Morning Session – Table III

TABLE III

Facilitators:
Gardner Campbell, Professor of English, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA
Ruth-Ellen H. Simmonds, Executive Director, One Stop Senior Services

Questions:

2) How does listening factor into effective communication? What does it mean to listen effectively? How might effective listening be fostered or taught in both academic and business settings?
5) How have electronic gadgets (mobile phones, Blackberries, iPhones, clickers, etc.) and the various means of communication they enable (text and instant messaging, voice mail, email, etc.) affected how we communicate (and miscommunicate) in both business and academia?

Opening thoughts:

• The ‘airplane’ episode from Esther Dyson’s Keynote is interesting.
• Nonverbal communication (body touch etc.) is also important.
• Some people feel that for communication to be most effective, they need to be touched (tap on the shoulder etc.)

Cultural aspects:

How do you facilitate communication by pulling something that seems to be so different together? Emotions and speech, listening and paraphrasing, listening and analyzing…

‘Read the air’ is something from Japanese culture meaning people need to be observing many things in an interaction; energy, emotions, body language, time of day, etc…

This brings up the constant “Challenge” in communication in the office. Where do you draw a line in conversations when dealing with people from different age groups and backgrounds (drawing barriers)? Technological tools and networking (just send e-mails to look for a job? It is easy to hide behind technology. It can be difficult for people to understand the ‘story’ in communication in any subject.

Genres:

So then the study of genres becomes an important part of communication studies? Yes, for example” speech genres” or conversation genres and how the genre shapes up the way you communicate. The new digital world daughter is IMing because the transcript can be looked at to review the funny parts, or an important piece of a communication, a trace of what was “said.”
What if someone likes the cookie-cutter approach: one solution to all problems? It’s a nice model but… in the end it’s about having transferable skills
Genre question: How do we communicate according to situations?

Practicing and reflections:

How would you practice face-to-face conversations?
For example training for networking. It’s like learning to play basketball (Learn by doing) Communication should be learned like this.

Now, the newest thing, Twitter (micro blogging of 140 characters) is like ongoing roundtables. It makes it easy to get a hold of someone. Research says that 150 people are the maximum to have real communication with the group. So people try to do Tweeting with the right group of people; a whole new form of networking to find the right group. Younger generations are tech-savvy but lack underlying, critical knowledge.

Listening as a communication skill:

Can it be taught?

How does listening in music factor into better listening and better communicating?

Listening to music has so many technical aspects. Listening is about close attention and constructing arguments from it.

How do we engage in rhythms (listening, responding, etc.)

In the Freshman English seminar, there are exercises determining the genre of music heard. Listen carefully (pair work preparing debate together; heuristic). It is hard exercise that makes students pay attention to music (and not the words).

Listening: How do we get people to listen intelligently? If we don’t know anything, how can we learn anything? (Plato’s bootstrapping problem) Every utterance is about every utterance that preceded it and every utterance that follows it.

The role of emotion: How do we learn to filter? How do we deal with genres? How do we ‘bootstrap’ left brain and right brain? How do we create the rhythm?

How to get the individual to go from a goal-oriented society where winning is everything to getting into the playful mood to: get in a learning mode.