The Summer 2025 Schedule of Classes and Syllabi are now available! Registration Begins May 1st!

 

The University will be closed Friday, April 18th, for Good Friday.

We will reopen at normal operating hours on Saturday, April 19th, and classes will be held as scheduled.

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COM5405

Persuasion

The course presents the major theories of persuasion and helps students apply them. Key topic areas include credibility, motivation, social campaigns, manipulation, and audience analysis, and adaptation.

CAVEAT: No graduate credit will be awarded if COM4405 has been successfully completed.

UPON COMPLETION OF THE COURSE, THE STUDENT WILL BE COMPETENT IN:

  • Comparing and contrasting persuasive theories.
  • Describing the different kinds of fallacies.
  • Identifying, describing, and analyzing fallacious arguments in the media.
  • Writing credibility arguments to persuade an audience, improving interpersonal relationships.
  • Hypothesizing how emotions can be used to influence audiences.
  • Using logic to support a position on a controversial topic.
  • Using information literacy skills to support credibility, emotional, and logic arguments.
  • Discussing methods of audience analysis and adaptation.
  • Analyzing and evaluating persuasive nonverbal behaviors.
  • Examining persuasive messages and speeches in politics, in organizations, and business.
  • Applying the theory of the stages of a social campaign to a movement that affects business.
  • Discussing and analyzing the rhetoric of a campaign.
  • Analyzing the process of manipulation—the unethical side of persuasion.
  • Assessing the characteristics of unethical manipulators.
  • Determining how a manipulator gains control over an audience.
  • Applying information literacy skills to research unethical persuasion.
  • Utilizing effective argumentation skills and techniques to persuade and influence an audience.
  • Developing a personal code of ethics for the persuasion.

Syllabi

Spring 2023 Download
Fall 2023 Download
Spring 2024 Download
Fall 2024 Download
Spring 2025 Download
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