For those who commit to academic area, your success as an academic will depend heavily on your ability to communicate to fellow researchers in your discipline, to colleagues in your department and university, to undergraduate and graduate students, and perhaps even to the public at large. Communicating well in an academic setting depends not only on following the basic rules that govern all good communication (for example, tailoring the message to meet the needs of a specific audience), but also on adhering to the particular norms of academic genres. Even though your interest doesn't lie in academic field, you may still want to have a look at this course for better preparation for your thesis defense or simply enhance your presentation skills.

The purpose of this course is threefold. First, the course will acquaint you with guidelines that will help you create well-crafted academic communication. Second, it will give you the opportunity to practice your communication skills and to receive extensive feedback from your colleagues and from me. You will write and/or revise an article manuscript or conference paper, present a conference paper or job talk, write a manuscript peer review, and engage in various other communication exercises. Third, the course will provide an opportunity for you to learn about professional norms for a range of activities that surround the academic enterprise, including, for example, the scholarly publication process and the job search process.

Joanne Yates is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She holds a BA from Texas Christian University as well as an MA and a PhD from the University of North Carolina. Yates developed and taught in the Communication for Managers core course. Her research examines communication and information as they shape and are shaped by technologies and policies over time, in both contemporary and historical organizations. In her work on contemporary organizations, she collaborates with Wanda Orlikowski (of MIT Sloan’s Information Technology group) and various students and researchers to study how groups and organizations use communication and information technologies, and how that use shapes their work. Specific studies have looked at the use of technologies such as electronic mail, instant messaging, the BlackBerry, and corporate blogging. Her most recent historical book, Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century, provides insight into the largely unexplored evolution of information processing.