This Specialization is aimed at preparing students for undergraduate study in an English-speaking university. The course equips you for full participation and engagement with your studies by building awareness and understanding of the core values and expectations of academic culture, and providing you with practical strategies to apply to your studies. In this course, you will learn how to develop your Communication Skills to help you achieve success in your university studies. After completing this course, you will be able to: 1. Recognise the importance of communication in communities of practice at university 2. Understand contexts of communication at university and associated expectations 3. Communicate clearly across a variety of different contexts and to a wide range of audiences by adapting communicative styles appropriately 4. Demonstrate, negotiate, and further understanding through spoken, written, visual, and conversational modes 5. Effectively formulate arguments and communicate research findings through the process of researching, composing, and editing 6. Confidently engage in constructive and critical dialogue with respect and professionalism
1.2b Introduction to Communication
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Communication Skills for University Success
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The University of Sydney
20 classificações
Curso 4 de 5 em Specialization Academic Skills for University Success
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Introduction to Communication in Academic Culture
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Katherine OlstonDeputy Director (Digital Learning)
University of Sydney Centre for English Teaching
Lydia DutcherEducation Manager, Graduate Programs
Centre for English Teaching
[MUSIC]
So, we've looked at the concept of academic culture in general and
some of its core values.
We saw that communication was one of these core values but
what does that really mean in practice and
how can you develop your skills in this key area?
At university, you'll encounter different situations where you'll be called
upon to write and speak about what you're learning.
You need to interact with people face-to-face in lectures, tutorials, and
group work, as well as online through emails and discussion forums.
You'll need to complete written assignments, such as essays and
reports, and give formal presentations to your classmates.
Doing these things for the first time in a university setting can be daunting.
Through this course, we want to help you with some strategies for
finding out what is expected of you in these situations, and for
communicating your ideas and learning successfully.
We spoke to some academics to get their ideas on the importance of
communication in academic culture and some strategies for
developing your communication skills within the university context.
[MUSIC]
>> The core values of Sydney University are expressed in the graduate qualities.
And one of the graduate qualities is actually communication.
So clearly the university considers our effective communication to be very
central to its values.
And another one of the core qualities is critical thinking and problem solving, and
of course, being able to communicate well, particularly in writing,
relates very much to being able to think critically and to solve problems.
Because, that's really in the active writing that's how
we developed our critical thinking and problem solving skills.
>> Well, academic culture is a very broad term but,
I think if we don't have communication within that culture,
within that environment then the ideas and the knowledge that
people are developing and building, there just not going to get our there.
So one of the core things in an academic culture is to question.
To question all of the lectures and the people that are teaching you.
And to question the knowledge that you're reading about.
And it's really critical then to debate that with your fellow students and
with your lecturers, and of course, that all involves communication.
And there are many different forms of communication, of course, visual, and
spoken, and written.
And actually,
tying things down in written communication is a core aspect of the academic culture.
Because once that is done, then it becomes if you like a kind of
fixed knowledge, not exactly fixed, but it's fixed in a time and a publication.
And then, that can be built on.
And again, that's a matter of looking at the knowledge that is there,
and then trying to contribute to that.
And new ideas, develop new ideas.
So without that I don't think you would have a successful academic culture.
>> So communication skills are essential to success at the university.
Because the academic culture has core values of lifelong learning,
global citizenship, and scholarship.
And in order to be successful in those, you really need to know how to speak and
write effectively.
It's something that will take place for your entire life, and enable you to
use what you've learned at university and apply it in a global context.
>> Well, core values of academic culture focus on clear communication.
You must love your subject.
So that a great motivation to actually want to communicate that subject and
content knowledge who are you going to communicate to?
Are you communicating that information to a person who might have
passing interest in that topic?
So you're going to have to moderate how you communicate that passion for
your subject.
Alternatively are you communicating to a peer,
somebody who's equally interested in that topic as you are?
So what strategies are you going to use?
You're going to have to increase the amount of technical language that you
use in that peer-based communication.
And of course, you're at a university, so
there's some very clever people involved in that topic area.
And you have the opportunity to engage with those people.
So what type of communication are you going to signal that you're engaged
with a topic, and that you're here to actually further your understanding,
further your ability to communicate that topic, and
perhaps demonstrate that passion for the topic that you have.
[MUSIC]
>> Communication skills are fundamental to success at the university.
Because no matter what students decide to major in or
what careers they anticipate, they'll need to know how to get their ideas across.
A good idea without knowing how to portray and convey it persuasively,
is it really not going to go anywhere.
I think, for example, of a role model of mine President John Hennessy,
he was the former President of Stanford University, a mechanical engineer, and
a high powered business man.
Students would ask him all the time,
what do I need to do to be successful at university?
And he would say, when he was in college,
he thought it was mastering calculations or using a slide role and
he said, actually he found out it was effective writing and speaking.
Because that way he could take his ideas and he could use them for
whatever purpose he had in the future and that lead to his success.
>> Communication skills have fight to let university.
You're going to be discovering new knowledge and
new environments with new people, so
how are you going to do that if you can't communicate clearly with those people.
But you might find yourself talking to a professor and
you're thinking my goodness I'm talking to a professor.
And be over awed or overwhelmed by that type of conversation,
but you really need to remind yourself,
it's not about the relationship between the professor and yourself.
It's about a third relationship,
it's about the knowledge that you're trying to create.
So I think confidence and clarity is a key factor
in clear communication in presentations with a professor.
>> Well, communication skills is about sharing your ideas and your knowledge.
So if you keep those all to yourself, then you're not really growing and learning.
So communicating what you're thinking about in whatever discipline you're
studying in is really a way of learning very effectively.
So if you didn't do that whatever mode you're using it could be visual,
it could be spoken, it could be written but what you're doing is
you're trying to define what your ideas are on a particular topic.
You're trying to tie them down in some way and exchange them with your fellow
students or your lecturer and, in that debate, you're growing, you're learning.
And I think that that's a really important thing to do in your university career,
and if you don't do that, you're really not going to be learning that well.
>> Communication skills are really important at university because,
basically, studying at university is communicating.
It's either reading texts, or writing them, or
listening to lectures, or speaking in tutorials.
And so it's absolutely central, without good communication skills,
I don't think that you can function effectively at university.
And I don't think you can get the most out of it, so it's really important.
[MUSIC]
>> Well, students need to prepare all of their communication skills at university.
You're going to be doing a lot of reading, so much reading.
It's fantastic.
You might be invited to read half a dozen papers per topic.
And if you have four topics in one semester,
it's going to be an awful lot of reading.
Having said that, from the reading,
you're going to have to abstract information and write about it.
So in 90% of exchange of information between you and
your tutor and the topic that you're taking,
it's going to take place probably through I think.
Having said that we're not going to discount our oral communication because
there is a component, quite clear component,
in most units of study where students have to communicate through oral presentation.
>> So as you approach university,
you might ask yourself what do I need to prepare for university?
What communications skills would help me?
And I would say from my experience teaching over nearly two decades there
are three things you could consider.
The first is do you know how to synthesize information?
So rather than memorizing in rote form, how can you bring ideas together,
that synthesis you can use in writing or in speaking.
The second point would be how can you come up with your own contribution.
That's often very hard because in high school or
other situations you kind of have to defer to authority.
But it's university, they want you to make your own contribution.
At Sydney University they want you to contribute to new knowledge.
And so knowing what your own contribution is
as a communication device will really help you.
And the third thing would be what do you observe?
So we call that visual literacy we call that digital literacy for
looking at text in a multimedia world.
How can you look not just that entertainment but as something that has
an argument, something that is providing a communicative act.
So a multimedia text, or a visual text, is something you will analyze in college.
And if you develop the communication literacy, or ability, to be able to
look at those as objects of study, you'll be in great shape for when you enter.
>> Well, students need a variety,
a wide range of skills to prepare for university, but three,
I guess I'd like to mention three that I consider to be particularly important.
The first one is the ability to communicate effectively
with lecturers and tutors.
Because it's important at university to be, if you don't understand things
to be able to speak to your lecturers and your tutors and to ask them questions.
And you might do that face-to-face or you might do it via email.
So for example, it's important to have good email writing skills so
that you can write emails that are polite, clear and effective.
The second skill is really being able to read academic texts,
because students often experience when they come to university,
that there's a big difference between the kinds of texts they're used to reading,
and the kinds of texts they suddenly read at university.
So if they've come from high school, there's often a big difference.
If they're preparing for something like IELTS, there's often a big difference.
And just in general, there's a big difference.
So I would say getting experience with reading textbooks and
journal articles before you go to university.
And the third thing is to become aware that there are many,
many different types of texts that students write at universities.
It's not just essays and reports, there are many different kinds.
And I think being aware of that before you go to university makes it a bit easier.
>> The communication skills students need to better prepare for
university begin with actually reading and listening.
And you might not think that they are actually communication skills but
they're the basis of communicating or speaking and writing.
So what you need to do is to think about the subject that you
think you're going to study.
So perhaps economics,
perhaps political science, perhaps biological science, engineering.
Whatever it is, and do a bit of reading in that area, or
listening, there's lots of online resources there that you can listen to,
and of course, visual as well.
And whatever catches your eye, maybe make some notes about that,
actively questioning some of the things or the things that you find particularly
interesting in that reading or what you're listening to.
So that will help you to develop your writing skills.
And the other thing to do is to perhaps talk about whatever it was
that really caught your eye or interested you to your friends, to your family.
Because these are the things that are going to really engage you
when you get into the university context.
And that's a really good preparation before you actually get into the uni.
[MUSIC]
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