The components of a college course on communication and aging are described and discussed in this paper. The first section of the paper focuses on appropriate assignments, their underlying strategies, and necessary materials for enhancing young people's communication with older adults and their appreciation of the situations that elderly people face. Subsequent portions of the paper provide a syllabus for a course on communicating with older adults, a quiz on the myths and realities of aging, a questionnaire designed to clarify different ways of defining oneself as old, guidelines for conducting an interview with older persons, the simulation of a chronic condition or age-related impairment (hearing or vision loss) and guidelines for writing a report about the experience, the procedures for assigning students to a "fantasy trip" to imagine and describe an age-related experience (such as retirement), an intergenerational communication map on which students indicate their interpersonal communication patterns with others, a list of popular music items whose subject matter is aging, suggested assignments for papers and studies on aging, and a case study for class discussion. A bibliography on aging also is included. (RL)