Received and understood?

Below are just a few examples of communication you’ll encounter here at the College. Identify who each is ‘sent’ by and who each was ‘received’ by (or intended to be ‘received’ by).

Message Sent by Received by Comment
Distribution of course notes
A lecture on a topic
A presentation on a PC
A TV program or a video
Overhead projector slides
Instructions for a task written on the board
Course information on the intranet
Course information on the Internet
The warning notice on the opening screen on most College PCs
Notices on the notice board near room A101
Your timetable
A tax disc in a car
Names on doors
Student ID badge

Add some more examples of your own.

Think about a specific example of each one and add comments as to how effective you found them. Add a few notes to describe how you believe some of them could have been improved on a separate sheet. (Be prepared to discuss these suggestions in class.)

Intended recipients

Often a good or important message never reaches its intended recipients. Communication fails because it was poorly planned. Preparation for sending a message can take from a few moments to years but it is vital in all instances. Unprepared communication would be no more than a reaction and the chances of it being successful a matter of . . . precisely that – chance, or luck.

That’s the knee-jerk response, the shriek of anger, the tears, the big laugh, the violent physical action you may well have seen or heard. A poorly-planned presentation, talk or instruction will often also, in turn, provoke a poorly-planned response. How many times have we sat in a room, listening to someone mumbling on about a topic and just switched off, started thinking about something else or chatted to the person next to us? Worse, of course, are cases where people have simply got up and walked out.

We’ve all done both – communicated badly and responded badly.

Pause for thought

Write about an occasion when you believe that you have simply just reacted to something. Then add how you might have made things better for yourself and the other party (or other people involved or around if appropriate) if you’d acted differently. If you’d planned, thought a bit about it – properly considered your own ‘communication process’.

Putting on a show

For this unit you will be asked to research a topic and tell your colleagues in the class about it. The research we’ll deal with separately. For now, concentrate on your part of the process of passing information, opinions, ideas to others.

You’ve got a pile of paperwork. Some images. Some scribbled figures in some folders. Now, you could just say ‘OK, there’s my research – see what you can make of it’, sit down and leave them to it.

You could, alternatively, provide a brief introduction with a stunning visual or two (to get the sleepy guy’s eyes open a bit wider), invite some of the audience to get up and tae a look at some short, sharp features you’ve placed around the place. (A bit of physical movement may help awake some interest amongst the still-dozing few.) Then, once they’ve all sat down and the lights are dimmed, hit the Play button and run a PC presentation, displayed on a big screen on the wall.

Your headings on the screen will prompt you for what to say and the notes you’ve prepared will help if you forget what to say. A friend is nearby to whisper support if you really get stuck. The show flicks through a few slides and ends with a Big Message, a Controversial Point, a Remarkable Statistic – something that provides a memorable finish for them. Switch off the gear. Switch on the lights. Look at someone you’ve briefed earlier and ask for comments or questions. Answer as best you can, sit down and thank them all for helping you get your message across (even if they didn’t!)

‘I CAN’T DO THAT!’ you say.

Plan it and you can. Or something along those lines – your lines.

Planning

You’re lucky. You know who you’ll be talking to. You know the delivery style because you communicate with them every week. Apart from tidying up your grammar, adjusting the volume you speak at and correcting the spelling on your show and handouts, that’s going to be fine.

OK, so how do you actually do it?

1 Start off by making sure that you really do understand what you’re being asked to do.
Get your tutor to tell you exactly what the criteria are that you have to meet in order to get a pass, merit, distinction or whatever. Remember that there’s no point in producing something brilliant if it isn’t what’s required for the unit! Aim for a distinction but be aware of the minimum requirements for a pass in case you later decide that you simply cannot cover all the best grade requirements. Write down in your own words the minimum pass requirements. Check you’ve got the right and keep referring back to them throughout. By the way, this applies to all your assignments, not just for this Unit. Communication is that important!

2 Decide the general purpose of the presentation.
What do you want people to think about / know about / be bothered about / talk about / do when you’ve finished?

3 Think of a draft title (it’ll probably change)

4 Think of an ending (to give you an idea of where all your hard work is leading for now) This may well change later too!

5 Get some general opinions.
Ask lots of people about the subject. Record these. Add your own views too.

6 Get some facts.
Use books, newspapers, magazines, web sites, CDs, organisations, experts. Collect lost of statistics, relevant numbers and quotes. Record them all. File all research material printed or copied. If you can’t print it there and then, make a note of the source. Include references for everything – who said it, who wrote it, where they published it, when, which company published it and, for a web site, when you accessed it. References are important. Facts have to be backed up, proven or they’re just opinions and belong in the previous section. Remember that no-one will believe what you say and will need to know why you believe what someone else has said and are now expecting them to swallow!

7 Review all the input and, if you’re trying to promote a particular view, divide your material into stuff that supports that view and stuff that’s against it;
if you’re just giving instructions or stating facts for others with little or no personal view on them being appropriate you needn’t bother with diving the stuff up, but in both cases check the facts for consistency, authority and validity. Some things change with time so dates can be important. What was once true may not always be true!

8 Get some images.
Any topic – however tedious – needs pictures or graphics. Collect as many as you can use. If you have a particular design or image in mind and can’t find it, get some help. You may need to take or make some pictures yourself.

9 Discuss your whole project with your tutor to check you’re on the right lines, not wasting time and that your general plan is sound. Sketch out a draft ‘storyboard’ for the main visual content.

10 Decide which visual aids you’ll use for the show – PC+projector, flip-chart, chalk and talk, stand-up routine or whatever.

11 Check availability of equipment for planned practice sessions (see below) and for the actual day of presentation. Get to know any support staff who arrange what you need – they may well have useful tips on actually using the things.

12 Arrange training you may need to use any equipment, arrange this with your tutor or an appropriate, qualified person. Check that it is realistic to obtain adequate training in the timescale allowed. Change to a simpler medium if necessary. Better to give an old-fashioned show well than a modern one badly. Check those basic Pass criteria, though, in case you have to use a specified package or range of items.

13 Finalise the storyboard.

14 Convert the storyboard to visual aids suitable for the audience.

15 Produce promotional | support material for additional illustration to be available

16 Produce notes | handouts for the audience in the same sequence as the final storyboard but with more detail.

17 Produce your own notes to help you deliver the show or talk and some ‘panic material’ you can turn to if you get into difficulty.

18 Have a trial run of the main show with colleagues and your tutor (at least for part of it). Write down their comments. Good or bad. Listen to advice.

19 Act on or ignore comments / advice as appropriate and do another trial run of at least the bits that seemed troublesome and certainly anything new.

20 Double check any printing requirements, equipment orders, room arrangements, assistance etc. and be satisfied that all will be in place when wanted

21 A complete rehearsal, including putting things up, closing blinds, switching on equipment, walking around the room, answering pretend questions with people acting as an audience. Beware, though – if you’ve got some special attention-grabbing picture, a Big Conclusion or any surprise element, don’t allow the expected audience see your dress rehearsal!

22 Have a back-up plan if any technical problems arise – discuss options with your tutor as to how unforeseen events might be dealt with and his or her role on the day. Decide what to wear. Remember that back-up means documents and PC material too!

23 Go for it! And smile.

The first may come last

For your particular presentation there will, of course, be other entries throughout this list but this should serve as a general guide. You’ll be amazed at how much better everything goes when you’ve practised. Even the first practice effort will go well if you’ve learned how to use the equipment well and have a good lot of research material which you have become familiar with. The research material itself will almost certainly give you some bright ideas for the way you’re going to approach the whole thing and, hence, the ending. Views on the way you start will doubtless change as you learn more about the project and very often the ‘Start’ is actually the last job that people do.

Questionnaires

Many projects demand that you obtain information from a survey which you are expected to construct and conduct yourself. This can be a very time-consuming task and if you are going to include a questionnaire and survey do take advice from your tutor as to how to go about this at an early stage. A handful of replies will be a pretty useless bit of evidence and the process of posting stuff and waiting for replies seldom yields anything but frustration. By all means have a go if necessary but don’t rely on this. A smart, modern alternative is the web poll. It may be feasible to feature a device for collecting views within the College intranet or, of course, you may have the skill to set up one on a site of your own but, again, the actual results may not be terribly meaningful.

Groups and teamwork

Sometimes students are placed in groups of 3 or 4 for the purpose of planning and delivering the presentation. This obviously reduces the workload on individual members in some aspects but that benefit can be countered by the problems associated with working with other people. The planning process will be more complex and the addition of checking colleagues’ progress at frequent stages throughout the timetable is crucial. Generally, however, each member should still follow the principles outlined in this guide.

The most common problem with teamwork is that one or two people do everything and one or two lazy members do virtually nothing or continually forget, don’t turn up or lose things. Allocating marks can be a nightmare for tutors too and inevitably the good get penalised because of teamwork planning problems and the bad get better marks than they could have ever hoped for had they been on their own! That’s life. If you’re in a team you’re likely to get let down or to let someone else down. Prepare for it in your plan.

Language and body language

The way you speak, the way you write, the way you stand, move, look and present yourself will all have as important an impact on your audience as what you are actually talking about. Advice on these aspects will be available separately.

Research methods

Finding information – even deciding what information to look for in the first place – is crucial to so many of the tasks you’ll be set throughout this course. The Internet makes this process incredibly easier than was the case a few years ago but it can still be a challenge. Do not underestimate, however, traditional media like books. An Internet search may reveal that useful information is contained in a particular book but it is unlikely that you’ll be able to access it in anything other than very general form. Books on-line don’t make any money for their publishers. Books in libraries do.

More detailed guidance on research is available separately.