1. Family (or group) Dinner Assignment

Your assignment is to be a keen observer at some other family or group dinner (It is fine if the dinners are not in English). During the dinner, be on the lookout for communication-relevant events. This might include such things as

–someone tells a joke and people laugh/don’t/groan; someone tells a story, and people respond with advice; siblings have a fight or tease one another; people compliment the food (even if it isn’t great), or criticize it; parents interrogate children; children ignore parents’ advice, etc……. Write up a one-page description (single-spaced) of ONE important COMMUNICATION event that occurred at your dinner, and apply it to any theory or concept from the course.

2. Arrange and take a visit to an organization in which communication or information is managed, used, processed, dealt with in some way. Be creative — you could choose the kind of organization you hope to end up working in; you could choose a museum; the possibilities are almost infinite — use the opportunity to investigate something that might be helpful to you in the future.

After the visit, write a serious 1-2 page paper (single-spaced) in which you demonstrate connections you were able to make between what you found in the organization and some theories and concepts from class discussions/lectures and the text.

3. You will have noticed that your professor likes to use movies, TV and Youtube videos to illustrate course concepts. For this extra credit option, suggest a SPECIFIC scene in a SPECIFIC movie that illustrates a SPECIFIC concept from any of our class LECTURES. You should say where exactly it occurs in the movie or TV show (how many minutes in), or provide a URL for Youtube videos or others available online. Then briefly describe the segment. In order to get the extra credit, you must explain what theory it applies to or illustrates, and HOW it does this.