Miscommunication...Oops!

Several of my most memorable experiences I have of miscommunication come from when I was the editor-in-chief of my high school yearbook staff. With this position comes a lot of responsibility for making sure tasks get completed on time. It is very common for their to be miscommunication between staff members, and it usually ends up with something not completed.

The one instance of miscommunication that stands out to me the most to me was when we had a miscommunication of who was suppose to complete a group of pages for one of our deadlines. Being the editor-in-chief, it was my job to post the names of people who were assigned which pages. After assigning pages to people, I would then tell the section editors how many pages I needed them to have complete by a certain deadline. These could be any completed pages, as long as they totalled to that amount. Then, each section editor would assign each person when those pages were due to them so they could double-check the pages before they got sent to the plant for production. This was a miscommunication that probably occurred over a week time period. But, it started by me not communicating clearly to one of the section editors how many pages I needed for that deadline. We had such a large staff that staff meetings were usually around 30 people. Either this editor was not present in the meeting, or was not paying attention to me talking during the meeting, and she missed the information about how many pages I needed from each section by the deadline. Since she did not hear that she needed pages due for this deadline, she just assigned her staff a small portion of pages, just so they would have something to do over the next week. A week later, it was time to submit the pages for the deadline. I approached that particular section editor because I had not received enough completed pages to mark her portion of the deadline complete. After asking her when she would have me the rest of the pages, she responded that she didn't realize she needed that many pages for this deadline. Since she did not have these pages completed, I had to personally go through and complete several additional pages to make up the difference between the pages she had given me and the pages we needed to have completed for the deadline. It was a pretty big mess at the time because completing a page can take a lot of time. It forced me to work on the pages during school, and then after school, continuing into the night. Needless to say, we met the deadline, but not without me having to go through a lot of additional stress that could have been avoided. I made sure from that point on that I talked to each editor individually before each deadline to make sure they knew how many pages I was expecting from them. This problem could have been avoided through several ways. One way would be that I should have confirmed that each person was at the meeting and ask them to repeat how many pages they had marked down that I needed by a select deadline. Another way I could have prevented this problem was speaking with each editor individually after the meeting to clear up any questions that they had and reaffirm that they had recorded the correct number of pages I needed for the upcoming deadline. Another way this problem could have been prevented would be if I would have checked on the specific progress of each page before the actual deadline date.

When this miscommunication occurred, it was one of my first deadlines in the first year being the editor-in-chief of the yearbook staff. After this incidident, I was wondering what I had gotten myself into by being the editor-in-chief of the yearbook staff...lol. Just kidding. I learned from this mistake and I fixed it from that point on, making sure that communication was a focal point for me. I went on to successfully complete my first year as editor-in-chief, and was then selected to serve as editor-in-chief for a second year, my senior year of high school.

Final Presentations and Online Portfolios

Out of the final presentations that were presented, I enjoyed Kyle Cook's the best. Kyle did a presentation on the "Top 5 Clemson Dunks from 2008/2009 Season." I thought this was a very relevant topic since basketball season is coming to an end and we have already played our final home game of the season. I am a pretty big basketball fan and if I can't be at the game, and it's televised, I'm watching it! I enjoy pretty much anything "Clemson." It's something about the school pride and spirit that runs through my blood! So with that being said, this was a great topic for me to relate to! I saw all the dunks that he presented in person except for the dunks that were at the University of South Carolina. I would have to agree that his presentation was pretty accurate with those being some of the best dunks this year! I really enjoyed the media that accompanied his presentation. He did not just stand up in front of the class and show us pictures of the players and tell about their dunk, but he found the actual video clips to go with each dunk. Kyle did a very good job at incorporating visual aids in with his presentation.

I have only created one online portfolio in my entire life and that was for BIOL120 my Freshman year. In my BIOL120 class, we had to create a portfolio and keep all our documents in it so we had an online portfolio at the end of the year. This portfolio was then graded by our professor as a percentage of our final grade. This portfolio was simply an e-portfolio that was hosted by BlackBoard. We did not use any external websites to produce this portfolio, just BlackBoard. That worked out well because it helped me get a jump-start on creating my e-portfolio which I have to create through Clemson in order to graduate. A link to my BIOL120 e-portfolio is located here. I thought that the BIOL120 portfolio was fairly easy to create; thus making it a positive experience with using an online portfolio. I think it is a lot easier to create a portfolio online rather than a hard copy portfolio. With an online portfolio, you can keep it for a long time and share it with as many people as you would like. The hardest part for me was just figuring out how to get everything uploaded onto the website and linked to the right category. For this online portfolio, I don't know if I will need any additional help with figuring out how to work everything. What I might like to see is an example of what you expect our portfolio to look like when we get through with it. This would give me an idea on how I need to arrange my online portfolio.