Interactive Communication. Definition.

What is your definition / your personal understanding of an interactive communication style? How can interactive communication forms influence your cross-cultural business communication? Share your ideas in the comment box.

Interactive Presentations

Make a presentation on communication styles of different nations (choose one!) Describe how you would manage these styles and create a clear flow of communication.
How would you use an interactive communication style and its forms?

Use the Present.Me platform and make either a voice or video presentation.

Share links to your final products with your instructor and the links will be shared with the public!

Business Writing / Communicating Bad News

Please write a sensitive and effective email communicating a bad message to your international partner. Use ‘Communicating bad news’ strategies. Follow the recommendations at 20 Tips for Communicating Bad News by Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, founder of Syntax Training.

Please welcome Present.Me!

Present.me is an online application that allows users to combine a slide presentation with a video presentation. You'll see that the screen is actually split in half for the viewers: The left half contains the slides, and the right half contains a feed of the speaker. You can toggle with the view so that the slides become bigger, the presenter becomes bigger, or that the entire presentation switches to full-screen mode.

What are the positives about Present.me?

It's easy to use!
It enables commenting so that viewers can voice their opinions about the show.
Categorize/tag your videos so that others can find them easily.
Search through the databases to find lots of neat presentations that are already made!
Several sharing options: download, embed, or e-mail links.
Several creating options: slide with video, slide with audio, slide only, video only.
Upload a variety of different materials for your "slides:" PowerPoint, PDF, Word document, Excel spreadsheet, RTF text file, URL, Google Docs, etc.
Option to make a presentation private...can include a password that people have to enter if they stumble onto the correct URL. Well... you can only do one private presentation per month on your free account...

Business with Bob: Culture and small talk

Compare the Coconut and the Peach culture. Which type are you?
How can the peach-coconut communication challenge be solved?

Business with Bob: Starting meetings effectively

What important issues does Bob Dignen mention that are necessary to prepare for a meeting effectively?

Reflections

Reflecting about what you are learning is very effective as a method to improve your skills. We will use an online journal for reflections on the course material – it is one of the ways of organizing ideas. You will have to reflect on what you learned and how you may apply these ideas in your (future) professional life.

Having learned the material of each unit, you are supposed to add at least one entry to your online journal. It will be an ongoing record of what you are doing in the course. At the end of the course, you will be able to look back and create a summary post that gives an overview of what you have done and what it means to you.

To accomplish this task, you will have to create an account at Penzu or My-Diary which are free online personal diaries or journals that give publishing opportunities.

What is Culture?

What definitions of culture do people give? Which one is the most appealing to you? Share your ideas in the comment box!

Online Discussions

Dear students,

every week, we are going to have online discussions. To join them, go to NICENET and click 'Join a Class'. Our class key is S348854C7Z.

Every week, your posts and comments will be graded:

Excellent (5): Using respectful language, you specifically mention something you found interesting or thought-provoking. You give a related example from your own experience (which may agree or disagree with the original comment). Your comments give other students something to think about and agree or disagree with. An excellent comment will add significant value to what someone else has said.

Satisfactory (4): Using respectful language, you either mention something you found interesting/thought-provoking OR you give a related example. Your comments may or may not give other students something to agree or disagree with. A satisfactory comment will add some value, but not a lot.

Poor (3): Your comment does not use respectful language AND/OR your comment does not add any new information to what was said before. Just saying "I agree" is a poor comment. A poor comment will add little or no value to what was said. Your comment may use information from a source without citing the source.