What I Learned in Communication Class: a Reflection

As we all know that communication is the key to personal and career success. I am glad to enroll in this course, it helped me to improve my presentation and documentation skills. Participating in class activities made me to understand other perspective on various topics and I learned how to analyze any content and provide an effective feedback. Overall, I really liked the coursework as the material was detail and concise. Moreover, professor Dr. Lindsay Miller-Branovacki conveyed the course concepts in a deliberate and effective manner by which my interest towards attending the class lectures was increased.

In this course, there were many activities and assignments covering the course content. The most interesting part of these tasks is that each activity was unique. Out of these, the activities I felt challenging were elevator pitch and final project. For my final project along with my team we chose Radon concept that comes under advance health informatics. Providing engineering solution to a serious issue like this is very challenging and difficult to analyze scenarios related to it. But with the help of lectures on report writing and documentation, I was able to complete this project efficiently. The notion of Elevator pitch strengthened my skills. At the beginning, when I heard about this topic, I felt nervous to stand in front of a camera, unable to maintain eye contact and memorizing the script was tough. I could not even think of something to say. Then, I started rehearsing the talk in front of the mirror many times until I felt I was satisfied with my performance. I realized that I am lacking in proper expressions, avoided hand gestures and was confused about the way I was delivering the content. Later, I started practicing in front of the camera by following proper rules provided by the professor helped me to achieve desired output. From every recording, I identified the flaws and made a lot of changes to improve my presentation from starting till the end. Elevator pitch is an interesting and beneficial task.

I realized improvement in my communication skills when I started giving reviews to my peers. Rubric helped me to understand the areas of improvement. Moreover, I was able to access in which areas I am strong and weak that lead me to focus more. This course not only helped me in this perspective but also helped me know more interesting insights such as time management skills by answering all the questions within the given time during in-class activates etc.

In the future, I need to develop my non-verbal communication skills such as gestures, body language and eye contact while delivering speech. From the beginning, I wanted to focus more on these areas as I felt that I am very nervous and lagging. I understood the importance of these things in my personal and professional life. With the help of this course I improved my skill level to some extent, I think if I utilize my knowledge from this course and try to interact with more people, attend the conferences or participate in social gatherings I can advance my communication skill. I am trying hard to improve in these areas with the tips I have received from the course.

For my successful engineering career, one way is by applying all the rules of effective communication and tips covered in this course and the second way is by volunteering for various social activities. Because it provides me a chance to interact with new people and travel to different places. I will try to initiate a talk and learn about their culture as it will helps to know more about the people around me. This way I will improve my fluency and will be more confident. Overall, I found that these two ways are very effective to nurture my skills.

Works Cited

1. Peterson, C. M., & Ray, M. N. (2019). Communication Skills for Success: Student Workbook. McGraw-Hill Education.
2. Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Ivy, D. K. (2018). Communication: Principles for a Lifetime. Pearson.
3. Sole, K. (2017). Making Connections: Understanding Interpersonal Communication. Oxford University Press.
4. DeVito, J. A. (2016). The Interpersonal Communication Book. Pearson.
5. Guerrero, L. K., Anderson, P. A., & Afifi, W. A. (2019). Nonverbal Communication in Close Relationships. Routledge.
6. Floyd, K. (2019). Interpersonal Communication: The Whole Story. McGraw-Hill Education.
7. Pearson, J. C., & Nelson, P. L. (2017). An Introduction to Human Communication: Understanding and Sharing. Oxford University Press.
8. O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J. (2017). Real Communication. Bedford/St. Martin's.
9. Miller, K. (2019). Organizational Communication: Approaches and Processes. Cengage Learning.
10. Guffey, M. E., Loewy, D., & Almonte, R. (2019). Business Communication: Process and Product. Cengage Learning.