Last week!! Discussion #3

Probably my favorite concept was from Chapter 7 on Listening. I found this concept to be very interesting when we first touched on it in my public speaking class. Most people just assume that listening is listening. Sure, we figure that people may or may not be paying attention. However I think it's cool that people have come up with theories and concepts that actually divide how we listen into subgroups, and they explain why we may or may not actually be listening and more importantly interpreting and understanding the message. I also really like reading about active listening, and the barriers to active listening. I know it sounds kind of odd but sometimes if I am not paying attention to a speech or lecture sometimes I try to figure out why I don't want to pay attention - is there noise in the room, is it lack of interest or is the person giving a distracting delivery, is my response going to be pre-programmed anyway (this happens so many times when people tell me their personal stories after I ask them a simple question, like 'how was your weekend' and they want to respond with a ridiculous sob story that was all their fault anyway).

On the flip side I also like to evaluate people's response to my lectures or presentations and decide whether or not they were actively listening. p 134-135 talks about keys to active listening response methods - paraphrasing, asking questions, expressing understanding. Recently I gave a class presentation on something and I noticed during my presentation people were on their laptops and on their cellphones.. Which is normal during that class anyway.. But either way I knew that people weren't paying attention. After I was done I asked if anyone had any questions and there were none. This is how I know people were not paying attention and I felt like I had wasted my time.

Last week!! Discussion #1

For my group project I observed executive and sales meetings at an office in Sunnyvale. It was a good exercise in observing groups in business and how leadership works, and how conflict arises and how its solved, and how culture, gender, age, etc all play roles in how the group functions.

I learned a lot about roles of leadership and how one must watch what they say in the boardroom, but how it is also important to speak your mind and not be too shy. I also learned that honesty goes a long way, and that it is important to be motivating in a friendly yet serious way. If you go too far reprimanding or threatening actions if people do not meet or exceed goals, then they will be scared off and not motivated to work. If you are too easy on them they could take advantage of you.

Some good aspects of the project were that I was able to apply a lot of concepts from the book easily. There were so many theories and concepts that were easily visible just ten or twenty minutes into the meetings.

As far as improvement goes, I would like to have more access to better articles - I'm not a COMM major and I found it hard to find research articles about the concepts, and applying them into the project was tough.

Last week!! Discussion #2

Wow, this 16 weeks has passed by quickly! In this class I feel like I have learned a lot about how and why groups act the way they do. I enjoyed learning everything about leadership, roles, context, culture, and how to make ideas into reality. Since group work is pretty much inevitable in any career path you choose, it is important to know these things and be able to recognize when people are not contributing as much, when you are being controlling, and how your group can reorganize or reposition itself in order to become more streamlined and more successful.

One of my favorite things about this class was the textbook. I don't say that very often, but quite frankly I found this textbook to be very well laid out and easy to read and comprehend. Aside from that, I enjoyed the class format. Posting on a blog and reading other blogs seemed like an easy way to communicate different ideas and theories. I enjoyed learning not just from the textbook or from instructor wrap-ups, but also from stories on other blogs and reading other people's experiences.

My least favorite thing about the class was probably the group observation assignment. I have a tight schedule and it was tough for me to find time to go observe a group I'm not a part of (it would have been much easier to observe and write about my group at work). It was also tough finding research articles, I thought.

As for improving this class..I think it's pretty good the way it is. I don't say that about a lot of classes.. In fact I think I can only say that about two other professors I've had my entire time here at SJSU. But as with my experience last year in another class with Professor Perez, I think she is definitely onto something with her class formats for online teaching.

Buzz sessions

I thought the idea of "buzz sessions" (chapter 11 - p 210-11) was pretty interesting. Essentially it is like a large brainstorming session, or an interactive version of an idea web graphic. If you have a large group with a lot of different ideas, you break off into smaller groups, and all the groups give a small presentation on their ideas of solving the problem. I thought this was interesting because, first and foremost, it seems like this is what we do in school a lot. With a group of 30 or so students, this is a great way to present topics that do not need in-depth lecturing, or topics that deserve more discussion. I think this is a great way to cover a lot of topics and ideas, but it's also a great way to keep things fresh and moving, as well as to present different views and facilitate new ways of learning. Another great benefit of buzz sessions is that it offers us insight into how group interaction is facilitated in different forms and how we choose roles of leadership, etc (basically, everything we have been learning about in this course!).

Competitive & Collaborative conflict resolution

Last year I had a COMM class and had to do a group project. When we were given the assignment, I quickly jumped on an idea that came to me that I felt was brilliant. When we were given our groups, I quickly shared my idea and the group loved it. I had planned out the entire presentation based on my idea. However, that is not very ideal for group projects, and it did not really facilitate group interaction, so when we began discussing ideas on how to add to and improve my presentation idea, I had to compromise a lot. I gave up a lot of ideas I had, including specific segments of the presentation that I really liked, but in order for everyone to participate, we had to compromise and collaboratively settle what would be included and what would be dropped. To contrast with competitive conflict resolution, I could have held firm and told the group that my project absolutely needed to be the way I thought up or else we had to choose another way to present our topic.

Public presentation formats

Forums, panels, colloquiums, and symposiums are all different means of group presenting a topic and offering their solutions. They all end with audience interaction, which as we already have learned, is valuable feedback as it can offer alternative views and solutions to the problem at hand, and it also lets the senders know how well their message was interpreted by the receivers.

Forums provide the most open means of problem solving, allowing multiple participants speak in an orderly fashion. Forums can be thought of as large, orderly brainstorming sessions.

Panels are mostly informative, where a group of experts pose different answers and alternative solutions to the same questions. While audience interaction is often limited, forums are often better for audience members who want to learn more about a subject, as opposed to audience members who think they already know the answer.

Colloquiums are generally a discussion between experts with little audience interaction. Similar to a panel, these are often informative in nature.

Symposiums are the most informative of the four, and are essentially technical speeches given by an expert with only questions and audience discussion at the end.

As for which format I would prefer for giving a public presentation, symposium is definitely the most speaker-friendly, that is if the person is a good public speaker. I feel that I am good when I have a prepared speech, and if I am knowledgeable on the topic. If I had a group presentation to do, however, I think I want want a little more relaxed atmosphere, possibly the forum or panel format, where audience interaction was welcome, and I was given more of a chance to explain our ideas and have different views expressed.

Something I found interesting - Gibb's Comm Climate Comparisons

I really enjoyed the section on Gibb's Communication Climate Comparisons. It is so true that depending on how you word things, people will react and respond differently. This is very clear at my workplace since we have only 4 managers, but they are all very very different. Our GM is demanding and very bold and blunt. The one opposite her (more or less) is a young guy who is also a bartender and therefore has to deal with a lot of the same problems we do. He is like the "friendly" manager. When people have problems, I often try to resolve them with him instead of the GM because I know he will do better at sparking creative solutions to the problems rather than handing down orders. More or less, because of his open mindedness, we are able to be more creative and our workflow is much smoother. It is good to have description of the problems rather than evaluation, have a "we" orientation against a problem, be spontaneous, and empathetic as well. Similarly, the sense of equality is the biggest factor in why we try to go him instead of the GM.