Sometimes Higher National Programmes of Study do not include HN Communication Units within their framework. However, communication skills are still crucial to the development of the learner’s vocational expertise. In the second semester of this academic session, Media and Audio Visual and Communication lecturers got together to discuss and implement some initiatives to help develop students’ communication skills within a vocational context.
Communication is clearly an important part of interpersonal interaction and, of course, teamwork is all about interpersonal interaction. Open communication is a fundamental part of effective teamwork in so far as it allows team members to understand each other’s point of view, to share ideas, to express feelings and to articulate plans.
Gail English, Carol Fyfe and Mark Hetherington met to discuss ways that would benefit their HN students and came up with a proposal that was successfully delivered.
Mark has experience of working with clients in a previous role as Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Communication Programme at Napier University. This involved students working on a variety of ‘live projects’ dealing with clients within the Communication industry. Central to the Graded Units in question, is that the students secure a project, which is linked to a ‘live’ client brief. This is then fleshed out into a proposal which alongside the client brief is central to the project. Technically, you could say in the ‘real world’ the client brief is in fact a legal document and must be treated with due respect.
It was important that the students were realistic about the potential limitations of their project and it was reinforced that the learners should always be mindful of work needing to be completed for other aspects of their Programme of Study. It was therefore important that the students did not fall into the trap of the client making too many demands on them as students. The concept of professionalism really was the watchword for this session. Mark drew up a series of slides that would help the students recognise the importance of how to deal with a client professionally and structured his talk around the following areas:
1. Client meetings and client contact
2. Client relationship
3. The first meeting
4. Being professional throughout the duration of the project.
Mark, Carol and Gail were keen to draw out the issue of transferring the student’s knowledge into the ‘real world’ and introducing a new lecturer for this session worked well. Mark was able to underscore the issues covered by Carol and Gail in previous classes, reinforcing the pivotal nature of positive client relationships. Some of the issues covered in the session, which was peppered with some light humour and anecdotal commentary, centred around a classroom setting where students were able to communicate their thoughts in an atmosphere conducive to expressing and allaying any potential fears, hopes, ambitions. Questions were encouraged and as a result the session doubled as a confidence builder, providing a catalyst, prodding even the most nervous learners into action!
The importance of recording and collating meaningful evidence to the relevance of listening skills were covered and feedback was uniformly positive from the learners. Students felt the session was very helpful to them, they understood the relevance of the discussion, could make connections easily with reference to applying theory to practice and that their creative input could be credited by using a meaningful recording system.
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