Post-Course Reflection Statement - EDRD 3140 copy
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School
University of Guelph *
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Course
3140
Subject
Communications
Date
Feb 20, 2024
Type
docx
Pages
4
Uploaded by ChefOpossum100
As I conclude EDRD 3140: Organizational Communication, I felt I met my future goals which I hoped to accomplish with this course. As mentioned in my pre-course reflection statement, I desire to become a pediatrician who manages their own medical clinic. To ensure I operate my business efficiently, I need to ensure that all staff communicate properly with each other and that the company’s policies surrounding internal and external organizational communication are strictly adhered to. I envisioned EDRD 3140 as a course which would teach me the fundamentals of basic communication while also providing me with opportunities to apply my understanding to novel situations either through quizzes or assignments. These expectations were met with both the course material and the course assessments. One aspect of the course that I particularly enjoyed was the amount of peer interaction we got to have, despite the course being DE. Whether this interaction occurred through the weekly Peer Learning Forum
posts or the Group Presentation Assignment, I enjoyed interacting with my peers and was fascinated by the multiple interpretations they had on a single course topic. I also had the opportunity to experience some of the organizational communication concepts in my interactions
with my group members. Although there were no components of the course I disliked, I would have preferred an additional group assignment over the two knowledge quizzes we had to complete. I highly value the quizzes as they are an essential component of understanding the course material, however, I feel that only a single quiz with an additional group assignment would have allowed me to gain more practice in applying these concepts before I enter the workforce. My favourite aspect of the course by far was the case study assignment. I enjoyed working on this assignment because it allowed me to investigate an organizational entity from a
new perspective. During my initial research into my former employer, I was surprised to learn about the numerous communication networks involved in running the organization. I did not realize the importance companies placed on making sure all employees knew how the business communicated with them. After learning about the many facets which organizational communication falls under, I was also shocked to learn how many course concepts were routinely adopted and practiced by company managers.
As mentioned in the previous question, my least favourite aspect of the course would be the two knowledge quizzes we had to write throughout the semester. While I see the value of these quizzes for learning and understanding concepts, I felt that only a single quiz for the semester would’ve sufficed and an additional group-based assessment could have been implemented in place of one of the quizzes. Since communication is a skill that is best developed
through practice, I felt that an additional assignment that allowed students to interact with each other and apply some of these concepts would have helped solidify the material in our heads.
One concept I was glad to learn about was the concept of organizational paradigms. I believe it is important to understand which type of organization you are working for, because it would be a lot easier for you to not only understand why decisions are made the way they are and more importantly to accept the consequences for decisions in case they do not go as planned.
A topic which I could have done without would be learning about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. While I do see the importance of knowing which stage of evolution a human is at (since it
allows you to understand their motivations and how to best communicate with them) however, because of its heavy emphasis in other courses (mainly psychology and sociology) I do not believe it is necessary to teach it in EDRD 3140.
During the group assignment, I was able to tailor my section of our presentation to previous real-life experiences. I was tasked with presenting uncertainty management and how it related to organizational communication. Coming from someone who manages a student-run club at the University of Guelph and is the founder of a swim instruction business for children, I can say firsthand that managing uncertainty is paramount to maintaining a successful organization. Uncertainty is usually the first of a long string of negative emotions which can eventually cause an organization to fall apart. Human beings naturally like to know what is going
on at all times; it brings them comfort. Anytime a situation is presented where the outcome is not
known, individuals will become uneasy and often panic without proper training. In my section of
the presentation, I made sure to detail these concerns in my slides and even used my experience in previous leadership roles to highlight the importance of managing uncertainty whenever communicating within an organization.
I generally had a positive experience when working with my group to develop our presentation. When the project was first assigned to us, we ensured to communicate over email and introduce ourselves to each other. Once a connection was established, we discussed the best form of communication that would be easiest for all of us to maintain. Eventually, it was decided
that Facebook Messenger would be the ideal communication platform of choice. We also met a couple of times in person to help put a face to a name and to establish what sections of the presentation each group member would contribute to. Frequent communication through Messenger was how the rest of the project was handled until submission. Overall, there were no major communication obstacles. The only minor issue that arose was establishing the initial connection with my group. It took us a while to coordinate a time to meet due to all our busy
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schedules, and it was also initially difficult to establish a communication platform which didn’t require constant emailing back and forth. Fortunately, this concern was addressed in our in-
person meeting, where we discussed solutions to the slow communication and eventually agreed that Messenger was a platform everyone felt confident would keep communication within the group fluid. This group discussion to solve the communication problem highlights the value of open organizational talks between employees since most problems can often be solved through simple conversations. Yes, I completed the required ten minimum unit activities and posted them to the forums for my peers to review. I ensured that my responses to the unit activity questions for each week aligned with the topics my peers had selected, however, I always made a note to choose a sub-
topic within the activity which differed from theirs to allow them to gain a new perspective into the course material. For example, if one unit activity asked about two concepts which required further elaboration, I always checked the discussion forums of my peers to ensure I chose a topic different from theirs so I could contribute valuable information to the conversation. By utilizing this strategy, I was able to learn course topics from new perspectives when my peers would reply
to my posts to share their views on the same course material. Usually, I found myself reading their responses to my initial post and was fascinated with how their interpretation of the course material differed from mine. I learned to appreciate the multiple perspectives people share for a single topic and how working together with these novel perspectives can lead organizations to foster connections and create new innovative ideas.