My skill when using virtual communication is to distinguish the use of a lean medium and a rich medium. I use these techniques when I have a group meeting to process information efficiently and effectively. I didn’t know any of these academic terms or their functions before I took this summer course. Additionally, I was not aware that I followed these lean and rich media. Since I read the textbook, I started to notice that I might have done some similar things that those media explained. In today’s page, I would like to talk about how I started using those skills.
The time goes back to my high school. My friends and I were planning to go eat sushi. It turned out that some of us want to go to an expensive sushi restaurant. The rest of us were surprised because we were expecting to go to conveyer belt sushi, which is a common and cheaper sushi restaurant to go. I was for the latter, and we got confused about which one to go to. As a consequence, the ones who wanted to go got angry, and the rest of us argued. These conversations had taken place in texts, and none of us could clearly understand what was going on. Then I suggested that we would talk about the confusing situation the next day, which is categorized as a lean medium because it’s a simple task to schedule. We decided to solve our conflict in a face to face environment, which is a complex part sorted as a rich medium. In these ways, we smoothly solved our arguments. I think it’s difficult to discuss complex issues over text messaging, if emotion is involved. In addition, it’s always important to talk about how people feel, but I learned that we might need to distinguish which subjects should be handled in a lean medium or a rich medium. After I learned these terms and functions in this course, it made me feel that I should be confident when I follow those skills to facilitate conversations with people.
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