D644 Foundations of Strategic Communications, catalog number COMS 2100, is the three CU entry course of the WGU School of Business communications sequence, covering the development of clear, concise and compelling messaging for specific audiences and business purposes. The word strategic is not decoration. It means every message in this course has to be traceable to a business objective, and messages that exist because something needed saying score badly.
Messages that trace back to an objective
The structural idea underneath COMS 2100 is a chain: business objective, communication objective, audience, message, channel, measure. Weak submissions break that chain at the second link. They name a business goal, then jump to writing copy, and the copy is judged on whether it sounds professional rather than on whether it moves the audience towards the goal.
Keeping the chain visible is the single most reliable way to earn aspects in this course. If the business objective is to reduce support calls about billing, the communication objective is not to inform customers about billing. It is to get a defined proportion of customers to use the self service tool before calling, which produces a different message, a different channel and a measure you could actually read next month.
The second scored theme is discipline about length and claim. Clear, concise and compelling are three separate demands that pull against each other, and this course examines whether you can meet all three at once. A message that is clear and concise but makes no case is a notice. One that is compelling and clear but runs to a page is unread. The craft is in cutting, and evaluators can tell whether a piece was cut or merely written short.
Turning scored aspects into a section plan
Scoring detail lives inside your Course of Study, so open the rubric first and count the aspects. Each is judged independently against a three point scale and each needs a 2 to pass, so polished copy paired with a thin audience analysis is a returned task rather than a compromise.
This course usually produces artefacts, and artefacts create a mapping problem: an aspect satisfied inside a piece of writing and never explained in the accompanying rationale. Point at your own work explicitly. Name the line, the choice and the reason.
The word budget, worked. Assume six scored aspects and about 1,600 words of rationale alongside the messaging artefacts. Reserve 120 words to state the business objective and 100 to close. That leaves near 1,380, about 230 per aspect. Then take 40 words from each of two descriptive aspects and give 80 to the audience aspect and the same to the message justification aspect. Audience analysis at 100 words is a job title and an assumption; at 300 it is the section that makes the rest of the submission defensible.
A structure that fits a strategic messaging deliverable
Where your task directions specify a structure, follow it. Where the shape is open, this ordering matches how messaging aspects tend to be scored.
| Section | What belongs in it | How it gets read |
|---|---|---|
| Business objective | What the organisation is trying to achieve, in measurable terms | Everything downstream is judged against this |
| Communication objective | The specific change in audience knowledge, belief or behaviour you are after | Confusing this with the business objective is the standard error |
| Audience | Who they are, what they currently believe, what they care about, what they can do | Scored for specificity; demographic sketches score poorly |
| Key message | One sentence the audience should be able to repeat afterwards | If it takes three sentences, the message is not finished |
| Supporting points | Two or three, each with evidence, ordered by what the audience needs first | Ordering by what you find interesting is a common weakness |
| Channel and format | Where it appears and why that suits the audience and the objective | Channel chosen by habit rather than by reasoning is visible |
| Measurement | What you would look at to know whether it worked, and when | Frequently omitted; it is what makes the work strategic |
Write the key message before writing anything else, then cut it until it survives being read aloud once. Everything else in the submission is either support for that sentence or a delivery decision about it.
Evidence craft in a messaging course
Communication work is easy to write and hard to justify, which is where the marks separate.
- Support audience claims with something other than assumption: survey data, support ticket themes, sector research or documented behaviour.
- Cite communication principles rather than asserting them. Claims about attention, structure and recall have published backing.
- Show the cut. Including an earlier, longer version beside the final one demonstrates the editing the course is teaching.
- Attach evidence to every supporting point in the message itself, and make sure that evidence would survive a sceptical reader.
- Name the channel constraints you worked within, including length limits and accessibility requirements.
- Use APA for external sources and keep quotation short.
The most useful discipline is writing the measure before writing the message. Knowing that success means a stated proportion of readers taking a stated action forces the message to ask for something specific, which is exactly what an evaluator is checking for.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score independently, so returns here usually hit the rationale rather than the copy.
- The communication objective is distinct from the business objective and stated as a change in the audience.
- The audience section describes beliefs and behaviour rather than demographics alone.
- The key message is one sentence and the audience could repeat it.
- Channel choice is justified against audience habit, not organisational convenience.
- A measure exists with a timeframe attached.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted without a grade penalty, so a return costs calendar rather than standing. Terms run six months at a flat rate, and the communications sequence rewards momentum because each course builds on the vocabulary of the one before.
Six mistakes that cost time in D644
- Writing before defining the objective. Copy produced first can always be justified afterwards, and the justification reads exactly like what it is.
- Audiences described by job title. What they believe and what they can do matters more than what they are called.
- A key message that is a topic. Billing changes is a subject; your bill arrives on the fourth from March is a message.
- Compelling mistaken for enthusiastic. Persuasion comes from relevance and evidence rather than from adjectives.
- Channel chosen by default. An all staff email sent because that is what is always done needs a reason or a replacement.
- No measurement. Communication without a measure is expression, and this is a strategy course.
Cutting a message until it works
The skill this course is quietly assessing is subtraction, and it is worth practising deliberately because it is the difference between copy that reads as professional and copy that reads as competent.
Start with the version you naturally wrote and find the sentence that carries the ask. Move it to the top. Almost every draft written by a student buries the request under context, because that is the order in which the writer discovered it, and it is the wrong order for a reader who is deciding within a few seconds whether to continue.
Then remove everything that serves the writer rather than the reader. Background explaining why the organisation made a decision, hedging that protects against objections nobody raised, and courtesy padding at the start all fall into this category. Keep the context that changes what the reader does, and cut the context that only explains why you are the one sending it.
Next, test each remaining sentence with one question: if this were deleted, would the reader do something different? If not, it goes. This is uncomfortable because a lot of well written material fails the test, and the discomfort is the point.
Finally, read the result aloud. Sentences that need a second breath are usually two sentences, and words that make you hesitate are words the audience will hesitate at too. Including this before and after pair in your rationale, with a line on what each cut achieved, gives an evaluator direct evidence of the craft the course exists to teach.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study and the task directions. What comes back is aspect mapped: objectives separated and stated measurably, an audience section built on evidence, a key message cut to one sentence, channel reasoning, and a measurement plan. Plus a walkthrough so the choices are yours to defend in the courses that follow.
D644 sets up the whole COMS sequence, and the vocabulary you build here reappears in every course after it. Terms are six months at a flat rate, so taking the sequence in order and without gaps is the efficient route.
Questions students ask about D644
Is D644 the same course as COMS 2100?
Is D644 a writing course?
Can you write the messaging for my submission?
Where D644 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. 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.