The Department of Communication Studies was established in 2010 by the Academic Board of the University, after it had run as Communicative Skills Unit from 2003. The Communicative Skills (CS) programme had run in the Department of English and Department for African and General Studies for some years. The CS programme started as a pilot programme for only students in the Faculty of Arts in 1987. It later became a university-wide programme designed to equip all first-year students with good study skills as well as skills in collecting, storing, and communicating information in acceptable forms. The Department has grown from the use of part-time lecturers to recruiting its own full time lecturers.
In addition to Communicatives Skills, the Department now runs B.A. Communication Studies, M.A (Teaching Communication) and M.A. (Communication) degree programmes on both regular and sandwich bases. The Communicative Skills programme is geared towards equipping students with communicative as well as study skills that will enable the students to use language effectively in academic communication. For quality assurance and uniformity, all students take one general quiz in addition to other group assessments for evaluation. The general quiz and the end of semester examinations are both graded through conference marking.