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Course Profile: Organizational Assessment (Spring 2013)

Are you a current student looking for a spring semester class or a friend of the program interested in getting back in the classroom and brushing up on your organizational assessment skills? Then you should consider enrolling in COMS 930: Organizational Assessment for the Spring 2013 semester!

This class will be taught by Dr. Ann Morrill on Thursday evenings from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. in room 151 Regnier. Here’s what Dr. Morrill has to say about the class:

With increasing emphasis on “fact-based” management and the pressure for performance in highly competitive environments, organizations increasingly turn to internal managers and external consultants to assess various aspects of their business.  Those “experts” are asked to assess the status of current events and diagnose “root causes” of challenges that organizations face.

Given the central role of communication to organizational performance, the assessment of root causes often involves (and sometimes focuses on) issues of communication. For that reason, it is essential that organizational communication specialists understand and apply appropriate means of assessment.

This course is designed to explore the following questions about assessment:

• Why assessment?
• What is it?  What is the difference between assessment and diagnosis?
• When do I use it?
• How do I do it?
• How do I responsibly interpret what I get? (Or, what does it mean?)
• Of what use is it?
• What are the essentials of reporting my findings?
• What ethical issues must I consider?
• On what assumptions do I operate?  How do those assumptions affect my answers to any/all of these questions?

In the process of answering these questions, the course will spend a substantial amount of time studying the methodologies involved in conducting communication audits–holistic assessments of communication flow and effectiveness in organizational settings.

Alumni and friends of the program are always welcome to take single classes with the department as non-degree-seeking graduate students for professional development purposes. Please contact us at laowens [at] ku [dot] edu for more information.