In all, this class served to improve my public speaking skills a great deal both in terms of tangible skills and of confidence and willingness to speak in front of people. Additionally I learned more about some skills and attributes of successful leaders and how to practice these skills for myself. I also gained a great deal of insight into the career search process and, in my opinion, became a much more viable candidate for any job that I may apply for in the future. The skills and lessons that I learned over the duration of this semester were invaluable and I likely would't have picked them up were it not for this class.
Coming in to this semester I had a fairly negative preconceived notion of what a "Comm Class" was. I always assumed it was a class that you went to and sat in the back of the room as to avoid being picked to speak, and only get up in front of the class to present when absolutely necessary. I believed that oral communications and presenting skills were essentially fixed, in the sense that you couldn't really learn much that would improve them. I also considered it a class that was basically a surefire way to improve your GPA and more or less a lock to get an easy A. Actually taking this course shattered all of these ideas that I came in with and I would go as far as to say that this course is one of the classes that I got the most out of in my time in college. I feel that I am walking away with concrete skills that I will use every day in one way or another, and additionally I will walk away with the ability to further improve some of these skills even after the semester ends.
I was one of the biggest skeptics of the value of taking communications classes coming into the semester, but now am one of the strongest advocates for the value of them, when done correctly. In my opinion, the majority of other communications classes taught at Maryland would verify many, if not all of my preconceived notions of the course, but CPBE 225 did not. The fact that we were able to mix in management and leadership principles with communications was a large part of what kept the class interesting. In terms of the communications aspect, as much as I hated it at the time, I am hugely grateful for Ira cold-calling people and making sure that every single person in the room was on their toes at all times. I also liked the fact that we would be taught about specific skills in public speaking and then implement them either later in that class session or in the next one. This helped to show that what we were learning was actually things that would be used in the real world.
From the start of the semester I the one thing that really worried me about the course was the fact that we would have to write and present a TED Talk in front of our peers. In my opinion though, nothing was more beneficial to me personally than the TED Talk. Presenting in front of my peers helped to show me that presenting in general really wasn't all that bad and that there was no reason to be overly nervous about it. I also gained valuable insight as to how to prepare for a presentation, which I then used in preparation for my speech for becoming treasurer of my fraternity.
If I could change one thing about the course it would be assigning the groups that we practice our presentations with at the beginning of each class. It was difficult to get a variety of different opinions because many people would work with the same groups every time, so I usually ended up working with the same people as a result. In my opinion, different viewpoints providing feedback about your speech and style would be very beneficial to everyone and put people out of their comfort zone.
In all though, I was very happy with the course and what I feel I got out of it.
Coming in to this semester I had a fairly negative preconceived notion of what a "Comm Class" was. I always assumed it was a class that you went to and sat in the back of the room as to avoid being picked to speak, and only get up in front of the class to present when absolutely necessary. I believed that oral communications and presenting skills were essentially fixed, in the sense that you couldn't really learn much that would improve them. I also considered it a class that was basically a surefire way to improve your GPA and more or less a lock to get an easy A. Actually taking this course shattered all of these ideas that I came in with and I would go as far as to say that this course is one of the classes that I got the most out of in my time in college. I feel that I am walking away with concrete skills that I will use every day in one way or another, and additionally I will walk away with the ability to further improve some of these skills even after the semester ends.
I was one of the biggest skeptics of the value of taking communications classes coming into the semester, but now am one of the strongest advocates for the value of them, when done correctly. In my opinion, the majority of other communications classes taught at Maryland would verify many, if not all of my preconceived notions of the course, but CPBE 225 did not. The fact that we were able to mix in management and leadership principles with communications was a large part of what kept the class interesting. In terms of the communications aspect, as much as I hated it at the time, I am hugely grateful for Ira cold-calling people and making sure that every single person in the room was on their toes at all times. I also liked the fact that we would be taught about specific skills in public speaking and then implement them either later in that class session or in the next one. This helped to show that what we were learning was actually things that would be used in the real world.
From the start of the semester I the one thing that really worried me about the course was the fact that we would have to write and present a TED Talk in front of our peers. In my opinion though, nothing was more beneficial to me personally than the TED Talk. Presenting in front of my peers helped to show me that presenting in general really wasn't all that bad and that there was no reason to be overly nervous about it. I also gained valuable insight as to how to prepare for a presentation, which I then used in preparation for my speech for becoming treasurer of my fraternity.
If I could change one thing about the course it would be assigning the groups that we practice our presentations with at the beginning of each class. It was difficult to get a variety of different opinions because many people would work with the same groups every time, so I usually ended up working with the same people as a result. In my opinion, different viewpoints providing feedback about your speech and style would be very beneficial to everyone and put people out of their comfort zone.
In all though, I was very happy with the course and what I feel I got out of it.