Communication: A Constant WIP

Over the course of this Winter 2012 semester, ALES 204: Communication Theory and Practice has proved to be a really eye-opening course for me. Initially, I was skeptical about what the course had to offer because I was under the impression that I already had sufficient knowledge about social media and different methods of communication; however, through in-class lectures, online activities, and lab assignments, I have been able to expand and diversify my working knowledge in regards to various methods and forms of social media that enable me to improve my networking and communication skills. 

As shown in Figure 1, there exists a wide selection of social media available online for us to use. While this figure does not cover all forms of social media available, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and flickr are ones that we have explored in class over the past few months. Individually, each of these forms of social media have features that make them distinct from one another. Facebook allows us to share status updates, photos, videos, and much more while keeping in contact with others through customizable networks. Through ALES 204, I was able to add on yet another plus to my Facebook experience by learning how to create a professional Facebook page. For example, if I were to provide that information on my LinkedIn, I would be able to connect with potential employers on LinkedIn and simultaneously direct them to my Facebook page for more information. In the same train of thought, Twitter and Facebook can be linked so that Tweets show up on Facebook as status updates, and all YouTube videos are accompanied by a one-click 'share' button that allows for videos to be shared with your networks on Facebook. In other words, rather than to divide one form of social media from another, the internet allows us to use them in tandem to make our ways of communication more effective.

Figure 1. Social media collage bubble. Adapted from "Persuasive Picks for week of 12/5/11," by V. Miller, December 9, 2011, PerkettPRsuasian. Retrieved April, 6, 2012, from http://perkettprsuasion.com/2011/12/09/persuasive-picks-for-week-of-12511/. Copyright 2007/2008 by PerkettPRsuasian - The Perkett PR Blog.

Besides learning how to navigate different types of social media, we also learned how to employ techniques that could improve the results of our communication both on and offline. For instance, we had to condense our thoughts on Twitter to less than 140 characters while ensuring our points made were coherent and offered a critical analysis of the topic at hand. Offline, conciseness while maintaining understandability can be paramount when attempting to hold the attention of, say, a group of strangers. More recently, we also explored the use of Audioboo. This online recording tool allowed us to listen to recordings of ourselves and potentially identify any slurs, mispronunciations, or pacing issues that could be corrected in the future. As I identified in my first blog post, a career as a Registered Dietitian will likely include many opportunities for me to craft and deliver presentations. Using Audioboo, I will be able to make recordings of myself to ensure that my presentations are understandable and of high quality.

As an individual born in an era where technology plays such an important role in how information is passed from one person to another, I am extremely grateful that I had the opportunity to be a part of the ALES 204 class this semester. As Loana mentions in her first blog post, communication is not something that we can avoid; in fact, it is literally an activity that we must engage in on a daily basis. Knowing this, learning about how to critically read scientific articles, how to create eye-catching posters and presentations, how to write professional emails, how to build a C/V, and much, much more over the past semester has been an invaluable experience. Instruction in these areas by our professor, TAs, and numerous guest speakers have essentially allowed us to build our own repertoires of useful tips to keep in mind for the future.

Links to 5 Blog Comments: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5.

From Wikipedia Stub to Article

In the past, the majority of my searches for information on Wikipedia have yielded a plethora of relevant information to be used at my leisure; however, with the task of looking for a Wikipedia stub that I could convert into an article, I was amazed by the sheer number and variety of existing stubs. It was an overwhelming experience trying to sift through the different categories to locate a topic that lacked enough information to leave me room to work while retaining the potential for me to track down that information through other reliable sources.

After this searching process, I initially settled down on a stub titled 'Edible Ink Printing' only to promptly redirect my efforts to another stub on cyberphobia one day later. Five days ago, this stub had nothing but a dictionary definition to begin with; as you can see by the screen shots below, it has been reformatted and updated with the final compilation of information that was currently available on the topic.

Screen capture of my Wikipedia entry about Cyberphobia capture from: 

Clara Tran, personal collection. Original article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberphobia, Accessed Mar. 23 2012.

 
As cyberphobia is a condition that affects individuals, I thought it made sense to organize the page using category tags like 'symptoms' and 'treatment', both of which are headers that are often associated with physiological conditions and/or illnesses. Finding the information to fill these categories was far from an easy one as I had difficulty finding peer-reviewed, scholarly articles that explored this specific phobia. In my experience, peer-reviewed articles have been reliable sources of information because of the fact that the information has been reviewed by others outside of the experiment. However, because next to none of these papers turned up during my searches, I relied on my own abilities to judge the relevancy and reliability of the information found on other websites to construct the full article on cyberphobia.This diminishes the reliability of my article greatly, but I did my best to remain objective and select the most relevant and useful information.

Later on, I would come to realize that finding the information itself was the easy part - dealing with the codes used to write Wikipedia articles was the tough part. Looking at other well-written articles certainly helped, but trying to track down the codes I wanted in these other articles along with the constant hopping between windows to transfer the coding over proved to be very trying on my patience. Like Susan Nielsen, I highly support the idea of Wikipedia being an online, openly-accessible compilation of information, but it struck me during my own attempt at editing that their coding system could serve as an unnecessary obstacle to many potential editors that may have a lot of useful knowledge to share with others. Even after I took a look at many of the articles on Wikipedia that attempted to explain some of the coding tags, I was frustrated with having to skim these articles for the information I needed; furthermore, many of these articles were flagged as "too technical" to be easily understood. In the end, for the sake of managing my reference list properly, I had to mangle the Wikipedia coding in favour of producing a proper citation. In the future, I hope that Wikipedia will adapt their coding system so that it is more easily used and navigated by the general population.

Through my attempt at transforming a stub into a full article, I came to understand how easy it is to compile information and make it accessible to others using Wikipedia. Whether or not that information is reliable is, at times, hazy even with the best of references, but as with all information online, some critical reflection on the part of the reader is required to determine the quality of the information presented.

Implicative Communication and Aboriginal Healthcare

Bronwyn Frederick’s paper titled “What health services within rural communities tell us about Aboriginal people and Aboriginal health” (accessible via EBSCO) reflects on the importance of setting and environment when delivering effective health care services to Aboriginal individuals. Prior to reading this paper, it had never occurred to me that one’s physical surroundings and social relationships could influence one’s receptiveness to health care in positive and/or negative ways. In fact, I had subconsciously assumed that as long as the services were readily available, they would be used, but after reading Frederick’s paper I suspect that that is not always the case. While the case study itself was conducted in Australia, both Australia and Canada have complicated relationships with significant populations of Aboriginal individuals. Additionally, as shown in the image below, Aboriginals make up a significant population in Canada, and there now exists an increasing need to address prevalent health issues such as diabetes amongst the Aboriginal population; thus, I found the points raised in this paper relevant to Canada as well.

Population Reporting Aboriginal Ancestry (Origin), Canada, 1901-2001


Frederick explores in detail the implications that physical environment and social setting can have in terms of effective rural health care delivery to Aboriginal people. In the abstract, he states that “the physical sites and appearances of health services can act as social texts that convey messages of belonging and welcome, or exclusion and domination” (Fredericks, 2010). Immediately, I was reminded of a certain Pecha Kucha presentation on Youtube that was shared with our ALES 204 class in lecture 10. A good portion of the presentation explored the way our understandings and emotions can alter in response to different images or slight changes in wording; in the same way, Frederick points out that three Aboriginal workers, "a couple of posters stuck on the wall, and leaflets in a room down the hall, is not privileging; [instead,] it acts to marginalise" (Fredericks, 2010). Like the signs in the video, Frederick identifies the implicative messages (whether intentional or not) embedded in our physical settings.

Reading Frederick's paper as a student in ALES 204, the importance of mutual understanding in maintaining effective communication was not lost on me. In class, we learn a lot about the effectiveness and use of online media (which is great!), but what intrigues me about this paper is that it seeks to reacquaint us with our physical surroundings and the impact they can have on us. According to Frederick (2010), places and their signs, symbols, images and representations are neither innocent nor neutral. They can marginalise and oppress, or include and engage - how we choose to communicate one or the other is a decision that should be consciously and carefully made.  

Citations

Fredericks, Bronwyn. (2010). What health services within rural communities tell us about Aboriginal people and Aboriginal health. Rural Society, 20(1), 10-20. doi:10.5172/rsj.20.1.10

Population Reporting Aboriginal Ancestry (Origin), Canada, 1901-2001 [graph]. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from: http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/analytic/companion/abor/charts/abancestry.gif

My Professional Facebook Page

Considering the amount of information floating around on the web, I figured it wasn't such a bad idea to give my future employers something nice to look at if they decided to go hunting on the web for my information; that is, if I really was the "Cooking Mama" whose impressive resume is shown on the following image.

(Click HERE to access the actual Facebook page)

Regardless of the fictional material on the Facebook page, let's pretend for this post that that information is actually mine. The act of putting the page together was important because it made me realize a few things: for starters, it was nice to be able to put together a virtual resume that could be accessed by others via a simple link. As individuals become more and more tech savvy, the days of paper and ink are being shed for convenience and easy manageability. With the link to this page, not only will future employers be able to access my information at any time (provided they have internet access), but they will also be able to see any updates and/or changes I make to this information immediately.

Additionally, having this page as a means to organize my information and attach it to a face (imagine my face where the '?' image is) makes it much more valuable than a simple, paper copy of my resume. A potential employer going through numerous resumes each day may not always link faces to paper. However, if they look at the Facebook page, they'll be able to directly match a face to the information listed on the page. With this page, I can promote my own professional image while connecting to employers. Like Marisa Salon mentions, our Facebook pages can function like a personal advert.

However, managing social media can be stressful at times, so here's a couple tips on how to keep up with social media this year.

Introductory Post

My name is Clara Tran. Just like it says on the sidebar, I am a second year student at the University of Alberta working towards a Bsc. Nutrition and Food Science. Currently, I am majoring in nutrition and minoring in physical activity. My reasons for studying these fields are relatively simple: while I love food, I also love staying physically active, so I hope to learn more about the impact that proper (or improper) levels of nutrition and physical activity can have on our lives.

In the future, I hope to be working as a registered dietitian in a clinical setting; if that is the case, I will undoubtedly have to interact with the public. While I have no doubt that clear communication skills will be useful in this situation, empathetic communication will be absolutely necessary. I say 'empathetic' because being clear with one's point is not always enough to ensure understanding - the individual with whom we are communicating must also be able to see how a piece of information is relevant to them. As professionals working in fields that are often very specialized, we may easily be able to grasp all of the associated jargon, but that may not be the case for the average individual.

For example, take a look at this image of L-Ascorbic acid (a Vitamin C isomer):

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L-Ascorbic_acid.svg)

If I were to show this to someone on the street and tell them that they needed this to prevent scurvy, they probably wouldn't understand what I meant; however, if I showed them an orange and said the same thing, their response would likely express some comprehension. The main idea here is that communication requires consideration for the other party's situation and/or background, and this is especially the case for dietitians providing advice to patients. For further emphasis, a registered dietitian fresh out of the University of Alberta once told me that "the first few years of our undergraduate studies [as nutrition students] are all about learning the gritty details that nobody else wants to get into...the funny thing is, our last year or so is all about learning how to dumb down what we've learned so that just about anyone can take our knowledge and apply it".

On a broader note, NCBI cited "interpersonal communication skill, nonverbal communication, professional values, and counseling skill" as the four major communication competencies used by dietitians in a study of how dietitians communicate with individual patients face-to-face. However, in the modern day, many individuals (dietitians and other professionals included) are heading online to not only keep their communication skills in good shape, but also to maintain their social networks. For instance, fellow classmate Danielle Becker uses Skype and Facebook to stay in touch with friends, and those are only two of the many forms of social media available to us.

Keep an eye on this blog for more ALES 204-related assignments!