Themen der Lehrveranstaltung
Main cognitive processes; psychological principles and theories of both verbal and non-verbal communication; mass-communication and persuasion; motivation, decision making and other processes applied to communication.

Unterrichtsform
Problem-based lectures and group activities.

Bildungsziele
Understand the basic knowledge of interpersonal communication theories; understand and apply psychological principles to personal, social, and organizational communication; develop insight into one’s own and others’ behavior and mental processes; develop effective strategies for management and improvement of communicative skills. Knowledge and understanding This course will deal with conceptual and practical issues in the field of psychology of communication, with an emphasis on understanding interpersonal communication. This knowledge will be presented by providing several examples and by indicating students how to analyse how communication works in different domains. Applying knowledge and understanding Students will develop insight into their own and others’ behavior and communicative skills. They are expected to develop and apply effective strategies for self-management and self-improvement. They will apply psychological theories, concepts, research and methods to contemporary problems in the communication practice. The group activity will be aimed at developing presentation skills about a scientific topic, in the domain of literacy communication, for science popularization. Students will put into practice issues learnt during this course and the parallel courses “Computer-Mediated Communication” and “Introduzione alla Linguistica”. Making judgments Students will use critical and creative thinking, skeptical inquiry, and, as much as they can, the scientific approach, being enabled to show these skills in their own lives and work to judge and solve real-life problems. Communication skills Students will be able to effectively communicate empirical and theoretical information when asked to produce knowledge or when using knowledge in applied settings. Moreover, they would enhance their own effective strategies for management and improvement of communicative skills. Learning skills Students will be able to describe and use several concepts from the psychological field, which are more reliable than those available through the common sense. This improvement will make the difference between their skills and those managed by several professional figures with which they will collaborate.

Art der Prüfung
Group activity (for both attending and non-attending students): Students should create a scientific article on a topic, selected from the topics covered from the course and connected to current hot issues related to the media. Students will be asked to form groups of three units, who would jointly work around a common topic (which will be proposed by the group and approved by the lecturer). Each group should then create a 8-page manuscript, which will be then published on the Journal “Digital Ecology”. The topic of the manuscript should be discussed with the professor, so that 1- the same specific topic would not be attributed to more than one group, 2- it covers an interesting aspect for the readership. Before their submission to the Journal, all the manuscripts will be published on Teams/Sharepoint, and all students will have the possibility to comment on (at least some of) them. After that phase, the authors are asked to revise their manuscript to include the comments received by peers. Optionally, students not willing to create a scientific paper, can choose to perform the "B-plan" (open to both attending and non-attending students). When: after the written exam (let's define a meeting date), or right after the oral exam. What: a topic is selected by the professor (acting as the boss of the company asking for the job) by looking on the news of the day. The task consists in drafting a presentation about this topic, for a suitable audience about such topic. The student is given 10 minutes to create the outline of a presentation, drafting how to organize the given time, the sequence of slides, their content. Then, they have 5 minutes to present the idea to the professor, acting as the "boss" of a company. The evaluation of this activity will be given on a maximum of 5 points, out of the 30 available for the whole course (the course counts for 5 ECTS, 1 ECTS for the activity). EXAM: Students could choose between two modalities of assessment: an oral or a written exam. The oral exam will consist in a colloquium, 30-40 minutes of duration: a general question will introduce an argument, and the following questions/comments will be devoted to exploring theoretical knowledge and its application in pragmatic situations. The written exam will consist of 5 questions, each to be answered within the assigned number of lines. Questions will assess whether the learning outcomes were obtained, through a mixture of both knowledge and applicative questions.

Bewertungskriterien
Evaluation of the group activity: Students will be evaluated onto two tasks. The main one will be the “Article” or, alternatively, the "B-plan" (up to 4 points): Criteria for the "Article": Abstract: attractiveness of the abstract, in which the topic is presented, Intro: how the state-of-the-art presents the topic, Gap: how the problem is presented to the readership, Discussion & Conclusions: how the problem is addressed. Criteria for the "B-plan" activity: - Congruency of the idea for the given goal, - Quality of idea, - Feasibility of the idea. The second one will be the comments to the other groups' manuscripts (both for attending and non-attending students, given that the manuscripts are published on Teams): The quality of the comments provided to the manuscripts of the other students (not of your group!) will be rated 0 up to 1 point. Parameters: concreteness, relevance, presence of concerns/challenges and politeness in expressing them. If a student wants to keep the activity evaluation for the total mark, during the exam there will be room also: - for discussing it together (5 minutes, no more); - for recover some lost point, due to excellent exams. So, even if the sum of points to this section is below 5, students still have the possibility to get the highest mark. Exam: The evaluation of the exam will contribute up to 25 points of the total mark. Criteria for the evaluation: accuracy and adequacy in applying course concepts and theories [40%], ability to discuss original opinions based on solid theoretical background [30%], logical argumentation, and critical analysis [30%]. Attribution of points to the written exam: For each question, the number in brackets will represent the range of points (N): for a basic answer = 0 points; for very good answer = +N points, no answer or totally wrong one = –N points. Starting from 18, the mark will be calculated adding (and/or subtracting) all the points assigned to answers. For both kinds of exam, these are going to be useful skills: ability to argue, to create broad connections between contents, ability to compare different objects also from different points of view; ability to discuss, apply and criticize models and theories, ability to focus the speech on the topic (without deviations or digressions).