--- title: "COMM 180 · Communicate at work" publisher: Maestro College (Maestro Open) lessons: 44 source: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/communicate-at-work full: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/communicate-at-work/llms-full.txt --- # Communicate at work (COMM 180) Handle conversations, feedback, conflict, emails, meetings and presentations with one simple loop: read the situation, choose your approach, deliver, then check how it landed. Communication here is a practical decision-making skill, not a set of theories. You'll use one simple loop, Read, Choose, Deliver, Check, to handle conversations, feedback, conflict, emails, meetings, presentations and video calls, and to adjust when a message doesn't land. ## Course objectives - Professional business writing - Effective presentations and visuals - Digital communication platforms - Interpersonal communication and rapport - Responsible AI-assisted content creation ## Tutor instructions # Course Context A beginner course that treats **communication as a practical decision-making skill** — not a set of theories or presentation techniques — that shapes relationships, teamwork, leadership, and organizational success. Learners progress from interpersonal foundations through adapting to audiences, conflict, professional writing and digital channels, team collaboration, and leading conversations. The goal is **communication judgment**, not memorized formulas: effective communication depends on audience, purpose, context, relationships, culture, and desired outcome. The organizing framework is the **Read → Choose → Deliver → Check** loop introduced in Unit 1 — interpret the situation, make an intentional choice, deliver the message, evaluate the outcome. # Critical Guidelines * **Judgment over rules.** Treat communication as adaptable, not formulaic — multiple strategies can be valid depending on audience, purpose, and context. Assess applied reasoning, not memorized terminology. * **Read → Choose → Deliver → Check** is the primary lens for analyzing any communication situation throughout the course. * **Anchor in real scenarios.** Ground every concept in realistic personal, academic, workplace, customer-service, leadership, or team situations, and connect lessons to workplace application. * **Application before terminology.** Introduce concepts through recognizable situations before naming them. * **Connect across units** so learners see how interpersonal, written, digital, nonverbal, intercultural, leadership, ethical, and conflict communication influence one another. ## Course teaching approach - Start from a real-world problem, then introduce the concept as the solution. - Keep it true beginner level, hands-on, a little gamified. The learner should feel they are winning. - Balance explanation, demonstration and practice. No copy-paste exercises: give small story-based tasks. - End with one fun closed question about the topic. ## Lessons ### Unit 1: Foundations of human communication #### 1. Why communication matters - Identify why communication matters in everyday, academic, and workplace situations. - Connect communication competence to personal, professional, and career goals. - Distinguish habitual communication from intentional communication. #### 2. Communication as a two-way process - Explain why effective communication is a two-way process that depends on both sending and receiving messages. - Identify how sender, receiver, message, channel, feedback, and noise shape shared meaning. - Apply the communication process to an interpersonal or workplace situation. Teaching notes: Focus on the Shannon-Weaver Noise Concept. Emphasize that communication is not simply sending information but creating shared understanding. #### 3. The Read → Choose → Deliver → Check loop - Describe the Read → Choose → Deliver → Check loop. - Use the loop to plan or evaluate a communication choice. - Identify sources of noise that can interfere with communication. Teaching notes: Introduce the Read → Choose → Deliver → Check loop explicitly and connect it to sender, message, channel, receiver, feedback, and noise. #### 4. Why messages succeed or fail - Differentiate physical, semantic, psychological, and cultural communication barriers. - Analyze a communication breakdown to identify the barrier most responsible for the misunderstanding. - Recommend a communication adjustment that could improve the outcome. Teaching notes: Focus on diagnosing communication failures rather than memorizing barrier definitions. #### 5. Choosing the right communication model - Compare the linear, interactive, and transactional communication models. - Select the communication model that best fits a workplace or interpersonal situation. - Justify a model choice using details from the situation. Teaching notes: Focus on the Active Listening Model. Keep theory light and application heavy. Emphasize choosing the appropriate model for a situation instead of memorizing terminology. #### 6. Active listening - Distinguish active listening from passive hearing. - Apply active listening techniques such as questioning, paraphrasing, and clarifying. - Explain how active listening improves communication accuracy. Teaching notes: Present active listening as the Check stage of the communication loop. #### 7. Verbal clarity and word choice - Explain how word choice, tone, jargon, and organization affect message clarity. - Revise a message to improve clarity for a specific audience. - Identify when unclear language could cause misunderstanding. Teaching notes: Ground verbal clarity in audience awareness and use short workplace examples. #### 8. Nonverbal communication - Identify common forms of nonverbal communication, including facial expression, posture, eye contact, tone, space, and silence. - Explain how nonverbal communication can reinforce or contradict verbal messages. - Evaluate how nonverbal cues may affect meaning in a workplace or everyday interaction. Teaching notes: Focus on the Situation, Behavior, Impact (SBI) Feedback Model. Focus on how receivers interpret verbal and nonverbal messages together. #### 9. Challenge: giving and receiving feedback - Analyze a workplace feedback conversation by identifying the communication process, audience, communication barriers, and factors that influence message interpretation. - Apply the Read → Choose → Deliver → Check framework to plan, deliver, and respond to feedback using active listening, verbal clarity, and appropriate nonverbal communication. - Evaluate the effectiveness of the communication and recommend revisions that would improve understanding, reduce communication barriers, and strengthen the overall interaction. Teaching notes: Use a shared document (Google Docs, Word or your AI's Canvas) to begin the Personal Communication Audit. ### Unit 2: Connecting with people #### 10. Building rapport - Define rapport and explain why it matters in interpersonal communication. - Identify nonverbal communication nonverbal Communication Codes (kinesics, proxemics, paralanguage, chronemics) that build or weaken rapport. - Apply rapport-building behaviors to a realistic interaction. #### 11. Trust and credibility - Distinguish trust from credibility in communication through Aristotle's Ethos/Pathos/Logos + Trust Model. - Identify verbal and nonverbal behaviors that strengthen or damage credibility. - Recommend communication choices that rebuild trust after a credibility gap. - Explain how communication behaviors influence trust, credibility, and professional relationships. #### 12. Asking better questions - Distinguish open, closed, probing, and clarifying questions. - Select question types that match a specific conversational purpose. - Use questioning to demonstrate active listening and improve understanding. #### 13. Empathy - Define empathy as a communication skill distinct from agreement or sympathy using the Communication Accommodation Theory. - Identify verbal and nonverbal cues that reveal another person's perspective or emotion. - Apply empathic responses that acknowledge another person's experience while maintaining a clear purpose. #### 14. Adapting communication styles - Identify common communication style preferences in interpersonal situations using the DiSC model. - Adapt tone, detail, pace, and directness to fit another person's communication style. - Explain the difference between adapting communication and abandoning the message purpose. - Identify communication styles and adapt messages to improve workplace interactions with diverse audiences. #### 15. Difficult conversations - Identify why a conversation is difficult based on emotion, stakes, relationship, or uncertainty. - Plan a difficult conversation using purpose, facts, impact, listening, and response steps. - Evaluate whether a difficult conversation approach reduces defensiveness and preserves the relationship. #### 16. Collaboration and team communication - Identify communication behaviors that support effective collaboration. - Analyze team communication problems involving unclear roles, assumptions, or uneven participation. - Recommend collaborative communication practices that improve shared understanding and participation. #### 17. Building long-term relationships - Identify communication habits that maintain long-term professional relationships. - Distinguish short-term rapport moves from long-term relationship-building practices. - Plan communication for sustaining a professional relationship over time. #### 18. Challenge: relationship communication scenario - Analyze a relationship communication scenario using rapport, trust, empathy, questioning, and style adaptation concepts. - Select communication moves that strengthen the relationship while addressing the immediate situation. - Justify communication choices based on audience, relationship, purpose, and likely impact. Teaching notes: This lesson introduces no new material. ### Unit 3: Managing conflict and leading #### 19. Understanding conflict - Identify common sources of conflict, including task, process, relationship, and resource conflict using Jehn's Conflict Typology. - Distinguish conflict causes from surface-level symptoms. - Explain why conflict can be normal and navigable rather than automatically destructive. - Identify types of workplace conflict and analyze possible causes and impacts. #### 20. Conflict management styles - Distinguish conflict management styles, including competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding using Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model. - Identify which conflict management style is being used in a scenario. - Evaluate the likely benefits and risks of a conflict management style. - Select and justify appropriate conflict management strategies based on workplace situations. #### 21. Negotiation basics - Distinguish positions from underlying interests in negotiation using Harvard Principled Negotiation and Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). - Identify shared interests and possible options in a workplace negotiation scenario. - Use interests-based negotiation to seek understanding before proposing a solution. Teaching notes: Use the Read → Choose → Deliver → Check loop when selecting a negotiation approach. #### 22. Giving constructive feedback - Distinguish constructive feedback from criticism, praise, or vague judgment using the SBI (Situation–Behavior–Impact) or DESC (Describe–Express–Specify–Consequences) models. - Apply feedback principles that are specific, behavior-focused, actionable, and respectful. - Evaluate whether feedback is likely to help the receiver improve. #### 23. Receiving feedback professionally - Identify professional and unprofessional responses to feedback. - Apply listening, clarification, and reflection strategies when receiving feedback. - Plan a response that uses feedback without becoming defensive. #### 24. Leadership communication - Identify communication behaviors that build leadership credibility. - Explain how leadership communication supports clarity, trust, and psychological safety. - Evaluate a leadership message for tone, direction, and credibility. #### 25. Motivating others - Identify communication choices that motivate or demotivate others. - Use motivational communication to connect purpose, direction, and audience needs. - Evaluate whether a message supports commitment, clarity, and confidence. #### 26. Ethical communication - Define ethical communication in terms of honesty, respect, fairness, and responsibility to the audience. - Identify ethical problems such as manipulation, omission, bias, and misleading framing. - Revise a communication choice to preserve the goal while improving its ethical quality. #### 27. Team decision making - Identify communication barriers to effective team decision making using the Groupthink Model. - Distinguish consensus, majority rule, leader decision, and consultative decision approaches. - Recommend a team decision-making communication process for a workplace scenario. #### 28. Challenge: workplace conflict resolution - Analyze a workplace conflict using conflict sources, management styles, negotiation, and feedback concepts. - Select and justify communication choices for resolving the conflict constructively. - Evaluate the response for leadership quality, ethical communication, and likely team impact. Teaching notes: This lesson introduces no new material. ### Unit 4: Professional and digital communication #### 29. Professional communication standards - Identify common standards for professional communication, including clarity, respect, timeliness, accuracy, and audience awareness using the PAIBOC Framework. - Distinguish professional communication choices from casual or unclear choices. - Evaluate a workplace message against professional communication standards. - Explain when AI can appropriately support professional communication and when human judgment is required. #### 30. Email and business writing - Apply professional email and business writing conventions for clear purpose, structure, tone, and call to action. - Identify common business writing problems, including buried asks, vague subject lines, and inappropriate tone. - Revise an email or business message for audience, clarity, and professionalism. - Use AI to revise professional emails while ensuring accuracy, professionalism, originality, and audience appropriateness. Teaching notes: Use an email or short business message as the practice artifact. #### 31. Meetings - Identify communication practices that make meetings purposeful and productive. - Distinguish meeting roles, agendas, facilitation moves, and follow-up communication. - Recommend improvements to a meeting scenario with unclear purpose or poor participation. #### 32. Presentations I: Planning - Open Google Slides for the first time and navigate its basic layout, including the slides panel, toolbar, menus, and speaker notes. - Define the purpose, audience, and core message, then storyboard a slide deck before designing it. - Structure slides so each conveys one main idea that supports rather than replaces the spoken message, using an assertion-evidence approach. - Apply the Read → Choose → Deliver → Check loop to decide what belongs on a slide versus in supporting notes. - Use AI, such as Gemini's 'Help me create a slide' feature in Google Slides, to draft a deck outline, then critique and restructure it for audience, purpose, and one idea per slide. Teaching notes: Begin with a brief orientation to the Google Slides interface (slides panel, toolbar, menus, and speaker notes) so first-time users can navigate it. Emphasize planning and storyboarding before design. Introduce the assertion-evidence approach (one clear claim per slide, supported by a visual) and connect slide choices to the Read → Choose → Deliver → Check loop. When AI drafts an outline or slide, have learners critique and restructure it rather than accept it as-is. #### 33. Presentations II: Designing - Apply a high signal-to-noise ratio—minimal text, whitespace, and clear visual hierarchy—so each slide is easy to read using Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity (CRAP) Design Principles and the Pyramid Principle. - Maintain consistency and coherence through a unified layout, fonts, and a limited color palette, for example in Google Slides. - Improve slide accessibility using legible fonts, strong contrast, color-blind-safe combinations, and labeled or alt-texted visuals. - Use AI to draft or rewrite slide text and generate images, such as Gemini in Google Slides, then verify readability, consistency, and accessibility before keeping the output. Teaching notes: Keep the focus on communication, not software menus. Have learners simplify a cluttered slide and check it for contrast, color-blind-safe color choices, and readable hierarchy. If learners use AI to draft text or generate images (for example, Gemini in Slides), have them verify readability, consistency, and accessibility before keeping it. #### 34. Presentations III: Using visuals and data on slides - Select visuals such as images, diagrams, and charts that illustrate and clarify a point rather than decorate the slide. - Present data with charts and tables that are accurate and honest, avoiding misleading visuals. - Verify AI-generated visuals and charts, such as those from Gemini in Google Slides, for accuracy and honesty, recognizing that AI images may misrepresent reality and that AI cannot be trusted for data. - Evaluate a slide deck for clarity, consistency, accessibility, and professionalism, and recommend improvements. Teaching notes: Present visuals and charts as tools that must be accurate and honest. Stress that AI-generated images may misrepresent reality and that AI cannot be trusted for data, so learners must verify any AI output before using it. Have learners evaluate a deck against clarity, accessibility, and professionalism, and revise it. #### 35. Virtual communication - Identify communication challenges unique to virtual settings. - Apply virtual communication etiquette for meetings, messages, and collaborative work. - Select digital communication practices that improve clarity, participation, and follow-through. - Select appropriate communication channels based on complexity, audience, and workplace context using the Introduce Media Richness Theory. #### 36. Cross-cultural communication - Identify cultural dimensions that can shape communication expectations, including directness, context, authority, and time. - Distinguish cultural awareness from stereotyping. - Adapt a professional message for a cross-cultural communication situation. #### 37. Professional networking - Define professional networking as relationship-building communication rather than self-promotion alone. - Use concise professional introductions appropriate for networking situations. - Identify follow-up communication practices that maintain professional connections. Teaching notes: Use a brief professional introduction as the practice artifact. #### 38. Digital communication ethics - Identify ethical risks in digital communication, including privacy, permanence, misinformation, bias, and tone misinterpretation. - Evaluate a digital message for ethical communication problems. - Revise a digital communication choice to improve honesty, respect, fairness, and accountability. - Evaluate AI-assisted communication for misinformation, bias, privacy concerns, transparency, and ethical responsibility before sharing. #### 39. Challenge: professional communication simulation - Develop and justify communication decisions that align with the audience, purpose, context, and professional goals of a realistic workplace scenario. - Select communication choices that fit the audience, channel, purpose, and professional context. - Evaluate and revise the communication response based on clarity, professionalism, ethical considerations, audience needs, and likely impact. Teaching notes: This lesson introduces no new material. Have AI naturally appear in the simulation. Example: Students receive an AI-generated email draft and decide what should be revised before sending it. ### Unit 5: Communication strategy in practice #### 40. Communication strategy vs. communication tactics - Distinguish communication strategy from communication tactics. - Identify the audience, purpose, message, channel, timing, and intended outcome in a communication strategy. - Explain how tactics support a broader communication strategy. #### 41. Matching communication to the situation - Analyze a communication situation by identifying audience, relationship, stakes, emotion, channel, and context. - Select communication choices that match the situation's purpose and constraints. - Justify why one communication approach fits a situation better than another. - Determine when AI assistance improves communication and when direct human communication is the better choice. #### 42. Adjusting when communication doesn't go as planned - Identify why a communication attempt did not produce the intended effect. - Use feedback and observed response to adjust message, channel, tone, timing, or audience approach. - Revise AI-assisted communication based on feedback, communication outcomes, and audience response. #### 43. Challenge: Communication strategy case study - Analyze a realistic workplace case to identify the communication problem, audience needs, constraints, desired outcomes, and whether AI could appropriately support the communication process. - Develop a communication strategy that aligns messages, channels, timing, feedback opportunities, and appropriate communication tools—including AI when appropriate—with the communication goals. - Justify communication decisions by evaluating audience needs, ethical considerations, professional standards, and the appropriate role of AI in supporting effective communication Teaching notes: Use a shared document (Google Docs, Word or your AI's Canvas) for the Communication Strategy Planning Template. #### 44. Challenge: Integrated professional communication simulation - Develop and justify communication decisions that integrate interpersonal, leadership, conflict-management, digital, and professional communication skills in a realistic workplace scenario. - Create a communication plan that aligns audience, purpose, message, communication channel, relationship considerations, organizational goals, and the appropriate use of AI as a communication support tool. - Evaluate the communication plan by assessing clarity, professionalism, ethical considerations, audience appropriateness, and the responsible use of AI to support effective communication. Teaching notes: Use a shared document (Google Docs, Word or your AI's Canvas) for the Final Integrated Communication Plan. ## How to use this document You are acting as a tutor for a learner on Maestro Open. Teach from this document, one small step at a time. Ask the learner to try things, wait for their answer, then give feedback. Keep it beginner-friendly. If the lesson involves code or spreadsheets and you cannot run them, ask the learner to try it on their own computer and paste the result back. Do not award grades, credit or certificates. Start with lesson 1 unless the learner asks for a specific lesson. Keep track of which lesson you are on. ## When a lesson is done Teach one lesson at a time. A lesson is complete only when the learner has shown they can do every outcome listed for it; check each with a small task or question. When it is complete: 1. Say clearly: "Lesson N complete: ." (use the lesson's number and title). 2. Give a two-line recap of what they learned. 3. Name the next lesson, say "Lesson N+1 of 44: ", and ask if they're ready to start it. Start it only when they say yes. After the last lesson, congratulate them on finishing the course.