Neil Teixeira: Here's a quick look at what we'll be covering today. During today's webinar, you'll have the opportunity to hear from two of our faculty members. Neil Teixeira: Here's a quick look at what we'll be covering today. During today's webinar, you'll have the opportunity to hear from two of our faculty members.
First, I'll introduce you to Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, who will go over the program's curriculum, including the online course that she teaches, and discuss the advantages of online learning at Annenberg.
Dr. Mathew Curtis will then follow with a detailed overview of two of his online courses, both of which are integral to the Master of Communication Management degree.
After we hear from our faculty, our enrolment advisors will spend a minute talking about the admissions process and requirements. And we will then wrap up with a Q&A session.
Our first presenter today is Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, Director of the Master of Communication Management Master's degree program and Clinical Professor of Communications for the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Hello, Dr. Weintraub. I'll now turn the presentation over to you.
Dr. Weintraub: Thank you, Neil. I'm delighted to be here and be able to speak with all of you, even if I can't actually see you. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the program, the curriculum, and online learning. So let's get started. What you're probably really interested in is what are you gonna be studying? So let's take a look at the curriculum.
You will be taking two classes per term. At least, that's what we're going to encourage you to do. We will be allowing students to take one class a term because we understand that sometimes, work or family obligations make it difficult to manage two classes. But I'll let you know that we really think you're better off taking two because, otherwise, the program's gonna really go on for quite a while, and what you want to do is get in, do the work, get the learning, get the knowledge, get the skills, and start applying them.
The first two classes you will take are: Communication Management 500 and 540. If you decide to take one class to start, you will begin with Communication Management 540. The courses on this slide go in numerical order, which is not the same as the order in which you'll take the classes. But let me follow the slide because it'll probably be easier for both of us.
Communication Management 500 is your core class, and in this case, the core class is an overview of Organizational Communication at the macro level. We think that it's really important to understand how communication works in organizations for anyone who's coming out with a degree of Communication Management.
We want you to be studying how organizational information flows, how networks work, what strategic communication is, what the literature says about how organizations function, and look at how you can apply this academic, theoretical knowledge to the actual workplace. And that's some of the work that you'll be doing.
Communication Management 502 is the Strategic Corporate Communication class. And this is the class that I teach, and I'm gonna come back to this one and talk a little bit more about it after I finish the overview.
Communication Management 508 is our Change Communication class. In this class, you look at what's required in an organization to communicate to all of the stakeholders, but especially the internal stakeholders, the organization's strategy, and when an organization goes through change, how important it is to communicate that change clearly and frequently.
Most of the studies on why change in organization fails – and that can be any kind of change: reengineering, merger, acquisition, divestiture – the No. 1 reason why these change efforts do not take and do not work are because communication was severely lacking. So communicating strategy and change, we think, is a key success factor for managers, directors, vice-presidents, and certainly anyone who has communication in his or her title.Communication Management 510, Communication, Attitudes, Values and Behavior, is our persuasion class. Sorry. I needed a drink of water. In this class, you'll study information on influence, what causes people to change their minds, what causes people to change their behavior from an unhealthy behavior to a healthy behavior. And whether you are in marketing communication or organizational communication or HR communication or investor communication, understanding the theoretical constructs that underlie influence, we think are really important, and that's why you'll take Communication Management 510.
Communication Management 540, The Uses of Communication Research, is, as I said before, the first class you're going to take. This class looks at communication research, and you learn to evaluate and analyze it. Dr. Curtis is going to look at this in more detail in a few more slides, so I'm not gonna tell you too much more about that.
Communication Management 541, Integrated Marketing Communication, is our basic marketing class. And here, you're gonna look at how marketing communication strategies are integrated beyond just the marketing and incorporate all of the communication elements that go on inside an organization.
Communication Management 556 is our Global Marketing Communication. And here, you'll learn about how you market globally but gain the local advantage because, whether it's a company that is global in its reach in terms of selling products overseas, or it's truly an international, inter-global company, understanding how marketing works in this global economy is very critical.
And then the last class is your Communication Research Practicum, and that is also a class that Dr. Curtis is gonna talk to you about.So let me go back to 502 and tell you a little bit about the class that I will begin teaching this summer. Strategic Corporate Communication is a class that looks at all of the communication stakeholders that a publicly held US company needs to communicate with. And what we really focus on in this class is creating strategic communication plans.
Now, this is a class I've been teaching online since 2003. And, while we are using some new technologies that are available to us and such, it will continue to be a case-based class where we will follow a fictional company through a variety of scenarios across the course of the semester, looking at the challenges that are facing the chief communication officer in terms of the various communication problems that an organization faces: employee issues because there's been a very bad employee survey showing that employees are very disengaged; a crisis surrounding an environmental issue; an investor communication issue.
And so, by the time you're done with this class, you will be able to create effective, implementable, highly analytic, data-based, strategic communication plans.
And I will tell you, having spent 20 of my career years in the corporate world before coming back to USC 11 years ago, is that most of the professionals in the communication functions are not good strategic thinkers, primarily because communicators tend to live in a rapid-fire world of ready, fire, fire, fire because so many things are happening so fast. The ability to quickly and accurately analyze a situation and determine where the stakeholders are and identify the data and create a strategic communication plan, I believe is a definite strategic career advantage for communicators.So let's go to the next slide, which will tell you why we think that USC Annenberg is the right program for you. First of all, your program, the online program, is designed for mid-career professionals. This program is only for people who have at least three years of work experience, and the bulk of the people that we have in the program currently have greater than five and ten years of work experience.If you take the program full-time, two classes a semester, three semesters a year, you'll be able to complete in less than two years, and we know that that's a real advantage for working professionals.
We think that one of our competitive advantages is that you are taking classes from USC's top-ranked faculty members. All of the Master instructors are USC full-time faculty and all with PhDs. We think that makes a difference in the quality of the learning.And if you are interested in our program, it means that you want a rigorous curriculum. Online and easy are not necessarily synonymous. Our course design is state-of-the-art. The work that you will do is rigorous. The readings that you will do are academic in nature. I won't make any apologies for the fact that this will be a tough program. You will work at this.
But what our current cohort says is they're loving the reading; they're loving what they're learning; they're able to apply what they're learning in their jobs, practically the same day they do the reading. And we think that will make a real difference for you. But, please, don't make any mistake. We will work you. And I think when it's done, you'll thank us for it.
And, of course, you're gonna be part of the USC's Global Network of Alums. There's a reason why we're called the Trojan Family. We have alumni organizations in most major cities. You will be a part of that. You will join the alumni organization. You can attend events. And, of course, when you finish, you'll come to USC, we hope, and walk across the stage to receive your diploma.
So let's talk a little bit about online learning advantages. Now, as I said earlier, I've been teaching online since 2003. I am a huge fan. Now, I still teach some classes on campus, and the online class that I teach is for the on-campus program. But online allows us to do some things we can't do in an on-campus program.
First of all, despite what you might think, you're gonna find that the interaction and connecting with your classmates is more frequent, more powerful and deeper than what happens in an on-campus program. Now, that may sound counterintuitive, but what we find in on-campus is students come to class, they're there for three hours, they may do work group and such, but then they go home, or they go back to their jobs, or they go back to their internships. In the on-campus program, the learning management system that we're using makes connecting with your colleagues incredibly easy. And you're gonna find that it will create powerful friendships.
Most of your coursework will be asynchronous, meaning you'll go on and do it when it is convenient for you. Now, some of our classes have been using one-hour live sessions that are – except in one case – not required, but are optional; however, we're finding that almost all of the students in the classes are really appreciating the online session, which is run very much like this webinar. You look at things on the slide, and you hear the faculty member's voice or your colleague's voice if they are presenting.
But, while you will not be able to do all your work on the weekends, you will be able to do a lot of the work at a time when it is convenient for you, in the evening after the kids are in bed, or early in the morning if you're not a night owl, but a lark.
And then, of course, the system that we have will make it very, very accessible. You will easily be able to go back and look at something. You know, one of the things that doesn't happen in on-campus is you can't go back and listen to a lecture again. And, in this case, you will be able to go back to the archived material. You'll be able to go back to material that you had two or three semesters previously because you might find that something that went on there has relevance to a project that you're doing in another class. So we think that online learning is richer; it is deeper. I find the work product is far, far superior.
And for working professionals who can't move to Los Angeles for a year, clearly, this is the best way to get a Tier 1 university Master's degree in Communication from one of the top, if not the top communication school in the country.
So now, let me turn this over to one of the faculty members. Mathew Curtis is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Communication. He has a PhD in Social Psychology from USC. And he's taught a wide range of courses for us in the Communication Management program and in the university overall. He may be one of the best research methods teachers at the university and, in fact, won a teaching award for teaching an undergraduate methods class. And you may not appreciate what that says, but it says that he's an extraordinary instructor. Mathew, it's all yours.
Dr. Mathew Curtis: Well, thank you for that introduction. First, I'd like to repeat the earlier work of this webinar and thank you all for attending today and your interest in the online program here at USC. As Rebecca mentioned, I've been teaching here at USC now for a number of years. I think I started in about 2004, and our current MCM online program is definitely one of the most exciting things I've been involved with.
The technology we have available to us today _________ developing my 540 class is very impressive, and it was only once we had the tech available to us that we felt comfortable at USC putting our degree program online because we wanted to give a quality experience that you associate with USC in our online courses. And we feel very strongly, and USC is associated with high expectations for the students. We want to meet and fulfill those expectations that our students have in our program.
So, rather than focusing on the big picture of the degree, let me talk about the courses I teach and my areas of specialty. As Rebecca mentioned, I got my PhD here at USC in Psychology, and I traveled about 800 yards across campus from the Psychology building into the Annenberg Communications building. There's a lot of overlap actually between communication research and psychology research, and a number of professors in Annenberg who also teach in the online program have Psychology PhDs but now teach in Annenberg Communications.
So I'm gonna talk first about the 540 program. As Rebecca mentioned, it is the first class you'll take if you enter the program, and it serves as an essential foundation course and, arguably, the course that would distinguish you most in the workplace. In 540, you learn about research methods. You not only come to learn about them, but you come to understand them.
For many students, I know at first it seems unappealing because you don't think research methods is exciting. But it's this research methods class that really sets you apart in the workforce in your professional career. As you've experienced yourselves in the workforce, anyone can have ideas, but very few people can provide concrete data collected by research methods to explain how and why their ideas should be supported. And the data you can generate from research − and you will learn those methods in this class – provide very strong support for any argument you make. And, in many ways, it provides a safety net on which to rely.
As a concrete example, suppose you went to talk to your boss today and said, "Hey, I think we should go with Product A rather than Product B," or, "Hey, I think we should go with this commercial rather than that commercial." Well, your boss might consider your idea in passing.
But if you could go to your boss and say, "Hey, I've run some data. I've conducted focus groups. I've done a survey. I've looked at the numbers, and I think we should go with Point A rather than Point B," or, "Commercial F rather than Commercial G," then your boss is going to pay much more attention to you because saying you've got numbers and facts and figures to back up your opinion greatly strengthens the argument you're trying to make.It's a skill set to allow you to collect data, analyze, interpret and communicate that data that we learn in 540 that really distinguishes you in your workforce, in your current place of employment or wherever you end up working in the future.
So let's talk in some more detail about the objectives of 540. And, as I mentioned in passing, we have the application of different research methodologies, and the four methods we cover in detail in this course are focus groups, surveys, content analysis and experiments.And I'm gonna talk in more detail about these four methods on the next slide, but many of these methods, especially surveys and experiments, generate data. But we have to analyze and make sense of that data. This is where we use the statistical program SPSF, Statistical Program for the Social Sciences, and I walk you step by step through how to analyze and make sense of the numbers your research methods generate.
And, as a baseline, I typically assume you've got some foundational high school math, but maybe managed to avoid all statistical data and all math classes, all numbers, all throughout undergrad. So it's pretty a handholding process at the start of teaching about how to analyze statistics, but we quickly ramp up the speed until, by the end of the class and the course, you're performing at a graduate level appropriate to a communications student in statistics. It doesn't mean to say that you're a math expert, but you've now acquired the skills and knowledge to make the most common typical analysis to data, interpret what those numbers mean, and be able to communicate those to people around you.
Effectively utilize research databases: This is very important. This moves your ideas, opinions, business proposals, research plans away from just being an opinion piece to being kind of a professionally supported, academic or research industry piece. What I mean here is that when you make a statement that there's been sales increasing in the last quarter, or since 2010, use of social media has increased dramatically, if you can put a citation that backs up that claim, it greatly strengthens your argument. It takes it away from being your personal opinion and saying, "Hey, here's what I think, but I've also found an expert in the field, in the industry, in the academic literature, who also agrees with me that social media use has been increasing since 2010," or, "has trailed off over the last six months."
If you're using the database, the technology's out there because you believe that, for some reason, over the last six months, social media use has doubled or trailed off, if you can put that other supporting opinion there, it adds a great weight and support to your ideas.
And then writing in the research style: The research style has many similarities with the writing style that's in use across a number of industries. The research style is short, concise communication. Bosses and myself included, in this course, we don't want to read flowery, ornate language that communicates one idea over the course of ten sentences. If you can communicate that one single idea in the space of one sentence, do it in one sentence. I'd much rather read your ideas quickly and be able to digest them without having to plow through a number of additives and ornate language that confuses and hides the real point you're trying to make. So we really focus in on writing in 540.
And then writing in the research style: The research style has many similarities with the writing style that's in use across a number of industries. The research style is short, concise communication. Bosses and myself included, in this course, we don't want to read flowery, ornate language that communicates one idea over the course of ten sentences. If you can communicate that one single idea in the space of one sentence, do it in one sentence. I'd much rather read your ideas quickly and be able to digest them without having to plow through a number of additives and ornate language that confuses and hides the real point you're trying to make. So we really focus in on writing in 540.
So, moving on now to the next slide, I want to talk in some more detail about the four main methods we cover in the class: focus groups, surveys, content analysis and experiments. So let me give you a brief overview of what each method entails, and I can talk about how and when we might use these methods.
So focus groups are probably familiar to a number of you. It's when you get a group of people in a room and sit them down, usually, say, four to six people. You sit them down and say, "Tell me what you think about X. Tell me what you think about this product. Tell me why you think this product's easy to use. Tell me what you like about the packaging." And it's lots of kind of very open-ended questions, such as, "Why? Tell me more. What do you think?" It's almost like a brainstorming session where you get potential customers, current customers to tell you what they think of the product, service that you're offering.
Surveys extend upon the idea of focus groups. In a focus group, you've got maybe four to seven people in the room, sitting down, talking. A survey, if you put it online, you can get 1,000 responses within an hour. So a survey is allowing you to test your ideas or theories or prospects on a much larger standpoint. You can put it online and go worldwide. You can put it online and restrict the geographic location to say, "Only give me people in California." You can email your current customer database list of emails, so you're only contacting current consumers or current users of your service.Content analysis: This is a very interesting area, in my opinion, because when you ask people their opinions, they might tell you what they think they're gonna do. The problem is behavioral intentions don't equal behaviors.
A concrete example of this is many people intend to lose weight. The problem is they don't follow through and actually lose weight. They go on and carry on eating fast food and cream cakes. A personal example on my part is at the start of this year, I intended to go to the gym and exercise at least three times a week. My behavioral follow-through was there for about the first two weeks, but from mid-January onwards, my intentions didn't equal my behavior.
So content analysis allows us to actually go in and see what's happening in the real world. So a place where we might conduct a content analysis is we might – let's say we've got a technology product that's out on the market. We might go onto discussion boards and see what people are posting and saying about the product. We maybe go to CNET or Amazon and read the customer reviews and say, "Are people actually giving our product a high rating or a low rating?"
Maybe in the focus groups when we said to people, "What do you think of this product?", they said, "I love it. I'd buy it. I think it's a great product." But then you actually read the Amazon reviews and see what's happening in the real world. Maybe what's happening in the real world is comments that users make towards your product are not reflecting what your focus group data generated for you. So the benefit of the content analysis is it's actually looking at what's happening in the real world, what's happening with your product, your service, when it's used by real users.
The final method we cover in the class in Week 11 and Week 12 is experiments. So experiments are − fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, you don't get to wear a white lab coat unless you really want to. The experiment is comparing and, in my simple form, two products.Maybe you show people Commercial A, then you show them Commercial B, and you say, "Which of these two commercials do you like?", just directly comparing two things; or maybe you're showing them the packaging – the proposed packaging for Product A and comparing it to the proposed packaging for Product B, and you say, "Which packaging do you like best, the red packaging or the blue packaging, the packaging with the smiling child or the packaging with the smiling group of children?" You compare two things, the single child versus the group of child; the red packaging versus the blue packaging. It helps you really focus in on the specific questions you have about what should be on the packaging.
Moving onto the next slide, how do we test your knowledge of these materials we're presenting to you? Typical way, as is probably common to many undergraduate classes or graduate classes if you've taken them, we want you to write. If I'm teaching you writing, the best way of testing if you've understood the instructions I've given you on writing is to have you write some papers.
Now, it's a 12-week course. There's lots and lots of material I want to share with you. I'm always trying to find ways to put more information into the course so that I call these mini papers. I intentionally cap the paper page commit at five to six pages. I know you're smart people if you're in the program. I know you could write 10 to 20 pages if you had to. It's a much harder skill to take the information you want to share with me and condense it down into five pages.This goes back to the previous slide, a few slides back, when I said I want you to write in a concise style. Writing in a concise style is essential if you're going to communicate what I need to see you've learned within the space of five pages.
Statistical analysis is probably the least popular assignment in the course of the current students going through, but it's also arguably one of the most valuable ones. Again, I'm teaching you how to do statistics. The research methods of surveys and experiments generate numerical data. You have to be able to analyze, interpret, and understand and then communicate what those numbers mean.
Midterm and final paper: These are slightly longer papers. The midterm paper is 7 or 8 pages, and the final paper is 11 to 12 pages. So the page counts are not demanding. What is demanding in these papers is, again, writing in a concise style and using the library databases and research databases to help you support your viewpoint.
The importance of these library databases is emphasized in Week 1. I have the USC librarian come in and do a number of presentations, which are asynchronously recorded – you can view them again and again at your convenience – but the librarian comes in and says, "Here's what USC can offer you. We have access to all these journals and access to all these professional reports, all these industry reports, industry data. Here's how you find these numbers. Here's how you find articles, opinion pieces, editorials on new features." We have access to everything from the New York Times to the LA Times to industry insider publications, to academic publications, such as the Journal of Social Psychology, the Journal of Communication.And then discussions and quizzes: Each week, there's a number of discussion boards where you post your reflections and thoughts on the class, either in response to a prompt from me, or in response to a prompt from a fellow student in the class. And it's these discussion boards where our current students are making very good, strong personal connections because they're engaging in a debate.
This is one of the nice things about the online program compared to the ground program is that, in the ground traditional classroom, students are on campus for three hours for their one class, usually 6:30 to 9:30. They come into class at 6:20, sit down, say hi to a couple of friends in the class. They sit there for three hours, digest the information that we present. And 9:30, they're out of there and heading home. They maybe only talk amongst themselves for five, ten minutes.
In the online program, these discussion boards are allowing constant interaction between the students. And a number of our students right now are phoning each other, engaging in ________ chat or instant messaging and making stronger connections again and again, as they work through papers, assignments, and just in a social manner outside of the classroom.
Let's now look at the learning outcomes for this. So what does this all boil down to? The learning outcomes we get from 540 is you learn in this class how to understand problems. There's problems all around us throughout the world, in our personal life, in our social life, in our professional lives. And the research methods training I give you in this class allows you to start understanding these problems, understand what is X causing Y? What might be other things causing Y? What's causing this problem?
It allows you to break down small, medium or large problems to allow you to engage in effective research. It then allows you apply and interpret the research data, the research numbers, the focus group responses, to generate solutions. It gives you insight into what the problem is and what might the potential solutions be to that problem.
And then another very important point here is that it's no good just having the answer; you have to be able to communicate that to your boss, your coworkers, your peers effectively, which is why we focus so much on writing in this class.
And then, as you progress through the other classes, there will be a series, a great number of presentations. You may either audio-record it, video-record it, which you upload, or very occasional live sessions. You have to be able to communicate solutions. If you have the solution and can't communicate it, no one knows and no one cares; it does you no benefit. You've got to be able to share solutions you have, share the solutions you generate from the research methods you apply to the problem that you've identified. So that covers 540.
Let's move now onto 597. So the two biggest differences between 597 and 540: In 540, you're engaging in a variety of research methods and writing mini papers. In 597, you pick one problem and write one big research paper. So 540 was four mini papers, a midterm paper and a final paper. 597 is one single, big paper.
You focus in on a single issue of your choice. And this is one of the big advantages of 597 is we allow you to pick pretty much any topic or problem of your choosing to use in this course because this is a Communications degree, and if you think about the problems that are of interest to you, communications is nearly always somewhere in that, whether it's how to promote a product, how to improve employee morale, how to select jurors for a legal case, how to persuade people to sign up for a newsletter; whatever your passion or interest is, it's likely communications is somewhere in there.There's a couple of minor caveats. We don't typically allow or want you to study minors, people under the age of 18, because that involves a number of kind of consent issues. And you have to be allowed – have permission, if you're doing something related to your workplace, from your boss to allow the professor supervising you to have access to the data you're examining.
For example, if you want to look at why sales have decreased in the last quarter of your company, the professor at some point is gonna need access to potentially some confidential information that your company possesses. So the professor will sign a waiver saying that they'll treat the information as confidential and not show other people; it'll only be seen by you, yourself, the student, and the professor supervising you. But sometimes companies don't like that.
So that's really the only two restrictions: You can't study people under the age of 18, and the instructor has to have access to the same data you're looking at.
So, once you've identified and had your topic approved by your supervising instructor, then you start digging around in the databases, the professional databases and the academic databases that I have mentioned earlier. This is where you can start to identify material to support and form your viewpoint. Whatever your problem is, whether it's selling more of the product, working out why sales have decreased, working out how to persuade people, it's very likely that topic has been studied before. So the phrase, "standing on the shoulder of giants," comes to mind. The giants are the people who have published before you. You're gonna take their work, identify what's appropriate to you, stand on their shoulders or push yourself higher or further, and allow yourself to get more and better and more informed insight into the topic of your choice.
Once you've got a thorough understanding of your topic based upon all the readings you'll be doing, then you can identify which of the four research methods – focus groups, surveys, experiments and content analysis – and then occasionally students engage in a couple of other methods, but these are the most four common ones.
Your 540 training allows you to identify which method is the best method to use, how to phrase appropriate questions, what makes a good focus group question, what makes a bad focus group question, what makes a good survey question, what makes a bad survey question. So information from 540 is what we use in 597 to allow you to fine-tune and make a really good data collection analysis – a data collection approach to the topic of your choice.Once you've got that data, you obviously need to analyze the data. So if it's experiments, you're typically digging around again in the stats program, SPSF. If it's focus group, content analysis should be more typically the qualitative type of analysis. Again, we've covered these analyses in 540.And the key thing, again, is once you've got those numbers, got the answers, you're got to then translate this information into actionable items. If you go to your boss and say, "I've identified the problem," the boss is then gonna say to you, "Well, what's the solution?" You've got to have concrete, actionable items that you can implement or at least recommend to your boss to allow them to see the full potential of the work you've done.
So how are we assessing and evaluating your work in this class? Moving onto the next slide, we can see there's a number of – oh, sorry, I missed a slide. Stay on this slide. So the criteria for success: What makes a successful student in 597? I've been teaching this class now for about six, seven years in the traditional ground program, and these are the four key things which I've identified as being characteristics of a successful student: They're very consistent in their work. They don't do nothing for one week. It's consistent, what they're doing, work every week. The nature of this program in the ground and the online setting is it's very intense. You can't take a week off. You've got to be working consistently. You've got to be focused on your work.
The time you're in this class and, arguably, throughout the program, you're gonna put a certain number of things on hold, such as personal lives, training for a marathon, whatever it is you're doing, and focus in on this program. This work and the program's very demanding. If you want to succeed, you've got to allow yourself the opportunity to succeed.
Timeliness and follow-through: The deadlines in this class and all classes, once you start missing deadlines, it's very hard to catch up. When you miss deadlines, there's penalties for missing those deadlines. The penalties for lateness in the program can dramatically impact in a negative fashion your grade. Instructors will work with you to adapt and tweak deadlines and provide extensions, but if you don't request extensions and then miss deadlines, your grade suffers.
Teamwork and constructive feedback: This 597 class is the last class you take in the program. At this point in the program, you've made very strong connections with the other students in the program, so we're expecting you to engage in peer review and teamwork and bounce ideas off each other.Now, of course, the constructive monitoring is feedback and stepping in where appropriate, but the people in this program are inspired, striving, over-achieving, academic professionals in the working world, much like yourself, and they are a very good resource of ideas. We want you to make use of the ideas of your peer network that you've developed with other professional colleagues throughout your time in the program.
And then quality of writing: We start hammering home the importance of writing in 540. By the time you get to 597, you've gone through a variety of instructors, been exposed to a variety of different writing styles and teaching methods to help you improve your writing.
At this point in the class – at this point in the program, you're about to graduate with your USC degree. Your degree's in Communication. It's very embarrassing to us if you go out into the professional world, and you can't communicate effectively, appropriately when your degree title says, "Communication." So we really work hard and push further the quality of your writing in this class.
So how are we assessing these things? On the next slide, it's a single paper. So most of the grading criteria are all tied up into this single paper, this initial draft of the paper. You then get that graded. The instructor gives you detailed feedback on that draft. You then resubmit that draft. You get more feedback. You resubmit that draft to your peer group and your colleagues in the program, and they give you feedback. You go through a variety, a great number of revisions to keep refining and improving the paper you write in this class.
Our expectation and hope – and we've seen this happen again and again in the ground program – is that the paper you write in 597 should a) reflect the best of your abilities; and b) it should be the best paper you have ever written in academics, in academic circles because you're working on this paper for a number of weeks. Typically, a midterm or a final paper in undergraduate or other graduate classes in this program are written in two to three weeks once you get the assignment prompt.
In this class, you get your paper prompt in Week 1 or Week 2, so you've got a whole bunch of weeks to work on making this the best piece of work you're capable of. And we hope – and, again, we've found this a number of times in the ground program – we hope that the paper you write is one you're proud of, and it should be if it's the best work you can do, and you've worked hard and appropriately on it.
We also assess the peer review. We assess the feedback you give to your peers to make sure you're giving appropriate feedback. At the end of the class, there's a brief individual presentation you make to the instructor and your class colleagues, and then the big final deliverable worth the greatest proportion to grade is the final paper.
We also assess the peer review. We assess the feedback you give to your peers to make sure you're giving appropriate feedback. At the end of the class, there's a brief individual presentation you make to the instructor and your class colleagues, and then the big final deliverable worth the greatest proportion to grade is the final paper.
You're also learning − the skills you learn in this experience allow you to transfer these skills to a variety of other problems. You're not – although, in the class, you're restricted to looking at one problem, the message and ideas in the projects you learn allow you to apply that single-focused approach to other topics of your choice outside of the program once you graduate. And, again, replicating 540, the key is to translate the answers you generate from your research analysis into communicable and actionable opportunities.
So that's a very quick run-through of 540, 597. I'm happy to answer questions at the end of the session. But I'll turn it back to our other presenters.Neil Teixeira: Thank you very much, Dr. Curtis, and thank you, Dr. Weintraub. Now, I'd like to introduce our enrolment advisors, who will explain the enrolment requirements, what you can expect in the process, and your next steps.
Mark Karkoska: Good morning, everyone. And thank you, Neil, and thank you, Dr. Weintraub, and thank you, Dr. Curtis.I wanted to spend a few minutes going over the admissions requirements for the Master's of Communication Management program here at USC Annenberg. Now, the application is available online at USC's graduate application website.
We are looking for an undergraduate GPA of 3.0 from an accredited university, and we also are gonna require an updated professional resume, which needs to be uploaded directly in your application file or sent directly to one of us in the online admissions office.Now, we do require one of the following standardized tests: Either the GRE, with a minimum composite score of 1,000, and the GMAT, with a minimum composite score of 650. Again, with the GRE, they are rescoring it, and we will have a university standard sent out shortly.Now, in addition, we do require the following documents for admission into the program: You will have your statement of purpose or letter of intent, one writing sample, and two letters of recommendation, and all of your official transcripts from your previous college and universities that you attended.
And, also, I did want to clarify, when filling out your online application, you want to specify the program as the Master's of Communication Management online option.
And I would encourage all applicants or anyone interested in learning more about the program and the admissions process to contact myself, Rupert or Sandy directly with specific questions regarding their application, so we can address those on an individual basis. Thank you.Neil Teixeira: Thank you very much, Mark. Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached the end of our presentation. I'll now ask my colleague, Laura Cibuls, who has been organizing your questions, to present them to our panelists, and we'll see how many we can address in the time we have left.Laura Cibuls: Thank you, Neil. It looks like we've got quite a few good questions that have come through during our presentation. The first one that we received today was: Do we accept transfer credits for classes that were taken elsewhere?
Dr. Weintraub: I'll take that one, Laura. The most transfer credits ________ for a program of the length of Communication Management is four units. And we will only review that once the student has been admitted. The requirement is that the course must match a class that is already in our program, except we will not accept ________ class, anything obviously ________ class, like 597 or our core class, which is 500.
The admissions committee – sorry – the curriculum committee will review the course, the readings, the assignments, and the grade, and then make the decision as to whether or not we can accept that credit. But, again, the most that could be is four units, which translates into one class.Laura Cibuls: Thank you. The next question we have is: Is this a degree just for corporate communications? Would someone in higher education communications benefit from this degree?
Dr. Weintraub: In the on-campus program, which has been around since 1973, we have had people in non-profit communication, corporate communication, consultancies, and higher education because one of the requisites that USC employees get is tuition remission, and so we have educated quite a number of people in higher education in the on-campus ________.
While a lot of the work that you'll do might look at corporate America, you can certainly take those learnings, those principles, that academic research, and apply it in a variety of areas, whether it's non-profits or universities or even global companies.
Additionally, you will have a number of opportunities throughout the program to do research and work around a topic of interest to you that relates to what you're studying. So, for example, if you are at a university, you could certainly, for your practicum, look at a communication issue or research that related to the university. So our graduates have told us that what they have been able to use their learnings from this program for are infinite. I can't list them, and so I won't.
Laura Cibuls: Thank you. Next questions are regarded towards the differences between the online and the on-campus courses, such as: Are the curriculums different? Does it take the same amount of time to complete both?
Dr. Weintraub: Okay. Laura, I –
Laura Cibuls: ________.
Dr. Weintraub: Got it. The on-campus and the online programs are very, very similar in the sense that the organizational and strategic and marketing communication areas have all of the classes that we are offering in the online program. They are taught by the same instructors. The online delivery system, by its very nature, changes the course. It's different than having somebody stand up in front of a class for three hours. But the reading, the learning, the bulk of the assignments are all very much the same.
The difference is that we do not allow people coming straight out of their undergraduate into the online program. So the on-campus program can have a mix of working professionals, people straight out of their undergraduate program and less than three years of work experience.
The program has similar flexibility to the online program in that students can take one or two classes a semester. The on-campus program has two 15-week semesters and an optional summer semester that is only 12 weeks long or 6 weeks long, depending upon which version students are taking the class in; whereas, the online program is three 12-week semesters a year, and students must take all three semesters.
So there are some differences, but the rigor is the same; the workload is the same; the instructors are the same; and the diploma looks exactly the same.
Laura Cibuls: Thank you so much. The next questions are regarding what the cost and the tuition is for this program. And, of course, is there financial aid available?
Dr. Weintraub: I'll let Neil answer that one.
Neil Teixeira: Sure. So I saw a question in the Q&A about whether or not the prospective applying students' estimated cost was correct on the Annenberg website. The Annenberg website addresses graduate costs for students who are on campus, which includes several fees that online students don't have to pay.
As an online student, what you're looking for is a unit tuition rate of $1,420.00 per unit. It's a 32-unit program, and that comes out to about $45,500.00 for the program in tuition and costs. In addition, you'll face the cost of books and materials, which are approximately about $1,500.00 for the course of the program.
Financial aid is available to all USC students who are eligible and are admitted. If you are admitted to the program, you'll be eligible for the same kind of financial aid that an on-campus student would be eligible for.
Laura Cibuls: Thank you so much for covering that. We have a couple of questions regarding who they should use as references when applying.Dr. Weintraub: We expect that, for working professionals who have been out of school for a while, you may not have connections back to your academic advisors, and that's just fine. We really are interested in references from your supervisors, former supervisors, people like that. You're coming into a program that's designed for working professionals. We want to know about your work experience and what you do and why you would be the right person for this program.
So I think some work-related resumes – I'm sorry – letters of recommendation are perfect. If you happen to still be in touch with someone who remembers your academic work, that's fine, but that's not what we expect.
Laura Cibuls: Great. I've gone through my list of questions. Now, I'm gonna ask the panelists if they've received any questions on their end that they would like to answer.
Dr. Weintraub: There were a number of questions from people wanting to know how firm the three years of work experience is, and generally, it's very firm. Our feeling is that the people with less than three years of work experience, who are coming straight out of an undergraduate program, probably have the flexibility to come to Los Angeles and do the program full-time. And we think, for people in that stage of life, the on-campus program is really the right way to do it. You can do internships; you can take advantage of the things that the university has to offer.
The online program is for people who really cannot move to Los Angeles for a year to do this program. And we also find that working professionals, when they're in a program like this, want to be taking classes with people like them because you're going to find that you're gonna learn nearly as much from each other as you will from your instructors and your reading materials and such. So we're pretty firm on that three-year.There's a question about the admission requirements being the same for on-campus and online. And I guess the answer is yes, although we do understand that the longer you've been out of the university, if you've been working for 10 or 15 or even 20 years, your ability to do standardized tests may have gone down just a little bit.
But we also know – we look at an entire application, and so we know that somebody with 15, 20 years of work experience has a lot more to show in that application file than somebody who is just right on the heels of undergrad. So, while the basic application requirements are the same, we understand that the applicants are gonna look different. I don't think I see any others. Neil, do you see any?
Neil Teixeira: I think we've covered most of the questions. One of the questions that I saw was about the admission requirements between the on-campus and online programs. And, as you mentioned, the admission requirements are essentially the same. The online program, we're looking for individuals with three years of professional experience; whereas, in the on-campus program, you can come straight off undergrad. But, otherwise, all of the test requirements, the resume, all of that information is also required. And the on-campus program can also be completed in the full-time manner.Laura Cibuls: Fantastic. I guess that covers all of the questions that we have that have come in today. I'll go ahead and let Neil close our session.Neil Teixeira: Great. Well, I'd like to, once again, thank our panelists for taking time out to be here with us today. This concludes the USC Online Master of Communication Management information session.
Remember, if you have any questions or think it's time to apply, please contact our enrolment advisors. Their contact information is on your screen right now. They will also have a PDF and a recording of this event, and we'll be able to send them to you within the next week. Thank you again, and have a great day.
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