Essentials of Impactful Communication- Write, Speak, Inspire and Influence

Learn how to become an impactful communicator to influence and inspire people both in your professional and personal life. Allow yourself to become a better leader, manager, researcher or engineer.

Forming connection and avoiding rejection remains the number one human need of all times.

Your ability to communicate is arguably the single most important skill in your life. Being a good communicator, however, is not just about writing emails or making presentations. It is about knowing what to say and how to say it to thrive in this new world.

Communication skills in a person remain relevant and updated through one’s unique life experiences. The course, Essentials of Impactful Communication: Write, Speak, Inspire and Influence goes beyond defined borders of traditional education. It will train you to make positive permanent shifts in your writing and speaking, well after the course has ended.

This course frees you from the limitations of rote learning as you learn and interact in active learning mode. As a result, the communication skills you acquire remain applicable at any stage of your life. It uses the most powerful but rarely implemented combination of classroom and lab sessions to learn different communication styles, such as descriptive, narrative, academic and reflective. You will learn to express yourself in a logical, concise and engaging manner. In other words, easily adapt to real-life scenarios and target audiences.

This course is designed and developed by Dr. Stephen M. Kosslyn. He is the founder of Active Learning Sciences, Inc. He has held several positions including Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and Chair of the Department of Psychology, Dean of Social Science, and John Lindsley Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Dr. Kossly is widely regarded as one of the world’s top disruptors in the ‘learn-by-using’ pedagogy and along with his team has made learning as fun and engaging as a computer game.

ABOUT THE COURSE

The course Essentials of Impactful Communication builds on the learnings of other coursesd offered in BITS Pilani curriculum. It offers a granular approach to written communication by emphasizing on nuances of different forms of writing including Descriptive Writing, Narrative Writing, Reflective Writing, and Academic Writing. It will enable students to learn about the importance of reflection in communication, identify credible sources of information, build a persuasive argument during an interaction, and leverage the style of narrative writing to make communication effective. Through active learning pedagogy the students will be able to develop critical thinking, brainstorming skills, visualization and put to practice the knowledge gained.

In this course you will learn to express yourself in a logical, concise and engaging manner while strategizing your communication and adapting it for the target audience and modality. By the end of this course, you’ll have a deeper understanding of who you are as a communicator. You will be able to write masterfully, speak powerfully and present your ideas and your best self to the world. You will also have an easy-to-implement routine that will help you write, speak, listen, and respond more effectively.

The course is designed to be:

• Practical: The material can be used immediately
• Relevant: It is global but designed for the Indian context
• Effective: Active learning leads to actual learning
• Fun: Active learning is stimulating and interesting

Duration: January 2022 to May 2022

Lessons: 28 hours of classroom and 14 hours of lab sessions spread over 2 lessons and 1 lab session per week

MODULES

• Descriptive writing (Lesson 1 – 7): get comfortable with each other and your instructors. Explore content on various media and formats such as news reports, podcasts, stand-up comedy, clips etc. Take your first steps towards writing your own content.
• Narrative writing (Lesson 8 – 15): develop your personal/public narrative (using Marshall Ganz’s principles). You will use narrative writing to tell the story of self, story of us, and the story of now.
• Reflective writing (Lesson 16 – 21): acquire tools that enable you to build habits of reflective thinking and communication.
• Academic writing (Lesson 22 - 28): focuses solely on academic writing. You will work towards making an argument by selectively quoting and incorporating credible sources

Assessment and Grading :

• You will be evaluated through 4 major writing assignments, one per module. All 4 assignments will involve an initial draft and a final submission. You will receive feedback from the instructor and their partner (another student in the course) on their initial draft. Grading will largely be based on the improvement shown in the final submission in comparison to the initial draft as well the quality of the final submission itself.
• Smaller writing and speaking tasks, feedback provided by students to their partners and their engagement in group discussions will count towards their participation grade.

Certification: This course is being conducted by Department of Management BITS Pilani in partnership with the Maker Bhavan Foundation. The department will issue a certificate to all students completing the course.