The subject of social psychology of communication within a work group can be a class all by itself and I am lucky enough to take this class this semester in parallel with PSYCH 424 – CAS 100B, Effective Speech. What is only a chapter on our applied psychology textbook (Gruman et al, 2017) is the whole semester of course material for the working in groups class (Engleberg & Wynn, 2013).
Working remotely on a group project presents unique challenges, primarily with communication. Non-verbal communication becomes very difficult, even impossible. This is what gets shared by intonation, mimic, gestures, and so on – anything that is not words. Some cultures, called high-context cultures, rely more on such unspoken cues than on what is being said.
Even a “plain” spoken language can be a source of misunderstanding. There is a term for a situation when two people took different meanings from the same set of words – bypassing. Add to it different dialects and accents, professional jargon, abbreviations, and cultural differences, and it is a surprise anything gets understood correctly and gets done at all! Sometimes it does not get done, or, more frequently what gets done is not quite what was originally envisioned.
There are some tools one can use to achieve effective communication. They are fairly simple to enumerate, but much more difficult to implement in practice on a day-to-day basis. One should try to use plural pronouns (we, you). Avoid abstract words which may have different meanings for different people. Prefer concrete terms. Absolutely stay away from offensive words – this one should be obvious. Try to be supportive, rather than defensive, that is – descriptive, problem oriented, empathetic, spontaneous, provisional, and equal.
When a meeting is in person, rather than virtual care should be taken of such details as sitting arrangements and personal appearance. Small things matter even in a modern progressive society. Effective communication can make or break your group project. It is bad enough if it is a class group project, but it could be much more serious than that. Imagine a situation when Jet Propulsion laboratory uses metric system for its calculations, and engineers from Lockheed Martin use imperial units. This actually happened. A miscommunication between two groups resulted not in a comedy but in a loss of Mars Climate Orbiter satellite in 1999. A few hundred million dollars were wasted due to an error in translation (Hotz, 1999).
References
Engleberg, I. N., & Wynn, D. R. (2013). Working in Groups. Pearson Higher Ed.
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology. Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems.SAGE.
Hotz, R.L. (1999, October 1). Mars Probe Lost Due to Simple Math Error. Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-01-mn-17288-story.html
Being in an asynchronous learning environment, I think effective communication is truly key in making the most out of the learning experience. This course is probably one of the most effectively interactive courses I have had since being at a physical Penn State location. As mentioned, it is extremely difficult to read nonverbal cues and understand different tones remotely, especially since there are people from varying cultures, backgrounds, and even age groups.
After reading your blog, I became curious about research concerning how effective online learning is when visual or physical contact among peers is minimal or not at all. Interestingly, I found an article by Al Tawil (2019) in which she focused on what she called “electronic nonverbal cues (eNVC). In the article she cites various types of nonverbal cues that can be found within a text-based environment and how we still can “read” the nonverbal cues of people through their online presence or persona they present. She looked at items like lack of communication, how often posts were made, and time taken to respond. She also looked at what she called electronic Style, Effort, and Tone (ESET). This was encompassed by the content of peers or instructors replies like length, amount of support shown in the reply, if they were benevolent or malevolent, and any use of digital emotion icons.
Al Tawil (2019) also found that even our profile pictures and their content (family/pets) or the way we use and format our text can influence how people interpret our personality online. Her results showed that posts with more formal layouts scored lower than a layout in which there were more unique fonts, formal greetings, and even emoticons when presented to both students and instructors. The type of tone peers communicated, how likely they were to respond either on posts or as instructors, and ideas about how socially present someone was all could be based on how personalized our online presence was and the various other ways we engaged communications via technology. These markers presented were suggested in order to help online students both feel more engaged and reduce the number of students who leave online learning due to the feeling of being less supported in their learning experience.
Reference
Al Tawil, R. (2019). Nonverbal Communication in Text-Based, Asynchronous Online Education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(1), 144–159. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i1.3705