Professor Steen is clearly knowledgeable and has a ton of worldly experience in the communications field (I believe he helped create the internet).

Unfortunately, this passion does not completely translate over to his role as a professor. Whilst most material is easily grasped, lectures are inefficient (spent at least 30 minutes of every class with one minute student presentations) and his actual presentation style is not the most engaging. There's weekly busy work, a midterm, a project, and a final.

Grading is also unclear for written midterms, where your responses will receive a number value and no comments. Overall good, but not great.

So steen is super, super boring. he's a nice guy but he's boring as fuck. however, the class is easy if you can sit through it. you'll learn that it isn't really necessary to go to lecture or do the readings because he posts his powerpoint and you can get everything you need to know for the midterm and final from studying those. the paper is important but i didn't think it was really hard, i did it in about 2 days. he doesn't really expect much from it as far as i can tell, just follow the guidelines he posts on ccle and add a lot of graphs. overall, minimal work, easy class

Learned a lot. I am Transfer HBS major and I took this my first quarter at UCLA considering an Entrepreneurship minor. I am a serial entrepreneur with an AA in Business Administration and found this material very engaging. The professor is not the most charismatic fellow but he knows his stuff and is approachable and willing to help. He allows the research project to be a group project, wish I would have taken advantage of that (3,000 words is a lot). He is a fair grader although takes a second to return the midterm. Allows late work for partial credit, and allowed me to bring my son to class several times after picking him up from school since class was in the later afternoon. Overall Good professor I would take him again, I see myself using the information I learned in this course in the future.

This class is terrible, don't take it unless you really need to. His lectures are boring and painful to sit through and he barely goes over the content on the Midterm/Final exams.
He wastes the first 30 min of second half of the course to go over project ideas and then gets distracted and expects everyone to know the course material. He also grades very slowly and takes a while to upload slides online.

This is the worst professor in the entire communication department. He is boring and dry and no matter how hard you try you cannot pay attention to him. His tests are often unrelated to what you learned in class, and he gives you bullshit assignments to waste your time and take up your time instead of being able to work on the 20 page research paper he assigns at the end of the quarter (in addition to a final!). Avoid him at all costs!! This is coming from someone with straight A's and will likely still get an A in his class as well. Still. AVOID!!!

Prof Steen was the highlight of my entire schedule this quarter! His class mixed many different aspects of social education: Communication (obviously!), Sociology, psychology, even some history, anthropology, economics and marketing. I am so glad I was able to add to his class last minute. I am not a comm major, but am desperately wishing i had made that choice instead after this class. There is 1 major project paper (10-20 pages), 1 Midterm, 1 Final and 5 or 6 smaller papers (500 words) every week or two. Don't expect him to grade all of them immediately. You won't know how you did on the midterm or many of the smaller papers until a couple of weeks before the final. be patient. if you studied, you will do fine. he is not a difficult grader.
The project is challenging and was honestly the most interesting project i have done so far. you take a type of media - news, entertainment etc - do some research and essentially do preliminary experiments and write it up to hypothetically submit for a grant. It was actually a lot of fun!
He is very sweet and kind, but is not the best at public speaking sometimes. give him a chance and really listen to what he is saying because it will actually change how you view every aspect of your over-communicated life. I promise.

He cares about his students and it shows.

However, unfortunately, his lectures are not the most interesting. He is a dry lecturer. But, you can tell his is trying to be more engaging and interesting.

There is a midterm, final, some homework, and a paper.

Dont expect to get your grades back in a timely manner for these assignments. You are basically clueless on your grade the whole quarter.

He provides a study guide for the midterm. Get to know it well. It will be useful. All of that will be necessary for the midterm.

The class also has a lot reading. The power points during lecture help break it down.

In sum its an okay class. I've had better.

I took Comm 133 in Winter 2009. Here's the rundown:

Professor:
Nice guy, means well, wants you to get a good grade. At the same time, he is very boring, a complete square. Steen is also VERY slow with grading. You will take a midterm in 4th week and get it back 10th week.

Lecture:
The longest lecture you will ever attend. At least for me. I missed class here and there because his powerpoint slides are always posted online. Every class he flips through his powerpoints at lightning speed and because they are so ridiculously long he rarely ever finished so you have to look at them online anyways. His lecture is always delivered in an incredibly boring monotone, he hates to break for questions and has no problem leaving you with your hand up for 30 minutes. The material covered in lecture is basically the readings, but the readings are long so the slides are actually more useful.

So main point: class is boring as hell

Grading:
The tests are all short answer, but do not fret, they are graded relatively easy. As long as you learn the main concepts and can explain them coherently, you are fine. Before each test Steen will give you a cumulative powerpoint of everything you need to know for the exam. Only bother learning what is on that powerpoint and nothing else. He will not throw any surprises on the exam. The final is harder than the midterm. So be ready.

There is also a research project. You CANNOT finish it in one day. Start ahead. It is graded much easier than expected. If you make a half-hearted effort you can still pull an A.

There is also homework every once in awhile. They are all easy and turned in online. Nothing too time consuming.

Professors Steen is extremely boring. There is a significant amount of reading every week which include experiments which have no relevance what so ever. He has a midterm which is 5 questions essay format (if you take this class answer in bullets you will run out of time) in 50 minutes. If I had known I would have just bulleted my answers because it seemed to get equal credit. His lectures are completely drawn out and he spends unnecessary time on each power point. He has a project which takes a significant amount of time and confusion to complete. For an elective class this is not one to take. Requires a lot of random work and reading on useless information. You have to know names and dates of people for the midterm and final. If you have a chance take a class with someone else like Von Blumm or someone with more excitement to their lectures.

Definitely start on the project in least 4-5 days before its due, i made the mistake of doing it the night before.. which prevented me from getting that A- (I got a B+ instead). The final and midterm are pretty straightforward, but make sure you dont spend too much time on any one question. Professor Steen is probably the nicest and most considerate professor I have ever had at ucla. He'll take the time to make personal appointments with you to talk about your project. Anyways, attendance is mandatory, so I suggest you go to class.