Spring 2027

Persuasion and Social Influence

Study social influence and persuasion to improve skills, reduce audience resistance, and critically consume messages in contexts like influencers and marketing.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Lyn Van Swol

The workload included three tests, a few group projects, a final paper, and not too much work outside of class.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Develop an understanding of social influence and persuasion in online contexts, such as social media influencers, persuasive AI, and persuasive technologies.

  • Describe the fundamental assumptions and the causal mechanisms of selected theories of persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining.

  • Analyze multiple persuasive messages from the perspective of course theories.

  • Create persuasive messages utilizing theories from the course.

  • Create and use compliance-gaining techniques discussed in the course.

  • Become a more critical and savvy consumer of social influence and persuasive messages.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Sophomore standing

  • Sophomore standing
COMARTS 368

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Sophomore standing

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

LYN VAN SWOL is recorded teaching in Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Online (some classroom)0 / 1000
DIS 303Classroom Instruction0 / 200
DIS 305Classroom Instruction0 / 200
DIS 302Classroom Instruction0 / 200
DIS 301Classroom Instruction0 / 200
DIS 304Classroom Instruction0 / 200

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Lyn Van Swol

Students found the class interesting and enjoyable, highlighting engaging and entertaining lectures.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.18 GPA, 57.4% A/AB (n=94 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.17 GPA, 50.5% A/AB (n=99 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.39 GPA, 65.5% A/AB (n=55 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Lyn Van Swol

The workload included three tests, a few group projects, a final paper, and not too much work outside of class.

Past student reviews · Lyn Van Swol

Professor Van Swol was described as friendly, respectful, and a great professor who made the course experience positive.

Topics

  • Nonconscious and emotional social influence processes
  • Influencers, marketing, advertising, and communication campaigns
  • Online and interpersonal persuasion campaigns

Skills

  • Persuasive and social influence skills
  • Analysis of nonconscious and emotional influence in social media
  • Creation of multi-channel persuasion campaigns

Grades

Historical instructor

Spring 2027 · Projected

Before grades are released

– average GPA

Approximate 80% prediction interval

About this estimate

The course’s semester-average GPA, not an individual student’s grade. The center uses 5 same-season terms, weighted toward recent results.

The range uses the finite-sample 80th-percentile rank of absolute errors from earlier same-season forecasts. Each forecast uses only records from earlier terms. At least four forecasts are required; bounds are rounded outward and limited to 0–4. This is an empirical estimate: changing instructors or grading policies can reduce its coverage.

8 earlier forecasts · 0.12 GPA average error.

Grades over time

Through Spring 2027

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Download part 1
Selected offering source records
COMARTS 368 · Spring 2027

Persuasion and Social Influence

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:250:003821",
    "course_id": "COMARTS 368",
    "course_uid": "course_a54fb931d3a848c691620152",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "003821",
    "source_subject_id": "250",
    "title": "Persuasion and Social Influence",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Fall, Spring"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "0077cbad11398bf7224e2313746a3085e69f86d9e8e27cbe724f990fe9a239b7",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}