I really liked this class and found it very interesting. I took the class to get rid of two requirements for my major (not related to communications major). He went into a lot of interesting topics that you don't normally hear in classes and really changed the way I view interpersonal relationships and different communication styles. This is definitely one of those classes that you walk away with a lot of information that you can directly apply to your own life, to understand others lives, and see it working everyday. You should only take this class because knowledge of communication fascinates you and you feel that it would be interesting to learn. Don't take this class because you just want to get an easy A or get rid of that GE with no interest in the subject because you will not have the motivation to actually learn the stuff you need to learn.

An A I feel is definitely something that you get a bit lucky with on top of hard work but an A- should be totally achievable if you actual do the work and take thorough notes.

This is the work that I put in to get an A. Always attend the discussions. They are not mandatory, but if you want a good grade and to understand the main ideas that are going to be on the tests you have to go. I mean it is 50 minutes to understand the main ideas on top of some light skim reading instead of maybe 2-3 hours of reading a week to just take a stab in the dark about what they want you to focus on. I didn't take any notes on the reading except what we talked about during discussion and did decently on the essay portion. For the short answers I took thorough notes on all of the podcasted lectures, putting them on 1.5x speed or faster (if you are feeling the real speed in those typing fingers) with subtitles and the auto-transcript open. He will give you outlines of all of the lectures and I would say really focus on all of the items on the list and make sure you have a good definition along with an example of the item by the end of the lecture. This way you will never have to watch a lecture twice. I also just took messy notes during the lectures and to review for the test I just wrote a concise definition and example or two for each item which made the short answer a breeze and gave me one of the highest scores on that section. TAKE NOTES ON YOUR COMPUTER. None of this writing on paper crap you heathens. This will save you so much time not only in the notes taking process but also during the test. Basically the test is testing did you do the work? Did you watch the lecture and take good notes, and get the gist of the concepts? And how good are your control F skills. He says that you should control F. I used OneNote for my notes. This way I was able to look across multiple entries with their given lecture titles and I even was able to include all of the given articles verbatim, along with their notes.

For the "essays". Honestly they aren't really essays that you might be thinking, no need for conclusion or for nice connecting sentences, they only grade you on if you hit the concepts they want you to understand and give good examples. They are just short answer sections disguised as essays. The only extra piece is a thesis that you can write up before the test because it is mainly based on summarizing the main concepts of the book that you are reading or major topic he chooses. He will give you a gist of the essay topics usually one from the book you are reading and one from lecture topics (He really likes nice lists for his lecture questions). Definitely have some sort of thesis written out and the main concepts for the book written out in a sort of outline. Go to OH before the test even if you don't have questions because someone else will and then you can get a good idea of what the essay questions might be and go from there.

As for timing of tests, if you did all the aforementioned preparing and are a decent typer you should have plenty of time to review the short answer and quickly skim the essays. If you get stuck, just flag the short answer and come back to it.

Also just going to say you will get a lower score on the paper than you think. It is a fun paper to write but they are extremely harsh on the paper and finding what they see as a good example is very hard to do. Just hope and cross your fingers that you land in the A-B+ range because it is the final and the midterm that will save you there. Definitely aim for that A tho cuz you may be the only one who hits it.

Also the curve is a God send (this is the luck part). He will create a curve based on the midterm results. I am so sorry to the poor souls that had technical difficulties during the test and got a low score but you definitely got me an A so thank you. To avoid slow computer and possible glitches just set up your zoom on your phone, if still online.

Good luck tho! It is a fascinating class, and as long as you put in the work you should be totally fine (I put in about 4-6 hours a week).

The online format of this class made it very difficult to stay engaged. Lectures were presented asynchronously in podcast form, accompanied by a page or two of bullet-pointed topics Suman was to address in his lecture. I do believe the lecture guides were helpful, as they noted the most important material to pay attention to and helped me to organize my own set of notes. Also, the textbooks for this class were interesting and affordable. The articles Suman produced were humorous and informative, and he acknowledged which portions of them were likely to be included in the exams. However, I found the exams to be notably difficult, considering they accounted for a large percentage of your grade (grades consist of one midterm, one paper, and one final). For example, our midterm was a set of about 25 short-answer questions accompanied by 2 essays-- I think we had 2.5 hours to complete it. The paper is very reasonable-- it is outlined in the syllabus and we had 8 weeks to complete it. The final was similar to the midterm, but we had 3 essays as opposed to two. It was very overwhelming to try to craft 2-3 quality essays after a series of short-answer questions in such a small amount of time. That being said, I would recommend this class to anyone interested, but be aware that your grade is very exam-dependent, so if you are not good at taking tests, I would stay away.

I took this class because I decided to double major in comm and I was nervous at first, but to be completely honest, I thought it was sort of easy, at least online. I imagine it would be much harder in person. But take advantage of the fact that the lectures are recorded while you can. I just took detailed notes on everything he said (in a word doc) and was able to control F everything for the midterm and final. Some of the questions are specific, but if you take detailed notes you should be fine (don't hand write, do digital note taking). I scored kind of low on the essay (31/40 points) but the curve was like 20% so it was fine. To me the midterm and final were the same level of difficulty and I scored an A on both of them. The Tannen book was necessary, but I did not buy Losing the News. I low key just looked up reviews of the book on Good Reads and cross checked with someone else to make sure the reviews I read were accurate (they were). I know I'm probably in the minority opinion here, but I actually really liked Suman as a teacher. It was very straight forward and simple. Go to lecture, take notes, midterm and final that test on lecture material, write an essay. I didn't go to discussion and was fine. Also there's a research participation requirement for this class: you have to participate in "4 hours" of studies. This does not really mean 4 hours, just four studies to help out other grad students/professors, etc. Some studies take only like 5 minutes to do. You do it through a website provided in class over the course of the quarter (might be different in person, idk). You can do article summary write ups instead if you don't want to participate in studies. Anyway, don't be afraid of Comm 10 at least if it's online.

The lectures were all podcasted, so only interaction was in discussion. Quite a bit of reading, but it was interesting material so I didn't mind. The tests however are incredibly difficult to do well on, and my TA graded the paper pretty harshly too, so I wouldn't take this course if you just want a GE where you can get an easy grade. Overall I enjoyed the material covered in the course so didn't mind not technically doing so well, but it does take a lot of work if you want to do well letter grade wise. Additionally, the first half of the course (interpersonal communication) is definitely more interesting/engaging in the lectures than the second (mass communication), although I personally like the novel we read about the history and developments of news. Just be prepared to grind after the first midterm because the tone of the course definitely changes.

COMM10 is a great class, but it is very difficult. As a hopeful COMM major, I was required to take this class. Overall I enjoyed the material and assigned readings, but it was definitely a LOT of information (roughly 100 pages in notes just for lectures). I think that this class would have been a little more engaging had I been in-person, but it was overall a great class. I don't think I would recommend taking this class as just another GE, as it is incredibly difficult and takes up quite a bit of time. BUT if you're looking to be a COMM major (obviously you're required to take this class), don't be scared if it!

THIS IS A WEEDER CLASS!
If you are only looking for a GE find something else because this class was hell.
I know two others who took this class in different years and none of us managed to get anything above a C+ (they were in person, due to covid I was online)
The communications major is severely impacted and this is one of the pre-req so it is extremely hard, even with open-note exams I still struggled.
Also, his videos are podcast style so if you are a visual learner like me... good luck.
And one midterm, one paper, one final, no other material to cushion your grade if you do poorly on one

I took this over the summer during COVID. The lectures were recorded podcasts and we also had readings and 2 books to go along with that. There was a midterm, a final, and a paper. They were all graded harshly but there was a fairly generous curve. I think I averaged Bs and B-minus raw scores on all 3 assignments but those all went up to A-minuses with the curve. Prof. Suman's lecturing style was quite clear and easy to follow, and my TA Tor was approachable and pretty helpful. Overall, not easy but very interesting.

While Suman is an informative professor and the class material is intriguing, I feel that the grading system of the TA's are EXTREMELY critical and harsh despite the rather simple material. Even after taking extensive notes in lecture, readings, and section, my grade did not reflect the effort and information I strongly believed that I retained. With that being said, you have to go to every lecture and pay attention to EVERY word Professor Suman says because in a normal classroom setting (before COVID) there were no slides, and he would literally talk at you the whole class.

This class sucks and everyone knows it, but all you lil comm majors we just have to endure because it is required that we take it. This class was difficult online because he would upload lectures like a podcast with no visuals to look at while he spoke in his monotone voice for an hour and a half. He may have altered how he does class because this was right when professors were new to adjusting virtually. This class is all about the note taking, and my tip is to really just devote a lot of time to actually taking detailed notes and reading as much as you can. I rarely went to discussion which probably hurt me in the end because that's where they went over the books and articles, but I was still able to end with a good grade. DONT TAKE THIS IF YOU DONT HAVE TO! Seriously this isn't a cute GE only suffer if you must.

This class is a lot of work but it is really interesting and engaging. I would say definitely don't take this if you are looking for an easy GE, but if you are interested in communication it is a very rewarding class. Professor Suman is also very helpful and answers his emails very quickly. Taking it online was nice because lectures were recorded and the class was slightly easier.