COMM 100
Communication Theory
Description: (Formerly numbered Communication Studies 100.) Lecture, four hours. Requisite: course 10 or Linguistics 1 or Sociology 1 or Psychology 10. Analysis of fundamental nature of human communication; its physical, linguistic, psychological, and sociological bases. Study of theoretical models explicating process and constituents of communicative act. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Class is broken into 50% midterm, 50% final. There are 2 reading responses (that you'll need the course reader for) that are graded credit/no credit. You don't receive a grade for them, but if you fail to complete them, your grade gets docked 20%. Readings are so important!! It's so hard to bullshit the papers if you haven't read. He references a lot of the readings during lecture and it gets kind of confusing if you haven't at least skimmed his passages. Midterm and final is decent, as long as you've read and gone to section you'll do fine. You discuss a ton of readings in section. He gives out 'hints' of what will be on the midterm/final during section as well! They're almost verbatim from the questions he gives out. Material is not hard, mostly a memorization based class. Selling my Course Reader + midterm/final notes and study guides + completed and graded papers for $35 OBO!! Almost perfect condition for physical books. Text me **********
Winter 2019 - Class is broken into 50% midterm, 50% final. There are 2 reading responses (that you'll need the course reader for) that are graded credit/no credit. You don't receive a grade for them, but if you fail to complete them, your grade gets docked 20%. Readings are so important!! It's so hard to bullshit the papers if you haven't read. He references a lot of the readings during lecture and it gets kind of confusing if you haven't at least skimmed his passages. Midterm and final is decent, as long as you've read and gone to section you'll do fine. You discuss a ton of readings in section. He gives out 'hints' of what will be on the midterm/final during section as well! They're almost verbatim from the questions he gives out. Material is not hard, mostly a memorization based class. Selling my Course Reader + midterm/final notes and study guides + completed and graded papers for $35 OBO!! Almost perfect condition for physical books. Text me **********
Most Helpful Review
Professor Clayman is organized, lectures well, and does his very best to make rather dry material interesting and engaging. I don't remember too much from Comm 100, since I took it more than a year ago, but I generally agree with what most people have said here, except the TA part. I didn't like my TA at all and just didn't go to discussions, but since they weren't mandatory (as I think all discussions should be), it didn't affect my grade. I would go if you have questions about the material, but if you have a TA like mine, I would just go straight to Clayman. He definitely is one of the nicest guys, and he is more than willing to help you with anything you need. Talk and Mass Comm was a good class. At first, I didn't feel like I was learning anything of substantial importance, but as it went on, Clayman brought some interesting studies up for discussion, which was one of the best things about the class (it was small, unlike Comm 100). I preferred learning about developing historical trends and journalistic questioning of presidents over transcriptions, question design/structure, and analysis of applause any day. That said, watching a video clip of one or two sentences being repeated over and over again was NOT fun. The papers assignments, however, were not difficult. Overall, not the best class I've ever taken, but Clayman is great.
Professor Clayman is organized, lectures well, and does his very best to make rather dry material interesting and engaging. I don't remember too much from Comm 100, since I took it more than a year ago, but I generally agree with what most people have said here, except the TA part. I didn't like my TA at all and just didn't go to discussions, but since they weren't mandatory (as I think all discussions should be), it didn't affect my grade. I would go if you have questions about the material, but if you have a TA like mine, I would just go straight to Clayman. He definitely is one of the nicest guys, and he is more than willing to help you with anything you need. Talk and Mass Comm was a good class. At first, I didn't feel like I was learning anything of substantial importance, but as it went on, Clayman brought some interesting studies up for discussion, which was one of the best things about the class (it was small, unlike Comm 100). I preferred learning about developing historical trends and journalistic questioning of presidents over transcriptions, question design/structure, and analysis of applause any day. That said, watching a video clip of one or two sentences being repeated over and over again was NOT fun. The papers assignments, however, were not difficult. Overall, not the best class I've ever taken, but Clayman is great.
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Winter 2021 - Professor Jones has been one of my favorite professors at UCLA. He is one of the sweetest guys ever and does a great job at explaining the content, especially when it got difficult or abstract. I know he is a good professor because he took content I would not typically care about and make it so interesting and easy to understand. I am so sad that he does not teach any other classes at UCLA. I always loved going to his office hours, and he was great at communicating with students. I never felt scared or hesitant to come to him for help, and always left office hours feeling confident with my assignments. I felt that he truly cared about us and our experience in his class even though it was virtual. He really let his amazing personality shine through the course, and I can only imagine how much more amazing he is of a teacher in person. I hope UCLA gives him more oppurtunities to teach because he is truly a gem and breath of fresh air to our communications department. (Plus he has two adorable pit bulls that he talks about all the time and sent us reddit memes in the class group chat :))
Winter 2021 - Professor Jones has been one of my favorite professors at UCLA. He is one of the sweetest guys ever and does a great job at explaining the content, especially when it got difficult or abstract. I know he is a good professor because he took content I would not typically care about and make it so interesting and easy to understand. I am so sad that he does not teach any other classes at UCLA. I always loved going to his office hours, and he was great at communicating with students. I never felt scared or hesitant to come to him for help, and always left office hours feeling confident with my assignments. I felt that he truly cared about us and our experience in his class even though it was virtual. He really let his amazing personality shine through the course, and I can only imagine how much more amazing he is of a teacher in person. I hope UCLA gives him more oppurtunities to teach because he is truly a gem and breath of fresh air to our communications department. (Plus he has two adorable pit bulls that he talks about all the time and sent us reddit memes in the class group chat :))
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2025 - I liked this class but beware of the final! The material was pretty interesting although sometimes confusing at times. Jones is very good at explaining things and very open to helping students. He would often stay very late to answer questions. Everything you need to know, he will tell you, and the TA's provide a study guide. This class is heavily based on memorization and understanding so the readings and lectures are a must do to do well. There is 1 midterm, 1 research paper, and the final. For the midterm, you can explain your answer to your TA to try and get some points back which bumped my exam grade up a letter grade. The biggest issue with this class was the final!! That exam was the most stressful exam I have ever taken in my life, not because it was hard but because it was too long for the time frame. The exam was week 10 so we took it during class but the exam should have been a standard 3 hour final. The questions on the exams are all written and some are a page long while others paragraphs or a few sentences. The first 3 questions took half the exam time alone and there were about 10-15 written questions. I found myself knowing the answers but struggling to write what I wanted to say because of how little time we had. The midterm wasn't curved but the final was and somehow I got a 97% because I studied for 2 weeks which bumped my grade from a B to an A. Overall, I enjoyed this class but the final exam needs to be fixed.
Winter 2025 - I liked this class but beware of the final! The material was pretty interesting although sometimes confusing at times. Jones is very good at explaining things and very open to helping students. He would often stay very late to answer questions. Everything you need to know, he will tell you, and the TA's provide a study guide. This class is heavily based on memorization and understanding so the readings and lectures are a must do to do well. There is 1 midterm, 1 research paper, and the final. For the midterm, you can explain your answer to your TA to try and get some points back which bumped my exam grade up a letter grade. The biggest issue with this class was the final!! That exam was the most stressful exam I have ever taken in my life, not because it was hard but because it was too long for the time frame. The exam was week 10 so we took it during class but the exam should have been a standard 3 hour final. The questions on the exams are all written and some are a page long while others paragraphs or a few sentences. The first 3 questions took half the exam time alone and there were about 10-15 written questions. I found myself knowing the answers but struggling to write what I wanted to say because of how little time we had. The midterm wasn't curved but the final was and somehow I got a 97% because I studied for 2 weeks which bumped my grade from a B to an A. Overall, I enjoyed this class but the final exam needs to be fixed.
Most Helpful Review
If you don't like competing with your classmates for your grades, don't take classes with Prof. Potter. After giving explicit directions on how to answer test questions -- essentially, produce as thorough answers as possible by regurgitating as much of the material as possible from your notes (allowed in exam) -- Prof. Potter made it crystal clear that he grades comparatively: the best answers are selected across the class, and all others are judged against them. This does not, however, necessarily mean that the best answers are guaranteed full points. The result at exam time was an exercise in seeing how much of the book you could copy into your notes, and then how much of that material you had time to copy onto your paper in the allotted time. Class time was also spent scribbling as much as possible -- so much so that it was impossible to think about the material as it went by. I feel I deserved a better grade than I got (B+), and, judging by the responses here, I am not alone. I was really looking forward to this class -- it covers great material and the Littlejohn text is a wonderful intro reference -- but Prof. Potter really pulled it down by focusing on test-taking/book-reading skills and on how to justify your arguments rather than focusing on the material we need to learn and retain for later.
If you don't like competing with your classmates for your grades, don't take classes with Prof. Potter. After giving explicit directions on how to answer test questions -- essentially, produce as thorough answers as possible by regurgitating as much of the material as possible from your notes (allowed in exam) -- Prof. Potter made it crystal clear that he grades comparatively: the best answers are selected across the class, and all others are judged against them. This does not, however, necessarily mean that the best answers are guaranteed full points. The result at exam time was an exercise in seeing how much of the book you could copy into your notes, and then how much of that material you had time to copy onto your paper in the allotted time. Class time was also spent scribbling as much as possible -- so much so that it was impossible to think about the material as it went by. I feel I deserved a better grade than I got (B+), and, judging by the responses here, I am not alone. I was really looking forward to this class -- it covers great material and the Littlejohn text is a wonderful intro reference -- but Prof. Potter really pulled it down by focusing on test-taking/book-reading skills and on how to justify your arguments rather than focusing on the material we need to learn and retain for later.
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Most Helpful Review
I have never hated a class more that Comm 100. Professor Steen was the most BORING person in the world and every Monday morning I would dread walking into class. The material he gives is so incredibly difficult!!! It was graduate student level reading and if it were not for my TA I would never have understood any of it. I truly hated this class and I know I'm not the only person. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!
I have never hated a class more that Comm 100. Professor Steen was the most BORING person in the world and every Monday morning I would dread walking into class. The material he gives is so incredibly difficult!!! It was graduate student level reading and if it were not for my TA I would never have understood any of it. I truly hated this class and I know I'm not the only person. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!
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