D647 Evaluating a Communications Strategy, catalog number COMS 3300, is the three CU course in the WGU School of Business communications sequence covering key performance indicators and metrics for measuring the effectiveness of a communications plan. It is the course that asks the question the rest of the field frequently avoids: did any of it work, and how would you know if it had not.
Activity metrics are the trap
The distinction that decides most submissions in COMS 3300 is between activity, output, outcome and impact. Activity is what you did: pieces published, emails sent, posts made. Output is what happened mechanically: impressions, opens, reach. Outcome is what changed in the audience: awareness, belief, behaviour. Impact is what changed in the organisation: calls avoided, applications received, retention improved.
Weak submissions live entirely in the first two categories, because those numbers are easy to obtain. A dashboard showing impressions and open rates measures effort, not effect, and a rubric aspect asking whether the plan worked cannot be satisfied by it. The work that scores well climbs the ladder deliberately and states plainly where it can no longer climb, because attribution gets genuinely hard at the impact level and pretending otherwise is worse than admitting it.
The second scored theme is choosing measures before the campaign rather than after. Metrics selected once results are in are always the flattering ones. Saying that the indicators were set in advance, and reporting the ones that disappointed alongside the ones that did not, is a straightforward way to demonstrate the discipline the course is teaching.
Turning scored aspects into a section plan
The scoring detail sits in your Course of Study. Count the aspects and give each its own heading using the rubric's own nouns. Each is scored independently against a three point scale and each requires a 2, so an impressive measurement framework does not rescue a thin section on what you would recommend changing.
Measurement submissions tend to produce tables, and tables create a mapping problem when the reasoning lives only inside them. Every table needs a paragraph saying what it shows and what follows from it, because the sentences are what an evaluator scores.
The word budget, worked. Suppose six scored aspects and roughly 1,700 words. Hold 130 words for an opening that names the plan being evaluated and 110 for a close carrying the recommendation. That leaves near 1,460, about 240 per aspect. Then take 50 from each of two descriptive aspects and add 100 to the aspect covering interpretation of results and the rest to the aspect covering recommendations. Reporting numbers is easy and cheap; saying what they mean and what to do next is the scarce material.
A structure that fits an evaluation deliverable
Where your directions specify a structure, use theirs. Where they do not, this ordering matches how evaluation aspects tend to be scored.
| Section | What belongs in it | How it gets read |
|---|---|---|
| Plan under evaluation | Its objectives, audiences and intended outcomes, restated measurably | You cannot evaluate against an objective that was never measurable |
| Indicator framework | Each indicator mapped to an objective, with its level and its data source | Indicators with no matching objective are the usual weakness |
| Baselines and targets | Where things stood before, and what would count as success | Without a baseline nothing measured afterwards means anything |
| Results | What the indicators showed, including the disappointing ones | Uniformly positive results invite scrutiny of the selection |
| Interpretation | What the pattern suggests, and what else could explain it | Alternative explanations are the mark of a serious evaluation |
| Attribution limits | What the data can and cannot credit to the communication | Honest limits score better than confident overreach |
| Recommendations | Specific changes, each tied to a result, with an owner | Generic advice to continue monitoring scores nothing |
Map every indicator to an objective before you look at any data. An indicator that answers to no objective is a number you collected because it was available, and evaluators recognise the pattern immediately.
Evidence craft for measurement work
Evaluation writing is judged on the honesty of its numbers more than on their size.
- State the source and collection period for every figure. A metric with no window is uninterpretable.
- Give the baseline beside the result, every time. A twelve percent open rate means nothing until the previous figure appears next to it.
- Name the confounders. Seasonality, concurrent campaigns, price changes and news events all move the numbers you are claiming credit for.
- Distinguish correlation from causation explicitly, particularly at the impact level.
- Cite measurement frameworks and industry benchmarks to their sources rather than treating them as general knowledge.
- Use APA throughout and keep quotation short.
Report a failure properly. An evaluation containing a clearly underperforming element, analysed rather than excused, demonstrates more competence than one where everything worked, and it usually supplies the strongest material for the recommendations section.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score independently, and returns here cluster on interpretation rather than on data collection.
- Every indicator maps to a stated objective and names its data source.
- Baselines exist for every result reported.
- At least one alternative explanation is considered for the main finding.
- Attribution limits are stated rather than implied.
- Each recommendation names a change, a reason and a person.
Performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs calendar rather than standing. In a six month flat rate term, closing the final course of a sequence promptly is what keeps the whole sequence inside one term.
Six mistakes that cost time in D647
- Measuring activity and calling it effectiveness. Volume published is effort, not result.
- Choosing indicators after the fact. The flattering ones always survive the selection, and it is visible.
- No baseline. A number with nothing to compare it to cannot support any claim.
- Claiming causation from a coincidence in timing. Something else almost always happened in the same window.
- Vanity metrics presented as outcomes. Reach and impressions describe opportunity, not effect.
- Recommendations that recommend nothing. Continue to monitor is not a recommendation; it is a way of avoiding one.
- Averaging away the segments. A campaign that worked strongly for one audience and failed for another produces an unremarkable overall figure, and the useful finding disappears unless the results are broken out.
Climbing from output to impact
The most useful thing you can build in D647 is a deliberate chain that shows how a piece of communication could plausibly reach a business result, and then measure at each step.
Start at the bottom with delivery: did it reach the audience at all. This is where opens, reach and impressions belong, and their honest role is diagnostic. If delivery failed, nothing above it can be interpreted, and if delivery succeeded these numbers stop being interesting.
Move up to engagement: did the audience do anything with it. Clicks, time spent, replies, attendance, downloads. Still not effect, but evidence that attention was obtained rather than merely purchased.
Then outcome: did anything change in what the audience knows, believes or does. This usually needs deliberate measurement rather than platform data, which is why it is so often skipped. A short before and after survey on a single belief, a change in the proportion of people using a self service route, or a shift in the mix of questions arriving at a support desk are all realistic at coursework scale.
Finally impact: did the organisational number move. Calls, applications, retention, revenue, cost. At this level attribution becomes genuinely contested, and the right move is to state the size of the change, list the other plausible causes, and say what you would need in order to attribute it more confidently, such as a holdout group or a staggered rollout.
Presented as a single figure with measures attached at each level, that chain answers the majority of the rubric aspects at once, and it is a far stronger artefact than a dashboard of whatever the platform happened to report.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study and the task directions. What comes back is aspect mapped: an indicator framework tied to objectives, baselines and targets, results reported with confounders named, attribution limits stated plainly, and recommendations that name changes and owners. Plus a walkthrough so the evaluation is yours to defend.
D647 completes the analytical half of the communications sequence and leads into the applied courses that follow. Terms run six months at a flat rate, so finishing a sequence inside a single term is the straightforward way to lower cost per course.
Questions students ask about D647
Is D647 the same course as COMS 3300?
What if I have no real campaign data to evaluate?
Can you build the evaluation for me?
Where D647 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.