How it Started     

When rehearsing oral presentations in front of my friends, I often joke about “looking like I know what I’m talking about.” Usually, this is a facetious way of saying that confidence can mask insufficient knowledge, but my problem is the opposite. Lack of confidence can also mask sufficient knowledge. I enjoy incisive, deep research, so I usually know what I’m talking about, my struggle is truly looking like I know what I’m talking about and presenting information in a concise manner.

 

One of my favorite high school classes which inspired my study of chemical engineering at Georgia Tech was my biotechnology class. I recall spending hours meticulously correcting the graphics and information in a presentation for this class. I still remember- it concerned Bioconversion of Distiller’s Grain Hydrolysates. I felt extremely prepared with my stack of notecards (which, in hindsight, were way too dense with information) and I thought that I presented some really interesting information (because, of course, everyone is absolutely fascinated by distiller’s grain hydrolysates).

 

After I finished, my teacher started to make a comment, and I was sure it would be a question about the super interesting information that I presented. Instead, all he had to say was to watch my time and that he had trouble hearing me. This low point in my struggle with communication made me realize that no matter how well I craft my information, my audience will take nothing away from what I have to say if I’m unable to communicate it with confidence and concision.

 

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Coming into English 1102, I knew I needed to optimize the process of taking information and ideas and formulating them into articulate, succinct speech. I was quite the over-thinker and loved to ponder concepts, but I rarely succeeded at articulating my thoughts when put on the spot. As I detailed in my diagnostic video, what I needed was a catalyst- a way to speed up my ideation process and bypass the massive amount of anxious energy that I put into composing my ideas into words. I was in luck, as this class gave me the perfect opportunity to practice my process optimization skills- before I even took my first chemical engineering course!

 

Intellectual and Communicative Priorities

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Dr. Truran’s English 1102 class explored the WOVEN modes of communication with respect to the poetry, art and culture of the Modernist period. By examining the poetic works of Modernists from a diverse array of cultural and national backgrounds and creating artifacts in response, students were encouraged to develop their skills in rhetoric, process, multimodality, collaboration, critical thinking, analysis, and articulation.

 

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While constant improvement in all of these areas is necessary for my continued development as a communicator, I identified articulation as the skill I needed to develop most. My oral communication was in the direst need of improvement.

 

What I discovered over the semester is that developing other skills, such as process, multimodality and collaboration, and gaining greater proficiency in other modes of communication, ultimately helped me succeed in improving my articulation and oral communication. All of these modes and skills interweave to form an ideation process that helps me get from an idea to an effective argument.

 

Experimentation & Methodology

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ARTIFACT 0

From the very first diagnostic video assignment, this class challenged me to find the catalyst that best fits my ideation process. A key takeaway from my video was that I needed to break the information I spoke into palatable segments. Unlike the dense, tiny writing that populated my massive stack of notecards for my biotechnology presentation, my video script was a pleasantly sized, double-spaced document broken up into sections of 3 sentences or less. I found it much easier to communicate the small segments of information in each of my video clips than to stand trembling in front of my classmates with notecards containing enough information to write a ten-page essay.

 

I also learned that variety is key in keeping my audience engaged. In addition to spoken word, I added moving annotations to my video. This also prevented me from rambling on about concepts that were more succinctly explained visually.

 

One of the potential catalysts for my process that I discussed in my diagnostic video was active participation in  class meetings every Monday and Friday. When I heard participation was a considerable portion of my course grade, I was quite anxious. Not only am I generally a reticent person, I struggle even more with virtual communication.

 

Instead of raising my hand and waiting for my professor to call on me in person, I have to unmute and that invites a whole array of questions:

• What if my voice sounds weird on the call or my microphone isn’t working?
• What if someone unmutes at the same time as me?
• Does my laptop camera make me look funny?

However, I’ve found from experience that I can overcome these trivial worries.

 

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I also knew that the only way for me to improve as a communicator was to communicate- quite the profound realization! If I wanted to get better at speaking my ideas on the spot, I’d have to unmute in class. I’d inevitably mess up several times, but I’d also have moments where I said something that contributed well to the class conversation.

 

While I was stressed at first, I ended up being extremely glad that class participation was graded- it encouraged me to get involved in class discussions. This facilitated my engagement in the topics we were considering and increased my level of comfort with speaking in a virtual setting. If I had been told at the beginning of this semester that I would have to choose a poem and read it to all of my peers over Bluejeans on the last day of class, I would have simply dissolved. However, I looked forward to it by our last class meeting.

 

ARTIFACT I

My second assignment, the visual essay, helped me identify the catalyst of multimodality. I realized that multiple media are much more conducive to conveying an argument than a sole medium.

 

I enjoyed the element of artistic creation in the visual essay, particularly since there are certain moods or ideas that I can't convey with words but can visually communicate. There are also concepts I can’t fully render artistically that are expressed well in written form. Combining both visual and written forms into one blog post nearly doubled my communicative range. I improved in my struggle with concision because I could use images to describe concepts that would cause me to stumble over my words or write in circles in a traditional essay.

 

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ARTIFACT II

The next catalysts I discovered were those of ideation and organization. When crafting artifact 2, I was initially unsure of what topic to choose or how to best communicate my thesis. With the resources provided by this class, I generated a large idea web which helped me translate ideas to written form.

 

Thanks to the proposal assignment, I also created a layout of my argument and the sources I would incorporate into each section of my essay. Employing this generative process rather than running headfirst into choosing a topic and drafting my essay ultimately made my process more efficient. Additionally, my final argument ended up sounding more confident using this strategy.

 

By the day of the gallery walk-through for my research poster presentation, I felt confident in my information and wasn’t nearly as anxious as I usually am before presentations. I had certainly grown since that fateful day in my biotechnology class. Instead of being equipped with a stack of notecards rivaling the width of a five-subject notebook, I had only my poster and my confidence.

 

I had grown since I created my diagnostic video, too. Instead of using the strategy of rote memorization, which I had done for my diagnostic video script as well as for nearly every assignment where I had no notecards, I decided to trust the information that I spent so long researching and compiling into a poster and essay. The result was ultimately greater success in my oral presentation than I had experienced with either index cards or memorization.

 

I was excited to see my peers gather around my poster as I spoke. When I finished, it wasn’t communication faults that they commented on, but my content, and that was how I knew they were engaged and had heard my argument. I still have room to grow; I wished that I had spoken louder and slower. However, I have come a long way from where I began.

 

Me, presenting my research to my peers with no notecards and no rote memorization!

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ARTIFACT III

My ideation process was further tested and optimized during my hidden figures project. This assignment required me to synthesize multimodality, ideation, organization and confidence into one ultimate catalyst for communication.

 

This project afforded my group an incredible amount of creative freedom, allowing us to choose both our poet and communicative modes. We ended up synthesizing written, oral, visual and electronic modes in a website with interactive elements and an immersive poetry reading. In the website, the content I added had to be concise, so I practiced condensing information into an amount that was palatable to a casual viewer. I found that utilizing interactive elements such as a timeline and images allowed me to add less words and still successfully get my point across.

 

This project also required confidence in my communicative abilities as it was necessary for me to clearly express my ideas and vision to the rest of my group. This communication was often spontaneous, especially when we met on Zoom or Bluejeans. I thus received a lot of practice with effective communication when put on the spot.

 

Ideation and organization were essential to this group project, so I created an idea generation document with potential hidden figures to facilitate our progress. I also practiced communicating deadlines and allocating tasks to group members, which improved my effectiveness and confidence as an oral communicator.

 

How it's Going

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By the end of this semester, I crafted an extremely useful catalyst for my idea generation and communication process. It is one I hope to keep perfecting as I continue my studies at Georgia Tech.

 

When I next speak about distiller’s grain hydrolysates or any equally thrilling topic, I am confident that I won't be the same student I was when I came into this class. Rather, I will be equipped with the courage that my knowledge is sufficient, the poise and articulation to present information clearly and concisely, and the preparedness to craft an effective argument even under a time constraint.