If you take this class asynchronously, I think it is for sure manageable. Everything in the exams is given to you in the material. However, if you are not a good test taker don't take this class because the whole grade consists of the midterm, final, and one essay. The readings can be very boring and kind of long but I think the lectures (in podcast format for the online class) are very manageable because he gives you lecture guides so you know exactly what you have to take notes on. If you take this in person I could imagine you would have to memorize a lot because the tests would not be open note for you. Overall, if you are interested in communications, this is a good overall basic intro class. If you are not interested, don't take this as a GE it is too much content that will bore you.

Almost absolutely certain I would be graduating summa cum laude in two weeks if not for Professor Suman - a point I think he actually takes pride in, that is, being a needlessly rough grader. This was my first class after transferring from LAVC (where I graduated summa cum laude) and as many have mentioned, the content is DENSE. Lectures were nearly two hours long in the form of a podcast with zero visual content to keep you even moderately engaged. Midterm and final were far too short for the amount of "short answer" questions (over 20) and essays (2 for midterm, 3 for final). Despite actually listening to every grating lecture, taking thorough notes, being a strong writer by trade, and giving a more than adequate effort, I somehow ended up with a B. I've only gotten one other B in my entire college career (a difficult math summer course at LAVC - not my forte) and wasn't sure what to do with myself. Upon taking a second class of his - Comm 145, a sitcom class - ended up with an A MINUS. WHO GIVES A MINUS? As if the goal is specifically to mess with student GPAs. Rude...

I took this class as a prerequisite for the communication major. I found the content to be incredibly interesting, however due to covid, the Professor would upload audio recordings which would be around an hour long with no visuals- only a document with some key words and concepts. This made it quite difficult to follow along and stay focused on the significant amount of content that we covered. Nonetheless, it was all very interesting. The midterm and final exams covered a lot of content and required a lot of essay writing in a short amount of time. The final essay was not too bad and a lot of it was covered in discussion where we planned things out with our TAs. My TA was Joshua Hardman- he was excellent! He helped a lot in discussion when preparing for exams as well as our essay. All in all, I would recommend not to take this class as a GE due to its complexness. For prospective com majors, just ensure that you study a lot and do not procrastinate on reading or lectures!

I took it this class online and it was not a fun experience. For one thing, the professor doesn't even make video lectures. Everything is taught through podcasts, which really doesn't help if you're a visual learner. The podcasts just ended up being such a drag that it was hard to force myself to get through the content. In addition, your grade is only composed of three things; two exams and a paper. The exams themselves are also extremely difficult. Definitely would not recommend this class as a GE.

I enjoyed this class even though I didn't do the best. The content itself is really interesting. The grading is picky as hell which sucks and the time limit on the tests are tough, very tough. Three essays and 20+ questions in two hours was extremely difficult for me even though I knew the information well. I didn't read Losing the news and found that just listening to the TA's discussions on the book were all I needed. Having a general outline in mind of You Just Don't Understand and Losing the News seemed to help a little. At the end of the day though he takes the most seemingly useless portions of the readings and makes them questions for the test.

To save money you can use Hoopla to get a free audiobook version of You Just Don't Understand or the pdf is online here:
http://www.frankjones.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/tannen.pdf

As for losing the news, there's a free audiobook here: https://www.audiobookcup.com/losing-the-news-the-future-of-the-news-that-feeds-democracy-audiobook/ !!
and a pdf online here: https://dlib.scu.ac.ir/bitstream/Hannan/302670/2/**********234.pdf hope this helps someone.

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!