Example 1: Communication Being able to communicate effectively is one of the most important skills of life. Even if you are communicating with your friends, families or with your work colleagues you must have clear communication skills. Developing proper communication skills can help all aspects of your life, from your professional life to social gathering and everything in between. Professionally, if you looking for a new job interview or a promotion with the current employee, you need to able to demonstrate good communication skills. You should have an ability to speak appropriately with variety of people whilst maintaining good eye contact, presenting your ideas clearly and concisely and work well in a group, which requires good communication skills. I have discussed about what I have learnt on this unit to improve the communication skills, the impact of learning this skill and how I can bring to practice for better out come of my future. Evidence (What) To achieve this skill I was required to prepare an elevator speech. To prepare that speech I had to learn about different communication models and discuss about the situation we may encounter on our workplace. The elevator speech should not be more than a minute; you have to express yourself with in that minute on a professional manner. The elevator speech was a short, precise oral piece in which I express myself to a CEO or a higher manager of the company. I had to construct the speech in my mind before expressing and that speech needed to be professional, impressive and concise which should leave my positive impact on the receiver. To build that speech I had to use my knowledge and critical thinking skill and to express that speech I needed to be confident and use best communication skills. To achieve this communication model helped me to understand other evaluations in the functions of communication. Each point on the communication model had a different emphasis on communication. To achieve the best communication skill you need to have good written, oral non‐verbal communication like different gestures or simple body movements. This kind of communication skill we encounter in everyday life, whether it be expressing you, running a meeting, giving a presentation in front of everyone or just a simple conversation with your friends and colleagues. These activities enable me to apply both communication and critical thinking skills on every situation we encounter in a formal or informal manner. Reflection (So What) After doing this activity in the class I realized that we use this communication skill on our everyday life depending upon how we use it. This helped me to focus on my capability in achieving communication and critical thinking skill. This activity of elevator speech has shown me the importance of creating a brief and impactful conversation that you don’t know personally. The communication model helped me a lot to understand the importance of communication skill to construct the best speech so that receiver can understand the meaning of the sender. This allowed me to focus how to utilize the communication skill to express your best idea to the audience. At first it took me quite a long time to think about presenting a good speech in a minute to express myself, which had to leave a good impact to the audience. But after few speeches in front of my colleagues and receiving their feedback I improved my speech and made my delivery as friendly as possible which resulted in a good speech in front of everyone. Outcome (Now What) This activity gave me a chance to refine my communication skills and gave me an opportunity to gain the assurance in both my skills and myself. It has helped me to open up to my colleagues and friends and establish more meaningful conversation with them. This activity helped me to anticipate and act in different situations, which we all encounter in future. The only way of enhancing these skills is to practice and follow these skills on your everyday life so that you are ready when you finish your studies to face the real world. Which will also help to gain more confidence in you and will able to express your idea, critical thinking more noticeably and concisely to others. Appropriate Strategies To enhance your communication skill there are some strategies I’ll consider like a good listener is way of communication. To communicate effectively with others, we need to show that we are interested in what the person has to say. Always acknowledge the other person’s ideas. After this activity I have taken a strategy that before doing anything you need to be fully prepared and really think before you give your speech on something or you give an opinion, you construct the sentence in your mind before you express. Always listen clearly what others are saying so you get better idea to construct your speech. Evidence of learning Now, after learning how I can utilize this skill I have used this skill in my everyday life. Now I construct the speech in my mind about any thing before I speak. This will help me not to make any mistakes and leave a good impact in front of my friends, families and colleagues. I had a meeting with my senior manager at work regarding change of some company policies and some vacant position, which was about new position opening up. So, I wanted to meet him and ask for the promotion. So, utilizing this communication and critical thinking skills I made up my speech before hand and got prepared for the meeting. I had everything in mind what I need to say, so that it will have a good impact on my manager. So, with the learning of these skills we can make a change on our life really to make it successful. Example 3: GLO 2  Communication  Communication is used to communicate with our partners in workspace effectively and efficiently, which will reduce the occurrence of misunderstanding and problems related to communication. 1.What In order to achieve this, it requires me to take SIT223 as it enables me to learn professional skills in which communication is included as one. Communication has 2 types and those are verbal and non‐verbal. There are two types of verbal communication that I am currently learning, known as, written and oral. Written communication requires me to practice writing, such as, writing resume, while oral communication requires me to practice as an employee, employer, as well as elevator speech. Moreover, I need to know the concepts of communication. As what I have mentioned previously, practices in written communication is crucial, in which it allows me to produce a professional resume. I need to impress the employer in this written document based on my language, skills, education, and experience. To achieve this, the resume needs to be written as professional as possible as it shows a good personality in order to leave a nice impression. I have practiced this task during SIT223 seminar week 6 and week 7 in which I improved my resume. Other than written communication, there is also another one, known as, oral communication. I apply this oral communication during my practice in elevator speech in Week 1, SIT223 seminar. Elevator speech allows me to know that to do when I am in a situation in which I meet my CEO inside an elevator. As it will not take much time in standing in the elevator, this is an opportunity as to speak professionally with confidence and good personality to impress the CEO with a limited time. There are different model of communication. In SIT223 seminar week 2, I have the opportunity to discuss and research about models of communication like linear, Shannon & Weaver, Berlo, and Schramm model. 2.So What After doing some activities related with communication, I can feel an improvement with my skills in communication with wider knowledge and understanding. Writing a professional resume is an interesting skill that I need to develop. This is a good practice as it allows me to be more confident when I prepare a resume to apply to a company. As for me, developing a resume requires me to think carefully as I need to show my skills that are related to the job, education, and language as professional as possible in a document to impress the employer. Afterwards, I show my resume to my partners in the seminar activities and they think that it looks professional. My partners did give me some comments in which it needs to be less personal. Hence, I believe that the next resume produced, I will make it better than before and ensure that it will be less personal. For the elevator speech that I have done, I understand that in communication there will be more than one situation. Different situations have different type of professionalism and language. Based on the feedback, my elevator speech should not be too stiff, this was what I did as I was too nervous. With the skills I learnt from the research I done with communication models, I know that communication model cannot describe a real human communication 100%. Nevertheless, based on the research, I understand that communication is not about one person talking, but it is about several people talking to one another and we need to listen, thus, a good communication is built. 3.Now What From here, I have improved my communication skills from the task that I have done and the feedback given by my partners during seminars. There are different situations in communication and I need to be ready. One of the situations is like the elevator speech. Wherever I work, I believe that I will always meet different people and need to interact with them by communication. One of those can be our friend, employer, CEO, and partners in work. Hence, a good communication is needed and this needs to be achieved by more practices. The more situation of communication I experience and learnt from, the better communication can be done. What I need to do now is to experience more communication situation, and developing a better resume. 4.Theories / Strategies Oral communication is very common as the interaction between people and people have different personality and moods in different situation. To build an effective communication, we need to be adjusting our oral communication skills in different situations and make sure the words we use are specific, meaningful, and understandable. For written communication, as always different situation will need different level of professionalism and requirements. So the key is being flexible and adjustable with the situations when doing written communication. For non‐verbal communication, I have not practice that much in this unit, but we are taught by the tutors to be confident, and professional. 5.Evidence Week 1 Seminar – 2.5 Elevator Speech • Improves my verbal communication skills in speaking and experience a new situation. • I learnt to be formal and professional when talking with managers or CEO. • Always smile. • Speak about the my job in the company, what am I working on, what I have achieved. Week 2 Pre‐Seminar Activities – 1.1 Investigate Models of Communication • I do researches and find out many models of communication like Shannon and Weaver’s model, Berlo Model, and Schramm model. • Shannon and Weaver’s model: o The creator of this model is working on Bell Telephone Labs in US and their names are Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. o This model consists of 6 elements, there are sender, encoder, channel, decoder, receiver, and noise. o The bad thing about the model is it only shows one way of person talking to another without getting any feedback. • Berlo Model o Berlo’s disadvantages are no response, barriers do not exist, noise is not shown in the model, and complex model. • Schramm Model o More realistic, however, noise is not included. • Based on the model I search, none of this can show exactly how real life verbal communication happens and verbal communication cannot just be explain in a model. Week 2 Seminar – 2.2 Putting Theory Into Practice • We need to think of the oral communication situations that will be faced by fresh IT graduates who is in the first day of work. • Our discussion outcomes are: o Talking with other workers about previous experiences. o When we are given task from project leader, we can ask the requirements of the project. o Working together in a team. o Discussing the previous education with other workers. o Like the elevator speech, if we could met the CEO of the company, use this chance to impress the CEO with our skills. 1 GLO2 - COMMUNICATION (GLO2) Communication: using oral, written and interpersonal communication to inform, motivate and effect change. WHAT? SETTING UP SKYPE SESSIONS (EXAMPLE 1) My group initially had a really hard time communicating with each other. People were getting frustrated because discussions on the online forum were being missed, not responded to, or ignored. Members of the team were starting to get snappy and hostile. To resolve this, I worked to set up several skype sessions for the team to be able to talk in real time. During these sessions, I worked to make sure communication remained on-topic and positive. CONTRIBUTING IN THE DISCUSSION FORUMS (EXAMPLE 2) The importance of communication was highlighted in a discussion thread. Group Member 1 was trying to determine the active members for the Media Watch Assignment, and Group Member 2 became irritated at not being considered to be a part of the group. Group Member 2’s reasoning was that they had been busy with work and not able to post on or read the Example 4: 3 needed to discuss their agitations. However, I did not want to linger on these topics as we all had a goal we needed to accomplish. I assumed a similar role of leading the skype discussion for assignment 3. By this time, I was very effective at leading the discussions, and within 45 minutes the whole group knew exactly what their responsibilities were. I went into these skype sessions prepared with supporting slides in Google Docs to share with the group so that we could all be on the same page. This aided the communication between group members as we could all share a similar reference point. The fact that I was able to lead the skype discussions tells me that I have leadership potential, and that I naturally gravitate towards leadership positions. It also tells me that I like to be in control and have a plan. Before the skype sessions I had mapped out in my mind what I wanted to talk about and achieve during each skype session. By doing this, I was able to ensure that I accomplished something meaningful for each session, and to keep the group on track. CONTRIBUTING IN THE DISCUSSION FORUMS (EXAMPLE 2) It took me a long time to write this response because I tried to be very careful with my wording, understanding that written communication is often misinterpreted. Like Group Member 1, I was annoyed at people not contributing and then popping up at the last minute to say that they were active, when the rest of the group were contributing on a regular basis. However, I knew we would have to work together for the rest of the trimester so I did not want to burn any bridges by using harsh language. As a result of my tact, I was able to work with this group member successfully during the assignment, and my tutor provided positive feedback saying that he agreed with my response. In my response, I was trying to convey to Group Member 2 the importance of communicating with the rest of the group so that everyone understands the situation. While everyone in the group has their own personal situation and responsibilities, we also have an obligation to communicate with the rest of the team. NOW WHAT? SETTING UP SKYPE DISCUSSIONS (EXAMPLE 1) From contrasting the different reactions to each style of communication (negative team reactions and frustration towards a linear model versus efficiency and rapport using an interactive model), it showed me that when trying to communicate with a team, making sure everyone is receiving feedback to show they are being heard is vitally important. This has increased my understanding of the importance of feedback in the communication process. It highlights the strong relationship between communication and inter-personal skills and teamwork, given that strong communication is essential for building a strong team and interacting with others. When the group moved from a 4 linear communication model to an interactive communication model, we were about to build rapport and work cohesively as a team. I need to practice stepping back and giving others a chance to lead discussions, to ensure that all group members have a chance to communicate their thoughts. When I go into a discussion with a plan about what we need to talk about, it reduces the flexibility and spontaneity of the communication and reduces the natural discoveries we may make in natural conversation. While a loose plan is good as it can ensure we cover the required material, I need to make sure this plan remains flexible enough to cater for the contributions of others. As I enjoy taking a leadership role, I will focus on further developing these skills and taking any leadership opportunities as they are presented in the workplace. I also recognised that I can be impatient with others. I got very irritated when the group members didn’t show up, or when they went too far off track. I need to ensure that I am conscious of this so that I do not let my temper jeopardize my interactions with colleagues or other professionals in the future. I need to be able to relinquish control to others to ensure that everyone’s viewpoints are heard, and that others in the group also have the opportunity to lead. CONTRIBUTING ON DISCUSSION FORUMS (EXAMPLE 2) To resolve future hostile situations caused by miscommunication or lack of communication, I must continue to be conscious not to react too quickly. I know my emotions can affect my responses, and when I am angry or irritated I need to make sure that I take extra time to calm down and read over my responses before hitting the submit button. With the response I provided in the example above, my first draft was quite hostile. However, once I calmed down, I made sure to communicate it in a way that didn’t damage relationships. I am not always successful at doing this, and need to remind myself to monitor my emotions when responding so that I do not cause permanent damage to relationships with colleagues, group members, or those who I am communicating with. GLO2Communication What Sowhat Nowwhat Communicationisaprocessin whichpeoplecouldexchange informationandemotionwith eachother.Usually, communicationisconsistof conversation,discussion,and collaboration. Inweek2’study,Iunderstood severalcommunication models,suchasShannonand Weaver'smodel,Stanton's modelandMaletzke'smodel, whichareusedtoexam whetheracommunication worksornot. AfterWeek2’s study,Irealized communicationisan importantskillnotonlyinthe processofstudyingbutalsoin careergradually. Takingpartinseminarisa goodmethodtoimprovemy communicationskills.Because Ihavenotusedthisstudy method ,sothisisan opportunitytohelpmelearn communicationskillsby discussingandcollaborating withmyclassmates. Thecommunicationincludes oralandwritten communication,thereare manymethodslearninghow tocommunicateappropriately. SoIamtryingtoimprovemy communicationskillsafter week2’sstudy. 1. Takepartinseminaris agoodwaytoimprove communicationskills. Duringtheseminar,I couldlearnhowtouse bodylanguageandthe otherstrategiesto communicatewith otherclassmates. 2. Puttheoriesinto practice:InWeek2 seminar,thetutor guidedustoput theoriesintopractice. Thesupposecondition isthatImeetmyCEO intheelevatorand makeanelevator speech.Itisnotan easythingtomakea deepimpressionin1 minute,soitneeds lotsofcommunication skills.Ispentlotsof timeunderstanding howtodoanatural speechandhowtosell myself.Iachievedmy aimbythefollowing3 ways: 1. Listeningother teammembers’ speech 2. Gettingfeedback fromtutor 3. Practiceitagain andagain Finally,Ihaveabasic understandingonhow tomakea1-minute speech. WhatIhavelearned: 1. Duringtheprocessof communicatingwith otherpeople,the contentofa communicationisnot themostsignificant, howtoconveymy informationandhow tolistenother people’s ideaare importanttoo. 2. Bodylanguageandeye contactplayimportant rolesina communication. 3. Weneedputtheories intopracticeduring theprocessofstudy.If wepracticemore,so wecouldhavemore confidencewhenwe communicatewith other. Example 5: Strategies: 1. ItrytousecommunicationmodeltotesthowIperforminacommunication,including sendinginformation,receivinginformationandfeedback.AndItrytogetfeedbackfrom tutorsandclassmatesaswell,byanalyzingtheseinformation,Iunderstoodhowto improvemycommunicationskills. 2. Prepareandpractice1-minute-speechinmorethan1condition.Bypracticing 1minute speechinelevator,IfinditisagoodwaytopracticemyspeakingEnglish,soIsuppose someothersituationstopractice,suchas1-minute-speechtopromoteacommodity,it isgreathelpfultomycommunicationskillsandoralEnglish. 3. Practice,practiceandpracticeandbecomeconfident.(Thisisveryimportant!) 4. Listenotherpeople’sideacarefullyandgiveappropriatefeedbackwhenwetalkwith otherpeople. 5. Takepartinuniversity’sseminarsandbeactiveincommunicating. Learningevidence: 1. Mediawatchpresentationgavemeachancetocommunicateinanewmethod.WhenI madeapresentationtotheaudience,Ineedtoapplythecommunicationknowledgeinit, becausenobodywantstolistentoaboringpresentation.SoImustusesome communicationstrategiessuchasbodylanguagetomypresentation. 2. Oneminutespeechinelevator:Thisscenarioisveryinterestingandgreathelpfultome.I thinkconfidenceisthekeyinthisscenario,andweneedusesomecommunicationskills toleaveadeepimpressiononCEO.Infuture,communicationwillhelpmealotifIknow howtouseit. 3. Analyzefeedbackandimprovecommunicationskillsgradually:Thefollowingdiagramisa feedbackfromtutoraboutassignment1.Ourteammembersanalyzedthefeedback together,andsummarizedtheshortageisthatwecannot answerquestionsclearly enough.Sowesearchednewcommunicationskillstoanswerquestionortellastory, whichiscalledSTARtechnique.Thetechniquefocuson4aspectstoansweraquestion, therearesituation,task,action,resultindividually,andwewilltrytousethismethodto preparenextassignment.