Week 3 Blog Assignment

How did your interpretation of the message change from one modality to the next?




No matter which version of the three I viewed I was sadly unenthusiastic because for me none of them did a good job of getting the message across. Whoever was attempting to communicate with other group members in this manner has failed miserably. It was best simply as written text. I felt that the video did not really do anything to convey the message that the text version had not already covered. The audio version could have added much to either of the other two, but I was sadly unimpressed with this version as well.

This communication could have certainly been done in a better way, whether it involved mixing several of the methods which were attempted here or not. But the bottom line is that there are certainly better means of communication than the ones used here.



What factors influenced how you perceived the message? Each of us certainly looks at material in different ways. Much of communication is the way that the sender of the message chooses to convey it to their audience. For me personally text along with sound makes for the perfect learning experience, but when we separate the two into one or the other, it can make it a bit more difficult for an audience or student to get the gist of what is being communicated.

As far as video goes, when one is done well this can be the pinnacle of communication; at least one can understand every example etc. when it's done with a video with an audio component as well.

In this case there was not much difference, for me, in the way that the info was given to us as the audience. Once again the text component was the best of three for me personally.





Which form of communication best conveyed the true meaning and intent of the message?

I feel that the text component got across the gist of the exercise because I found both of the others kind of busy as I tried to view and listen to them. The text mode laid out the message and got its point across; whereas, the other two means did more distracting than conveying, in my opinion.

What are the implications of what you learned from this exercise for communicating effectively with members of a project team?



I go back to what I have learned from this, as well as other experiences, in saying the simplest means of communication can be the best. This way your point gets across, the team members know what to do, and everything runs along the way it is intended to. When we try to blend too much audio, video, technology into sending a simple message a lot of times this can skew our message because other team members can get caught up in what they're seeing that we added to supplement our message and in a lot of ways this can distract our team members and thus detract from our message as a whole.