COMM 010 - Introduction to Persuasion

    Recent Professors
    Morgan McKnight, Gail Kirk, David Amancio, Lindsay Walsh, Ruth Zylka
    Recent Semesters
    Fall 2026, Spring 2026, Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
    Class Size
    28 students
    Credits
    3
    Prerequisite
    None
    Fall 2026 Sections
    View Fall 2026 sections of COMM 010
    Transfers To
    UC and CSUIGETC Area 1C · CSU GE Area A3 · CSU GE Area A1
    Description
    This introductory course provides students with the knowledge necessary to create ethical, logical, and impactful persuasive messages that advocate for positive change. Students are invited to examine historical and contemporary approaches to persuasive messages, including how to analyze, criticize, and promote oral and written ideas. Students are encouraged to demonstrate their understanding of how to test evidence and advance a persuasive position based on inductive and deductive reasoning processes and logos, pathos, and ethos appeals. Students are coached on how to recognize formal and informal fallacies of language and thought and to develop the ability to distinguish matters of factual evidence from judgement or opinion. Students are guided on how to write substantive persuasive sequential essays, which may include a combination of process drafts, inquiry-driven research collection, peer responses, critical evaluation, and self-reflections about their own knowledge. This course also focuses on how to confidently and ethically present persuasive appeals, including how to apply foundational rhetorical theories and techniques of public speaking in a multicultural democratic society, to construct, prepare, and deliver extemporaneous persuasive speeches to a live classroom audience.
    Usually Held
    Fri 9:00am–12:10pm, Mon Wed 12:30pm–1:55pm, Mon Wed 9:20am–10:45am, Tue Thu 12:30pm–1:55pm