C716 Business Communication is BUS 2600 in the WGU catalog, worth 3 competency units, and surveys business communication skills including messages, reports, resumes and oral presentations. The scoring risk here is unusual: form is part of the content. A well-argued document in the wrong genre fails aspects that a weaker document in the right genre passes, because the rubric is checking whether you produced the artifact that was asked for. Every aspect needs a 2. C716 and BUS 2600 are one course.
What C716 builds toward
Business communication is a genre discipline. A memo, a formal report, a bad-news message, a resume and a spoken presentation have different structures, different levels of directness and different conventions, and using the wrong one signals to a professional reader that you do not know the setting. The course teaches those conventions and then tests whether you can produce them under a specification.
Two things make it deceptively demanding. The genres are more different from each other than students expect, so competence in one does not transfer. And the standard is professional rather than academic, which means the essay habits built in general education can actively hurt you: long introductions, delayed conclusions and elaborate transitions are all normal in an essay and wrong in a business memo. The graduate treatment of similar ground is C204 Management Communication, and the writing method that underlies both is in the task-writing manual.
Aspects across multiple artifacts
WGU does not publish assessment types or task detail in its catalog; the Course of Study in your portal has your version. If a performance assessment carries the course, a communication rubric often distributes aspects across more than one artifact, and that changes the planning arithmetic because word budgets do not apply evenly to a resume or a slide outline.
A worked example. Suppose nine aspects spread across three artifacts, with an overall target near 1,800 words of prose plus the artifacts themselves. Assign aspects to artifacts first: four belong to the report, three to the shorter messages, two to the presentation materials. The report's four aspects take 250 words each, giving 1,000. The three message aspects are shorter by nature, at 130 each, giving 390. The two presentation aspects, covering structure and audience adaptation, take 205 each, giving 410. That is 1,800. The lesson buried in the split is that short-genre aspects are not less important, they are just less wordy, and a student who writes a 500 word memo because 130 words felt insufficient has broken the genre they were being scored on.
Genre conventions an evaluator checks
| Genre | Structure that reads as professional | The convention people miss |
|---|---|---|
| Routine memo | Header block, purpose in the first sentence, details, action requested | The ask belongs at the top, not the end |
| Bad-news message | Context, reasons, decision, alternative offered, courteous close | Reasons come before the decision, never after |
| Formal report | Title page, summary, findings, analysis, recommendation, references | The summary states conclusions, it does not preview them |
| Persuasive message | Attention, relevance to the reader, evidence, specific request | The request must be concrete enough to act on today |
| Resume | Targeted, achievement-led, quantified, one or two pages | Duties listed instead of results achieved |
| Presentation | One idea per slide, speaker notes carrying the argument | Slides written as documents rather than as visual support |
Sourcing and formatting in a communication course
Evidence in this course runs two ways. Where an artifact contains claims, those claims need support, and business writing conventions differ from academic ones: a report cites its sources, a memo usually names them in line. Follow whatever citation standard your task specifies, and use APA where nothing else is stated.
The second stream is the specification itself. A communication task usually supplies a scenario with an audience, a purpose and constraints, and treating those as binding is what separates a scoring document from a generic one. Quote the scenario's names, respect its stated limits, and if the scenario says the reader is hostile, write to a hostile reader rather than a neutral one. Submitted files are scanned through WGU's Similarity Checker, which is worth remembering because template memos and sample resumes are abundant online; build the artifact rather than adapting one.
Competent business writing
WGU records Competent or Not Competent, keeps no letter grades and no GPA, and requires a 2 in every aspect. In a communication course, professional presentation is frequently its own scored aspect, which means formatting errors are not cosmetic. Inconsistent headings, an unlabeled memo, a report with no summary, or a resume with three different date formats can cost an aspect on their own.
Documents that pass on the first attempt tend to be shorter than students expect and more direct than feels comfortable. Business readers want the conclusion early and the support underneath it, and rubric aspects on clarity and organization are usually scored against that expectation. If you are used to academic writing, the most valuable single change is to move your final paragraph to the top and rebuild the document underneath it. Where a task returns, comments name the aspects and resubmission carries no penalty.
Six mistakes that cost time here
- Essay habits in business genres. A memo that opens with background and reaches its point on page two has already lost the organization aspect.
- One register for every artifact. A bad-news message and a persuasive pitch cannot share a tone, and the rubric will notice.
- Unquantified resume content. Managed a team is a duty. Managed a team of nine and reduced turnaround by a stated amount is an achievement.
- Slides as documents. Dense slides with no speaker notes fail both the visual design aspect and the delivery aspect at once.
- Ignoring the scenario's constraints. If the scenario says the message must fit one page, a two-page message is a failed aspect regardless of quality.
- Formatting drift across artifacts. Three documents in three visual styles reads as carelessness in a course about professional presentation.
Several artifacts, one deadline
Send the rubric and the scenario. Each artifact comes back in its correct genre and format, with an aspect map showing where every requirement is met.
Writing to a reader who is busy and slightly annoyed
The most useful mental model in business communication is not an audience analysis framework. It is a specific imagined reader: someone with forty minutes of unread messages, moderate interest in your topic, and a reasonable expectation that you will not waste their time. Almost every convention in the course follows from that image.
The conclusion goes first because that reader may stop after two sentences. Headings exist because that reader skims before deciding to read. Paragraphs stay short because dense blocks get postponed. The request is specific because a vague ask creates work for the reader and therefore gets deferred. And courtesy stays brief because elaborate politeness reads as padding to someone who is behind.
This model also settles the tone questions students agonize over. How formal should a memo be? Formal enough that a stranger two levels up could read it without wincing, informal enough that it does not sound like a legal notice. How much background is enough? Enough that the reader can act without opening another document, and no more. Rubric aspects on audience adaptation are, in practice, asking whether you wrote for that person or for an assessor, and the difference is visible in the first three sentences.
Three questions C716 students ask
My writing is fine at work. Why would this course be hard?
Do I have to record a presentation?
How long should the report actually be?
Three CUs and a flat term
Communication courses close quickly once the genres are understood, which makes them good candidates for pairing with a research-heavy course inside the same six month term. Because a WGU term is one flat price, every course closed early is capacity for another, and artifact-based courses are the easiest to run in the gaps while a longer paper waits in the evaluator queue. The pacing page covers the cadence.
Where C716 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 5 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.