Computer Communication
Every application this course teaches now ships a generative assistant, so the entry-level office skill in industry has shifted from producing the memo, spreadsheet, or deck to specifying it, steering the assistant, and verifying and owning what comes back. The course keeps its business-communication identity and adds the verification, confidentiality, and disclosure habits employers now expect of anyone who submits AI-assisted work.
Current description → proposed description
Computer Communication introduces the basic concepts of the use of the computer in business, management, and in communication. Students will become aware of the main applications programs available, including writing memos using Word, crunching numbers with Excel, presentations with PowerPoint and using the internet to do research, send/receive email and explore other technology interests. This is an introductory course that guides students in appropriate communication techniques while using technology and computers with Office Suite programs.
Computer Communication introduces the use of computing tools for professional communication in business and management, where drafting, data analysis, and presentation work is now routinely assisted by generative AI. Students develop working proficiency with word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and electronic mail applications: document formatting and structure, spreadsheet formulas and charts that summarize business data, slide design for a live audience, and professional memo and email convention. Coursework then emphasizes specifying what a document or analysis must accomplish, directing the AI assistants embedded in office suites toward that purpose, audience, and tone, and verifying the resulting text, figures, citations, and formulas against authoritative sources before distribution. Students conduct research with internet search tools and learn to distinguish a genuine citation from a fabricated one. Attention is given to accessible document design and to delivering a presentation to a live audience and answering its questions. The course also treats confidentiality when institutional or client information is placed into third-party services, and honest disclosure of AI assistance. Throughout, students take professional responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of work they did not draft.
What changes
- Office-suite AI assistants treated as ordinary workplace tools
- Specification and prompting for a stated purpose, audience, and tone
- Verification of AI-generated text, citations, figures, and formulas
- Confidentiality of institutional data given to third-party services
- Disclosure of AI assistance and ownership of undrafted work
6 proposed outcomes, mapped to 7 program outcomes
Each outcome below is written to be observable and assessable, and each is mapped to the program learning outcomes for which it produces evidence.
Students will be able to construct professional business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that satisfy a stated purpose, audience, and accessibility requirement using current office productivity software and its embedded AI assistants, delivering the presentation orally to a live non-specialist audience.
PLO 5.1: the CLO requires finished written deliverables and an oral delivery of the presentation judged against a stated purpose and audience, which is the direct evidence of effective communication in both the written and spoken formats this PLO names.
Students will be able to formulate task-specific instructions that direct an AI writing or analysis assistant toward a stated business communication purpose, audience, and tone, producing from them a finished business document that meets that specification.
PLO 5.1: the CLO ends in a finished document a human reader receives, so the assessable evidence is whether that document conveys its stated purpose to its stated audience clearly and with integrity.
Students will be able to verify AI-generated text, figures, citations, and spreadsheet formulas against authoritative sources before the work is submitted or distributed.
PLO 4.1: checking machine-generated claims and numbers before release is critical analysis of a data-driven outcome rather than acceptance of it. PLO 6.1: tracing a generated figure or formula back to its source requires the student to interpret what an AI output actually asserts and whether the underlying data supports it.
Students will be able to analyze a business dataset in a spreadsheet using formulas, charts, and AI-assisted summarization, reporting the resulting conclusion in terms a non-specialist decision-maker can act on.
PLO 6.2: drawing a defensible conclusion from patterns in a dataset using quantitative tools is exactly the analysis this PLO names. PLO 5.3: the CLO requires the finding to be restated for a non-specialist decision-maker, which is the translation of technical work for a broader audience.
Students will be able to evaluate the privacy, confidentiality, and data-handling risks of placing institutional, client, or personal information into third-party AI services when selecting a tool for a given communication task.
PLO 2.3: weighing what data may responsibly be sent to an external service is concrete stewardship of AI resources and of information entrusted to the student. PLO 4.1: the CLO asks students to consider the ethical and downstream consequences of a technology choice, not only its convenience.
Students will be able to justify a disclosure standard for AI assistance in academic and workplace communication, grounding that standard in the university's Christian commitments to honesty and stewardship and accepting personal accountability for the accuracy of work the student did not personally draft.
PLO 1.2: the CLO requires the student to ground the disclosure standard explicitly in Christian commitments to honesty and stewardship, producing the reflection on how Christian values guide decisions about transparency and accountability that this PLO names. PLO 5.1: a stated disclosure standard is what makes a submitted document honest about its own provenance, which this PLO requires as presenting information transparently and with integrity.
Program outcomes this course reaches
Filled cells are program learning outcomes with at least one supporting course learning outcome in this course. Sparse coverage is expected — no single course carries all eighteen.