Hey Everyone!
My name is Hailey Torres and I currently attend Miami-Dade College. I choose to take SPC1017 (Introduction to Communication) during the Spring 2022 Semester with Professor Sinkoff. On the second day of class with Professor Sinkoff, everyone was split into groups of around 10-13 people and was given a topic to present within the next week. The topics were chapters from our textbook "COMM 6 Sellnow+Verderber+Verderber." The three groups were group 1, group 2, and lastly group 3. Group 1 presentation was based off of chapter 3 (Intercultural Communications), Group 2 was assigned chapter 9 (Communication in Groups), and finally group 3 presentation was based off of chapter 10 (Group Leadership and Problem Solving." Group 1 presented two days after we were given instructions, group 2 presented 7 days after and group 3 presented 9 days after instructions. I was apart of group 2, we had a total of 6 days to prepare and research. We had a total of 12 people, two whom were added a couple of days after we were assigned the presentation. In addition, we have two class leaders. They were assigned to do the introduction and conclusion for each group. One of our class leaders, Maria Chourio, did both the introduction and conclusion for all three groups. The presentation was an amazing and exciting experience, SPC1017 with Professor Sinkoff will definitely be a class I'll always remember.
The first group to present was group 1, they presented two days after instructions were given. Their chapter topic was Intercultural Communication. I believe they did a fantastic job considering they had such little time to prepare, including getting familiar with one another and the class. Being placed into a group with total strangers and having to cooperate well together with less than 48 hours seems like a huge struggle (much respect to group 1 for this). Although their presentation was well put together, they faced some minor technical difficulties. The major difficulty they faced was sharing the screen of their powerpoint/google slides through blackboard; however, since nearly no one in our class had experience with screen sharing on blackboard it made sense that they struggled a bit. The presentation otherwise was amazing, I never really understood what Intercultural Communication meant beforehand. I learned about many terms including but not limited to culture shock (psychological discomfort when engaging in a new cultural situation), code switch (altering linguistic and nonverbal patterns to conform to the dominant or co-culture), polychronic cultures (when more than one culture views something the same way as another culture). Overall, I was extremely happy and impressed with group 1 presentation. The bar is set high and I can not wait to see group 1 next presentation!
Group 2 (also my group) was the second group to present and we presented 7 days after instructions were given. Our chapter topic was "Communicating in Groups." To begin with, our group was extremely unorganized within the first couple of days. We were all not on the same page when it came to assigning work to each person. After a rough day we were finally able to decide on splitting the total amount of words by the amount of people in the group. This made it to around 3-4 words words per person After we finally settled on a well put together presentation, two new people were added halfway through our allotted preparation time. I admit this time around though it was much easier to split the assigned work since we were already organized and settled. We all collectively decided that I was going to be the group leader and that Kayla Roche was the technician. Everything else went extremely smooth and we decided to have a practice session on blackboard Monday night, about 24 hours before our actual presentation, to ensure we did not have the same difficulties group 1 occurred. Unfortunately, many group members were not able to attend the practice so we went with the flow during our presentation time. Another major issue we occurred was group members not being able to attend class for reasons such as jury duty and family emergencies. Thankfully everyone who was not able to attend prerecorded a video of themself presenting their topics so, it allowed everything to run smoothly. In order to best optimize my time, I split the work throughout 3 days and finalized it all the night before. My favorite part of my own research was picking photos that accurately represented the topics I discussed. Even though our group faced many difficulties, I think we pulled it together and had a well put together, informative presentation. I could have not asked for a better group, the experience was amazing and I can not wait for our next presentation.
