Course Information and Policies

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About the Course

Welcome to graduate study in Communication. I want to begin by noting that your being here is an accomplishment of the first degree. The graduate program in Communication at Maryland is highly selective and your admission indicates your past accomplishments and our faith in your potential to succeed in a program committed to excellence. So, congratulations on your accomplishment.

And welcome to COMM 700. This course is designed as an introduction to the department, as an introduction to or renewal of your skills as a researcher, and as an orientation to the common concerns of scholarship writ large and the discipline of Communication more narrowly. It is in the character of graduate study that it very quickly becomes specialized. In fact, you, no doubt, have come to the Department of Communication to study rhetoric and political culture or public relations or intercultural communication or persuasion and social influence or media or feminism or argumentation or health communication or some other specialty. But before you go there, the department wants you to spend a little time understanding the commonality of culture and skills that you will elaborate your specialty upon. This course serves that purpose.

So, how does this work out in terms of objectives. For one thing, the course introduces you to some common vocabulary that we use in this department that will help you move more quickly into your other courses. This advantage is subtle. It will happen without your being aware it is happening. Nonetheless, it is a critical addition to your adjustment to the department at Maryland. Second, it will introduce you or reintroduce you to research. There is a difference between a research department and a non-research department, as dramatic as the difference between undergraduate papers and research. Research is disciplined creativity. You have shown creativity or you would not be here. Our task is to discipline that creativity without suffocating it. Third, it will introduce you to all the faculty of the department. They will be dropping by and giving you a chance to hear about their research. It is the environment of inquiry that we hope to communicate and they will be invaluable in doing so. Finally, this course should give you a place to share anxieties and little detail kinds of questions that you worry are too piddly to bring up. They aren't here.

So, work hard on the fundamental understandings and skills you will practice here and it will assist you throughout your graduate education.

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What knowledge should you have before you come into this course?

It is not the job of this course to assume knowledge. In fact, I assure you that you will know some of the things you ecounter. Your job is to make certain that I don't overshoot your knowledge level. You come from many different backgrounds and all of those have validity. It is after this course that we should all be able to assume a common experience, not before.

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What will the course be like?

Each week will be divided into two parts. Throughout those 28 segments we will interweave three different projects: (1) acclimating to graduate study in the Department of Communication, (2) developing research skills, and (3) providing a glimpse of the research agenda of the Department of Communication. There will nearly always be reading. Many weeks I will supplement the reading with some additional advice on the topics you are reading about. The reading will prepare you for some discussion within the seminar. This will highlight the cooperative nature of scholarship. In addition, there will be considerable activity in researching, assimilating, and preparing research reports that will help you develop or renew skills for your scholarship.

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Learning Resources

You should purchase the following texts:

In addition, you need to buy at least one of the following. The manual you select should be determined by which typically characterizes research in your scholarly community.

In addition to these texts there are other instruments that you should buy if you do not already have them:

We also live in a time when you need to have some electronic resources. These include:

The biggest learning resource, however, is all around you - the faculty and graduate students of the Department of Communication and the University of Maryland. Get used to exploiting them.

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Participation and Attendance

Is this your first seminar? Seminars are a time when you are expected to speak. There is no question of absence involved. You don't absent yourself from graduate classes! It is one of those lessons you are to learn early. But it is important that you begin achieving a high level of participation in a seminar. All of our graduate degrees culminate in an oral exam. We are somewhat amused when students who have difficulty tell us that there is nothing in our program that prepares them for an oral exam. Ah, contrar! Our seminars give you plenty of opportunity to orally articulate your ideas and your doubts. Remember that when you fail to speak up for whatever fear that you have, you are passing up an opportunity to prepare yourself for the oral examination. It all starts here. So be active in making your contribution.

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Incompletes

Papers are due at the beginning of class - no phone calls that you will be a little late while the paper prints. If you can't get the paper done, negotiate a deadline extension. The Great Klumpp Incomplete Memo should be used.

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Academic Integrity

There is a close association between authorship and ideas in Western academic culture. This association provides recognition for the creative energy and discipline of a scholar, and over a career becomes an important way of framing work. This process begins in the classroom when you associate your name only with the work that is yours.

But this is a good place to understand that the issue is more complicated. Ideas of scholarship are not individual, they grow from the context of scholarship. For this reason we have elaborate systems of giving credit for ideas. Scholars become responsible for understanding the origins of their ideas and giving credit to those who precede them.

In addition, author's words are often influenced by editors, either informally by asking friends to work with your text, or formally by institutional editors. How much help can one obtain with the writing of their work before it is no longer their work? How does one properly acknowledge such assistance? The question is one that scholars must be able to answer.

To bring these issues into your work, you need to be familiar with the University's rules on academic integrity. But in a more fundamental way, you need to learn the lessons of citation, placement of your work in the context of the literature, and the rights and responsibilities of editing that this course will teach. Please raise these issues with us whenever you have questions or concerns. This is another of those lessons that should emerge from this class and then never confuse you again in your work.


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Disabilities and Religious Observances

The University of Maryland accommodates students with disabilities and recognizes the rights of students to exercise their religious rites. We ask only that you notify us during the first week of classes if you have concerns in either of these areas and require that we accommodate your needs in any way including alteration in the due date or manor of assignments.

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Course Copyright Restrictions

The lectures that I deliver in this class and course materials I create and distribute for your learning, including power point presentations, tests, outlines, content of this website, and similar materials, are protected by federal copyright law as my original works. You are permitted to take notes of lectures and to use course materials for your use in this course. You are not authorized to reproduce or distribute notes of lectures or my course materials or make any commercial use of them without my express written consent. Persons who sell or distribute copies or modified copies of instructors' course materials or assist another person or entity in selling or distributing those materials may be considered in violation of the University Code of Student Conduct, Part 9(k).

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