Communication
Communicate clearly to achieve professional goals using visual and verbal modes to explain and persuade.
Artifact: EDTEC 700 Culture Video Lesson
Context
How do you do that in a way that works globally? This was the driving question when I took the Saturday seminar course, EDTEC 700: Designing for a Global Audience. This artifact is a video I created for the course when we were assigned to design and present a short technology-assisted meeting or training activity that reflected the consideration of cultural diversity. My goal for the video was to teach American businesspersons how to communicate effectively with business people from a French culture. To complete this project I wrote the script, designed the storyboard, recorded the audio and video, and used Adobe Premiere to do the editing.
Demonstrating the Standard
Whether you are designing websites, distance learning courses, or chatting in Second Life, it is important to be able to communicate clearly. This artifact demonstrates my understanding of the important role that culture plays when trying to explain or persuade. I also effectively used learning theories and models such as Hofstede’s dimensions, John Keller’s ARCS motivational theory, and video design principles. The video used humor as a motivational tool and also used freeze frames to pause, point out non-examples, and deliver the learning content.
Challenges / Opportunities
I did not even own a digital video recorder until I was finished with the script and storyboard. I reread Bob Hoffman’s Educational Video Workshop from EDTEC 561, bought a new video recorder, a tripod, and Adobe Premiere and taught myself how to use them as I was creating this artifact. Because this was a weekend course, I had less than two weeks to complete the project, but my love for learning new technologies motivated me to complete the task on time. I could have simply created a PowerPoint or a Word document to fulfill the requirements of the assignment, but recording and editing audio and video was an area I needed to grow my skills, and this course presented me the perfect opportunity to do so.
Personal Growth
Growing up in a small city in the middle of Appalachia, I had very little exposure to different cultures. My family did not travel and the internet wasn’t big until I started college so all I knew of other cultures was what I saw on TV (which was very little) and what I learned in school (which was even less). It wasn’t until I graduated college and began working in a college town that I began encountering people from other cultures. I started making friends from China, India, Germany, Taiwan, and people from other parts of the United States. I quickly learned that I needed to figure out how to communicate better – starting with how not to offend them anymore.
This course helped to continue my growth in this area, and having Minjuan Wang as the instructor was invaluable. This course showed me that I need to examine the theories, principles, and models and be able to adapt them for other cultures. It also helped me see that culture goes much deeper than geography and language. You don’t have to go to China to encounter a different culture, each individual has his or her own beliefs, customs, and experiences even if they are from the same small town. Considering this when I design instruction, tasks, and assessment is vitally important as I try to work in, as Thomas Friedman calls it, a “flat” world.
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