Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Picture: Various modes of communications.
Since primary school, or even since kindergarten, we have been well exposed to group work. Whether is it working together to solve a problem, cooperating to achieve a goal, I am sure projects and group work are not new to many of us.
However, what seems ironic is that even though we are all well exposed to doing projects, and interacting with people all the time, most of us never learnt through the classroom the basis of communication, or what it is to communicate with people. Most of us learnt by experience learning, by facing obstacles during communication, and learning to overcome them by trial and error, and by repeated attempts to be proficient in communicating with other people.
This is until we met CG1413, and our module tutor, Mr James.
Then we learnt the concrete ideas behind communication, like how does communication get deciphered and passed on, how we can avoid miscommunication by taking measures, learning how non-verbal cues help us interpret one's behavior.
All these skills help us re-enforce the ideas we gathered during experience learning all these years, and gave us a concept on the importance of communication, and what exactly does it encompass. This helped me to build a rapport with my team-mates when we met for meeting to discuss the projects, or worked together to accomplish the assignment. It helped me to understand that having an effective team was not as difficult and as arduous as it seems to be.
In my CG1102 group, these communication skills allowed my team to have debates about the project that had minimal conflict. To the best of our ability, we objectively described and explained our opinion and how it might be beneficial to our project. This allowed our group to have many interesting and beneficial concepts and ideas that might not have come about if there was not any form of active discussion. The effective part of this is that our group maintained cordial during discussions and we were all open to suggestions from everyone. This greatly minimized the amount of conflict that could have potentially appeared in group discussions.
Picture: Enjoyable meeting sessions. (:
In my CG1413 group, these communication skills allowed me to hone my skills in requesting for people to help in my surveys, to create clear and concise survey questions that can be beneficial to my project, and communicating with my group mates. It also gave me an extra chance to keep my presentation skills in check.
Picture: Extra chance to hone presentation skills.
Out of the classroom context, these skills I learnt allowed me to understand better how miscommunication occurs, and how to avoid it, not only in the school based environment, but at home, with my friends, with my family, or whenever communication occurs, which is everywhere.
Picture : This shows us that communication is part and parcel of our everyday life,
for every situation that requires us to open our mouths, or to show something.
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6 comments:
Hi Cherlia,
I like the first photo you used in your blog post on 10 levels of intimacy in communication. It clearly shows the different types of communication in today’s technology.
I like your introduction as it sets up a stage for your reflections on the module. I am glad that you have learned useful skills like how non-verbal cues can help us to interpret one’s behavior. However, it may be better if you could give some examples of how such skills are applied during teamwork and how it can help you to build a good rapport with your teammates.
You have used more photos in this blog post which is an improvement from your previous blog posts. This has make your blog post seems less wordy, compared to your previous posts.
However, it seems that the fourth photo is out of place as you were discussing about your CG1413 project previously but the photo is actually on your CG1102 project. You may want to consider putting a photo of yourself doing presentation on the CG1413 project.
Lastly, all the best in your future endeavors and may you become succeed in everything you do.
Li Hua
Hi Cherlia,
It was a pleasure reading this post and I feel that it is a very sincere reflection of what you had learnt in this module.
Firstly, I agree with you that this module allowed us to really sit down and be serious about communications. Through the years of communicating with different kind of people, we have not really given much thought on how to communicate effectively. We simply communicate in the way we want, and after many mistakes and misunderstandings, and then we realize our mistakes.
Our module tutor has certainly imparted us valuable skills that will be useful to us in years to come. The principles and concepts that we learnt were applied and practiced in our team projects which further enhanced our communication skills.
These effective skills allowed to communicate well in a team, and thus able to minimize conflicts and misunderstandings between team members. I believe that your communication skills have indeed improved but I feel that there are still areas where you can improve further on.
Lastly, this module is only the start of our journey on attaining effective communication skills and therefore I wish you all the best and hope that you can continue to improve yourselves to make yourself a better communicator!
Regards,
Jason
Hi Cherlia,
I agree with you fully that even though we had undertaken many projects since young, we never really understood the principles of effective teamwork and communication. It is also very true that this module has taught us a lot regarding these two vital principles.
In your post, you mentioned how effective communication has helped you to prevent conflicts, even when presenting opposing views to your teammates. In a discussion, we need to give our views, even if it contradicts the view of our teammates. Therefore, this shows how important it is to know how to present our views properly, without offending others.
You also mentioned how you were able to apply the communication skills in your various project as well. I feel that this is a good part of this module as we were able to apply directly what we have learnt, thus, reinforcing our understanding of the skills taught.
Lastly, you mentioned how the skills learnt in this module can be applied to many areas in our lives. I find this to be very true, as we should not limit ourselves into using the teamwork and communication skills learnt here only in school or at work but in our daily lives as well.
I hoped that my comments were of use to you and that you will apply the skills you learnt in this module in your everyday life as well.
Leonard (C06)
Hi Cher Lia,
I agree that the need to communicate is critical in today’s world and that life is just a string of situations where we need to continuously apply communication skills. However, learning such skills is not easy, they are rather ironically, abstract concepts themselves and, like you mentioned, only through trial and error, can we perfect our communication skills.
By using a singular example to explain how you have applied the skills learnt in this module, you show that all of those skills are important in maintaining a good communication situation. In addition you have also shown that this module was successful in teaching you the skills.
However, you only focused on the meetings and presentation aspects of the course. If you also wrote on the reflection or blogging parts of the course, I believe your post will be an even more interesting read.
I am certain you will continue to use these communication skills in future.
Finally, good luck for Finals.
Regards,
Kimberly
Hi Cherlia,
Time really flies, and this hectic but rewarding semester has ended. From your reflection I believe you had a fantastic experience in CG1413, learning many important skills in communication, teamwork and writing.
I agree with your point that we learnt alot from this course, which really was teaching us the fundamentals of effective communication. You have also rightfully pointed out that this skill is not something new; instead it has always been a basic element of the human society that we often overlooked. I'm glad that you have given enough credit to this course for opening our eyes to a very important skill.
Perhaps you could have reflect more on the benefits of keeping an academic blog, which helps us to constantly review and practice the 7Cs of writing.
Lastly, there are still at least six semesters to go, no doubt the skills and knowledge gained from this module will be useful for our future endeavours.
All the best for this end-of-semester exams! It will be tough, but with hard work I believe we all will get the results that we aim for.
Brandon
HIHIHI!!
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