EDUC 6145 Week 3

The Art of Effective Communication

Walden University – EDUC 6145

This is a common issue with communication. Like the video Communicating with Stakeholders told us this week: 93% of communicating is not the words you deliver (Laureate, 2013). Using email is quick and effective. It cuts down costs for paper, or for having the group all meet at once. It allows for people from different continents to communicate instantly. However, it loses spirit, tone, attitude, and other non-verbals that may help communicate effectively. The answering machine does better with tone, spirit, and attitude but still misses out on the other visual cues. Face to face communication is best, but is not always available. For example, my building uses email religiously because we may be in the same building but we have different responsibilities at different times. For different messages each can be utilized effectively.

Email

I read the email as a favor I would be doing for Jane. It was somewhat whiny and comes off as long winded. She went out of her way to write redundant sentences to feign sincerity. She could have just wrote: “Mark I need that report. I know your busy, but I am stalled until I get them.” She didn't because that sounds impolite.

Voicemail

She sounded sincere and it didn't sound like I was doing her a favor. It sounds more like she was extending me a courtesy to warn me about a missing report I should have already completed. The sentences were word for word as the email, but this sounded more natural. I would feel more compelled to work on the report if I was Mark.

Face-to-Face

She looked desperate for me to just do my end of the work. I actually think Mark should be embarrassed she had to ask. I also think it would be harder to ignore or forget her request if she asked in person. An email can easily be disregarded, but the more personal the modality the harder to forget.

I learned that for small informal messages that are low on the priority list; Email is a fine way to easily communicate. Yet, the more important the message, the more personal the modality has to be. If I was Carlos from Case Study 29, I would have communicated more through face-to-face modality than he did. He made it easy for people to ignore/forget what he requested because he used email. To see someone is person and get cues back from them assuring they understood makes it almost impossible to have a miscommunication. In the future I will use this idea to motivate underproducing team members.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (n.d.). Communicating with Stakeholders. [Multimedia]. Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com Laureatte Education, (n.d.) 2013. 

EDUC 6145 Week 2

I once was put in charge of teaching my coworkers at my school how to use different delivery methods using technology. I was to show the basics of PowerPoint, Prezi, and Smart Software. I met with some of my stakeholders in a face to face meeting. The meeting lasted 3 minutes because they were all called to a discipline issue. The next meeting I set up was with less than 10% of my target audience. The reasoning was different, but most forgot or had another meeting to attend. I started to do more work thinking I wasn't grabbing their interest. I made an interactive PDF attached to the email I sent out, and even went door to door to make sure people were checking their emails. I was so excited I decided to make an online module using PDFs as my delivery method. In my haste I did not collaborate with anyone, and assumed everyone knew how to navigate my module. Looking back I feel ridiculous and ashamed that I tried to force feed people in the manner I did.

I had a version of the ADDIE process, that more resembled the DIE method [Development, Implementation, Evaluation]. To my credit, I did work hard on the modules. They would have worked if I would have done better on the other areas. I also tried my best to communicate with my target audience and did an effective job of making everyone check their emails. Outside of those two things, I did almost everything else wrong.

I did not involve all of the stakeholders. I should have included the department heads, and our district's IT guy. Our IT guy would have informed me that all of the school's computer's Adobe programs were out of date. He would have known that nobody would be able to view my modules. He probably would have updated the program in minutes to put on on track. The department heads would have informed me that Math and Language Arts have already chosen different methods months ago. They would not be interested in my project. They would also have enlightened me to the special education initiative to finish all IEP, IAT, and 504 meetings before state testing. That meant that many of the teachers would be unavailable during their prep period, which is when I scheduled meetings. So excluding all of those people took away around 92% of my target audience. So the few teachers I did help were very appreciative. However, I never got to the evaluation part due to a lack of motivation. What did it matter what 6 people thought, I was frustrated.

Had I done more Analysis I would have learned a lot more and saved time and effort. In this week's video they had an appropriate quote: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” I would have been able to “sell” my project better to the stakeholders. I don't think I made it clear exactly how this project was helping my target audience. Also including stakeholders more would have given me better ideas for my modules or other possible delivery methods. My biggest resources is the other veteran teachers around me that could have easily helped. I guess it was foolish to not include them, but at the time I didn't know better.

I am going to try another project this fall, and feel confident I will do much better. Already I have asked others to join the team and work on the analysis part of the ADDIE process. I have met with them and have pages of data that put us on track. We are now in the Design portion, and have a great couple of presentations we are altering daily to make better. We have included our IT guy, administrators, department heads, secretaries, teachers, and even the director of curriculum for our district. I am glad to have these classes to help.