To be brief, I would not recommend taking this class unless you are 100% CERTAIN that you want to major in Comm. I lost interest in doing so (for reasons unrelated to this class) around the second half of the quarter and felt like I was wasting so much time and energy to do well since I couldn't drop or P/NP. Anyway, the first half of the class was on interpersonal communication and I found the content pretty interesting. I was excited for the second half (on mass communication) but it was DREADFUL, like so boring that I stopped listening to the lectures and, instead, skimmed the lecture transcript for information related to the key points in the lecture guides. The essay was kinda fun since you are encouraged to exclusively use your experience and observations. I wrote about the "politics" of kissing in American culture, completed it in a day's time, and did fairly well on it. If you really resonate with an essay topic and dedicate a couple of days to it you shouldn't have that hard of a time writing it. The midterm and final were straightforward and open note, so if you take decent notes and study a bit you will probably be fine. The midterm consisted of ~29 short response questions (~50% related to lecture content, ~50% related to assigned articles) and two long response questions (one on lecture content, the other on Tannen book), where the final consisted of ~26 short response questions (mostly related to lecture/assigned articles with a few on Price book) and three long response questions (two on lecture content, the other on Jones book). I didn't really prepare for either of the exams except for making all my notes and the readings easily accessible (AKA Ctrl-F-able). So if you're taking this online, digitize EVERYTHING. This will definitely help you pass if you're struggling to find the motivation to study hard during these difficult times.

If you are not hoping to major in communications then there is no reason you should be subjecting yourself to the hell that is this class. While the material and readings can be interesting, you will never be offered any form of rubric for your exams or papers meaning the entire quarter you are taking shots in the dark and hoping you land an A. The class consists of 135 points split between the paper = 40, the midterm = 45, and the final = 50. The exams are split into an essay section and a short answer portion. The timing is brutal. For your midterm you have 2 essays and 28 short answers with around 2 hours for the whole exam and the final is an extra hour with an extra essay. Sure the tests were open note but with the brutal time constraint you didn't have time to consult your notes anyways. Not only that, but rather than making the short answers structured around important actually educational content he focuses on nit-picky seemingly irrelevant content from lectures or readings to try and trip you up. If you take thorough notes and pay attention during lectures, you should know most of the content that appears on the exams but that isn't the problem. The problem is you have no clue how to write for them. None of the essays on the exams or the paper have any form of rubric. For the paper they send you a document with vague instructions on being unique and having good points but there is no score breakdown or specific instruction of any sort. I wrote and had peers edit what I thought to be a good paper only for my grade to come back a C (the reason why I got an A - rather than an A in this class). The only critiques that my TA left were that "some arguments were unclear". No elaboration. No layout of why points were deducted. No indication of what arguments he was even talking about. And why would there be? After all, the professor provides no standard or clear rubric as to how the paper should be graded. It gives your TA the perfect amount of room to tank your grade without giving a justification. Some people manage to escape this class with the A, but trying to navigate through the dark is not an experience I'd recommend. Again, this class is mandatory for comm majors which is why I took it. But if you don't intend on going into Comms, then please save yourself the headache and avoid this class at all costs.

Sumon is one of the hardest teachers, I've had at UCLA. his curriculum is very interesting but the midterm and final are very hard and normal really impossible to finish.

Took this class during Spring 2020 when it was online. The midterm and final exams were SO ROUGH. Midterm was 4 hours for 3 essays and while it was open notes, you really did not have time comb through stuff. I was typing for basically 3 hours and 58 minutes before submitting, did not even have time to read over what I had. Final was 3 hours and 3 essays but the essays were shorter so it was a bit better. Probably because I learned to be prepared better even though it was open notes again. TA Joshua Hardman was a gem!

Selling You Just Don't Understand by Tannen and Losing the New by Jones for $15 together.

I have really good typed up notes that saved me if I missed a lecture :) and notes for the readings that are really helpful to organize your thoughts for the test

send me text if you're interested or just have questions ********** or email : *************

Andre Comandon was my TA for this class and he was absolutely amazing. He made everything so easy to follow and motivated me to attend every discussion section. If he went to lecture I would go every time too. In my three years here, I have never net a TA as interesting or engaging as Andre. I will forever remember him and hope to God and Jesus I can have him as my TA again. If you have him, you are surely blessed. Appreciate him you godless cretins.

I had a 4.0 before I took Suman. He only grades on 1 paper, 1 midterm, and the final. His test are all short answer and essay and are frankly ridiculously subjective. I requested the TA go over the test with me and he kept telling me that some of my answers were right even though he had marked them wrong. It was incredibly frustrating. My advice, avoid Suman at all costs if you can. I'll never take another class with him again.

i took comm 10 virtually over CSI in the summer of 2020. All the lectures were podcasts so we never interacted with Summan. While I want to be a comm major and the class was interesting, it was SO much work. I do not recommend taking this class unless you need it as a pre-requisite for your major. Your grade is just dependent on a midterm test, paper, and final test. Given that it was virtual and only 6 weeks, it was much easier than the class would be for an in-person quarter. This class is normally a weeder class so definitely know what you are getting yourself into before you sign up. The topics are interesting but it is a ton of readings and memorization.

For a friggen COMMUNICATIONS professor, this guy can't communicate to save his life. He speaks monochromatically. His lectures are far too boring (because of his communication style, not because of the content). Its a shame this guy teaches an intro-level comm class.

Also, he hasn't updated the conte t k

I took this class during CSI (it was my first class before starting in the fall). It was 6-weeks and asynchronous, so take this review with a grain of salt. I took this class because I really want to be a communication major. Do not take this class as a GE. I took it the summer before school because I heard it was difficult, and I wanted to do the “easy” version of it. I feel like I was coming to this class with the pure motivation of starting a new academic journey, which certainly helped. This class is simply a lot of nonstop content. Content. Content. Content. We only had to cover 60% of the material, and my study guides for the midterm and final were 60 pages each of pure notes. Notes. Notes. Notes. You really need to take notes on everything: the lectures, the books, and the online readings. (Might I say this is the first time I read 2 whole books in a while). Despite the amount of work, I thoroughly enjoyed the lectures and content material. Suman’s voice (lectures were podcasted) grew on me by the end; he can be funny sometimes and add charming anecdotes to the lecture material. He made the extra effort to get to know us during office hours. He is still a no joke straightforward professor; you can tell he’s done this course a billion times and doesn’t have time for bullshit.

The structure of this course is noteworthy. The first half of the course covers interpersonal and small group communication. The second half covers the mass media, including a lot of news. All content comes from lectures, books, and online readings. Discussion groups are about the books.

The grading is also important in this course. There are only 3 assignments for this course: a midterm (45pts), paper (40pts), and final (50pts). The final is not cumulative.
The paper is quite interesting; you choose 1 of 4 prompts and write from your own perspective and observations. It’s almost fun to write. There are no other ways to earn points in this course.

The tests are hard. Expect short answer questions followed by essay questions. They are all open notes. They are very time-cramped. If you are not a fast typer or don’t have your notes typed up and organized well, it isn't easy to finish them on time. The questions are very straightforward, not too tricky.

I also want to add that the lectures are mostly good, except for the freedom of speech content. Suman does a good job organizing most of the lectures, but he gets carried away during the freedom of speech lecture, inappropriately imbuing his personal views. He claims that this is his favorite part of communication studies, but this particular lecture was messy.