OVERVIEW

The ability to communicate effectively is essential in many aspects of our lives, but none more so than in the workplace. Improving your communication skills can not only improve your performance in your current professional role, it can also help you to progress in your career.

Our Diploma in Professional Communication is specifically tailored to help you improve your communication in a professional setting, including written, spoken and analytical skills. In a rapidly changing world, strong communication skills have never been more important in helping you to ensure your career is future fit for life.

Why study the Diploma in Professional Communication with UNE?

The Diploma in Professional Communication gives you a solid grounding in the fundamentals of effective communication, while at the same time allowing you to design a course that suits your professional circumstances, or areas in which you feel you can improve.

Our core subjects include public speaking, writing for work, and communicating in culturally diverse contexts. You can also choose from a diverse range of listed units, including (but not limited to):

• Communication for Business
• Language and the Law
• Working with Aboriginal People
• Persuading the Public: Rhetoric in Public Affairs.

What makes our course different?

The subjects in the Diploma of Professional Communications have been assembled from across a range of our bachelor's degrees, covering media and communications, arts, law, linguistics and theatre studies. This gives you a broad scope to tailor your diploma to suit your personal needs.

• Learn from lecturers and tutors who have years of industry and/or research experience in the field.
• Choose to study when it suits you. Our degree allows you to fit study around your busy lifestyle, not the other way around, no matter where you are in the world.
• UNE is Australia’s oldest regional university and a pioneer in the delivery of distance education – more than 80% of our students are online.

Year after year, students award UNE the maximum 5-star ratings for Overall Experience and Student Support, so when you choose to study with us, you are in very good hands.

Core units

• COMM103 - Creative Industries and Communications
• LING150 - Communication in Culturally Diverse Contexts
• THEA234 - Speaking in Public
• WRIT101 - The Craft of Academic Writing
• WRIT306 - Writing for Work: Styles and Contexts

Study online

Most of our students choose to study online across three study periods with 24/7 tutor support* and fit study around work and family commitments. Uniquely, our online students are mostly over 30 and bring valuable experience with them. They form a community of adults juggling the same challenges and priorities and who bring their life and work experience together at UNE in order to become future-fit and better respond to a rapidly changing world.

* 24/7 tutor support includes: essay feedback (within 24 hours); live chat 24/7 for generic feedback on academic writing; and subject-specific help at a foundation or first-year level for subjects including mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, business, accounting, microeconomics, macroeconomics and statistics. There are also a wide range of workshops, resources and courses available in academic skills support to assist your and help you to succeed.

To qualify for the award a candidate must pass units to the value of 48 credit points.

COURSE OUTCOMES

The Diploma in Professional Communication aims to develop an understanding of and competence in the core elements of professional communication. This gives graduates a competitive advantage in a variety of workplaces, whether in Australia or overseas.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• demonstrate knowledge within communication studies, with depth in some of the themes, concepts, theories, practices and techniques studied in this field

• demonstrate cognitive and communication skills to identify, analyse, evaluate and synthesise ideas and information from a variety of sources

• select and use appropriate communication technologies, forms, styles and techniques to investigate problems and present ideas and arguments coherently for specific purposes and intended audiences within a range of professional contexts

• transfer and apply theoretical concepts to plan and develop project, solve problems and make decisions in a range of professional or further learning situations; and

• demonstrate initiative, judgement and personal responsibility in decision-making and problem-solving while working both in collaboration with others and independently.