About the site: This is the official website for COMS 210, a 200-student lecture course entitled Introduction to Communication Studies. This site provides announcements, an official course schedule, reading questions, assignments, and other important course documents. You should subscribe to the rss feed or visit the site at least two times per week. There is also a WebCT site where you can check your grades, take a practice quiz, and participate in discussions. Click on the “MyCourses” link on the right to be directed to that site.
I have split the course website in order to better facilitate course management. This site uses a free program called WordPress that allows me to edit posts, update the course schedule, post links, and create an rss feed quite easily. You do not need to be logged in to McGill’s MyCourses in order to see coms210.net, and it should work with any web browser of your choosing. MyCourses uses WebCT, which is proprietary courseware, only works with certain browsers, is difficult and time consuming to manage and update, has a messy interface, and has a very poor calendar function. After four years of frustrating experiences with the software, I switched to running two sites. Student comments on the “beta” version in 2008 were resoundingly positive. I still use MyCourses for functions where students’ privacy matters. If you have suggestions for this site, please email me.
About the course: When we created the COMS minor, we decided that students needed a basic introduction to core concepts and issues in Communication Studies. As our minor has no practice-based or applied component, the course is designed as a liberal arts class where we study, critique and analyze communication in contemporary culture. If you have a professional interest in the field, you may find the course interesting, but you won’t find any professional training in Communication Studies. You might try Management, depending on your interests. Before 2007, COMS 210 was called ENGC 210; it was a survey of electronic history from the telegraph to the internet (I taught it in 2005 and 2006).
