Course Topics

Estimated Time: 15 minutes

Communication skills refer to the ability to effectively exchange information, ideas, and thoughts through speaking, writing, and other means.

There are several types of communication skills, including:

⚠️ In this course, we will focus on Reading and Writing.

These are all actions that we repeatedly perform each day, and it's easy to take them for granted. Have you ever stopped to reflect on how well you do each of these things? Do you think about how your competence in these skills impacts your performance and relationships at home, school, or work? Are you intentional about your approach to these forms of communication?

Robin Sharma once said, “Awareness precedes choice, and choice precedes change.” The goal of C4S is to help you develop, 1) awareness of what effective and efficient communication looks like, 2) insight into your current skill level, and 3) strategies for improving your skills so that they can support you in achieving your goals.

📺 Watch the following video from Adesola, one of the Kibo mentors, to learn why communication is an important skill for tech professionals.

Course Structure

Part 1 - Reading

Reading is an important part of communication because it allows us to receive and understand written messages from others. Reading enables us to understand and interpret written texts, which can be anything from emails and news articles to novels and poetry. The ability to effectively receive information in written format is a first step to being able to send back appropriate responses. Reading can help improve your writing skills. When you read, you are exposed to a wide variety of writing styles, language structures, and vocabulary. This can help you develop a sense of what works and what doesn't in terms of writing, and can also help you expand your own writing style and vocabulary. In addition, reading can help you understand the conventions of writing in different genres and disciplines, which can be useful when you are writing in a specific style or for a specific audience.

With all this in mind, C4S begins with an exploration of how to read well, so that you can build a strong foundation for the other communication skills that we will explore afterwards.

Part 2 - Writing

The second part of this course is focused on writing.

Written communication in academic and professional settings is important because it allows you to communicate your thoughts to others across time and space. In a globalised world were you are learning and working with people that aren't in the same location as you, you need to be able to clearly and accurately convey your thoughts and ideas in written form so that they can be understood by others without the direct feedback loops that spoken communication provides. Additionally, in professional settings, written communication is expected as it allows you to convey longer more complex ideas, while also creating a permanent record that can be referred to at a later time.

The goal is to help you improve both the quality of your writing output, and the efficiency of your writing process.