlights how everyday ideas about relationships and communication may differ from research-based perspectives. Considers ways that listening involves more than paying attention, that conflict can strengthen as well as weaken relationships and reasons disclosure and trust do not always follow predictable stages. Builds recognition of how identity, culture and context shape meaningful interactions, showing ways communication approaches that seem natural in one setting may be interpreted differently or counter-productively in another. TOPICS AND THEMES. May include exploration of perception, attraction, self-disclosure, listening and conflict management; study of interaction patterns and stages in relationship development; analysis of communication across interpersonal dimensions such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, ability, nationality and religion; consideration of productive and destructive aspects of communication; application of interpersonal theory to face-to-face and online contexts, including social media. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification.