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Alyssa
J. O'Brien. Ph.D. Phone:
(650) 723-3802 |
Communicating with Creativity:
Strategies for Effective Writing and Speaking
"The first thing you have to do to be effective with customers is to first be able to communicate with yourself." --Bob Kruger, CEO of Citrix Systems
What is this course all about?
Our ten weeks together will comprise a dynamic, interactive, and community-building course for Continuing Studies Students and members of the community. We'll run the class as a workshop on Business and Personal Communication. Topics will include Finding your Voice as as Writer, Learning Style and Strategy, and Presenting with Confidence. I have revamped my approach and lessons based on the feedback from previous classes in order to tailor the course to individual needs. You are welcome to email me and ask me more information about the course. Also, I invite you to read through this webpage.
What is the official course description?
How can you make your written or spoken words more memorable and powerful? How can you persuade your audience as you learn to write and present well? In this course, we'll work on communicating with creativity by learning strategies for effective writing and speaking. We'll work through an inspirational writing guide, wrestle with questions of style and correctness, and share work in progress through class workshops. You'll discover ways to free your inner voice, break through writer's block, improve your style, and write or present effectively for various audiences. You'll also learn how to become a proficient editor of your own written documents or public presentations and discover ways to meet your communication goals. As a result of our work together, you will be able to produce clear and compelling communications across a variety of media, from business emails and personal writing to spoken presentations. By the end of the course, you should feel confident that you can communicate with style, using your own creativity and unique voice. This course will be taught in a technology-enhanced classroom for the purposes of writing, revising, and presenting in class.
"To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of though, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression or message that carries moment, passion and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being."
---Clarissa Pinkola Estes
What course texts will we be using?
In addition to many course handouts that I provide and, most importantly, your own writing and presentations that we look at together in class, we will use the following books as guides to our thinking in three areas – is it Clear, Convincing, and Creative?
What are the Course Goals?
The purpose of this course is to facilitate the development of your own writing voice, to strengthen your communication techniques across a variety of print and electronic media, and to foster your confidence in producing writing that reflects your own creativity and style. As we work together over the next ten weeks, our primary objective will be to transform the experience of writing for you through meeting the following course goals:
While for you writing might be a difficult - even painful - process, through our work together, you'll come to approach written communication as an opportunity for using your creativity and exercising your powers of persuasion.
What can I get out of this course?
To answer this question, think about what your goals might be for this course? I have already had several emails from people who have specific, tangible writing or speaking goals -- including writing up memoirs, working on formal reports, developing competences with modes of scholarly writing, developing a book, and improving email in English. What do you want to get out of this course? Reflect for a moment about this... What do you wish to learn or accomplish? What specifically do you want to get out of this course? We'll shape our interactive class work to meet your needs and goals. So please come prepared to share your ideas and objectives at our first meeting on Wednesday!
How is the course organized?
The ten weeks of "Communicating with Creativity" will be organized into four clusters, focusing on the course goals of exploration, development, production, and confidence.
I. Exploration: Embracing Creativity, Freeing your Communication
Weeks 1-3: For this cluster, we'll explore our blocks to effective
communication, our frustration with writing and speaking, and the hopes we have
for change. During week two, we'll banish that inner critic that disrupts our
best work and we'll begin to embrace our own unique style and voice. Week three
will allow us to explore models of effective and creative communications,
including the example of our own strengths in various areas. We'll start to
build our persona by working from these positive models.
II. Development: Harnessing your Creativity and Implementing your Voice
Weeks 4-6: At this second stage of our work together, we'll affirm the writer's
voice that is beginning to emerge. During Week 4, we'll develop our
communication persona and implement our writer's voice in a variety of
exercises. Week five will enable us to use this voice in order to write with a
purpose: creating plans and persuading audiences. For week six, we'll turn to
the details of writing effectively, spending time on style, effective email,
writing correctly, and shaping our message with both creativity and conviction.
III. Production: Creating Innovative Written and Oral Communications
Weeks 7-9: The third cluster will provide a rich opportunity for innovation.
We'll start with the importance of revision, or seeing anew, in Week Seven, as
we learn strategies of reworking our materials and working through difficulties
in both written and spoken communications. Week eight we'll turn to innovation
in face to face communications, such as meetings, parties, networking events
and sales encounters, where your own voice and communication abilities become
paramount and often require follow-up through writing. Week nine will concern
strategies for creating effective presentations for both small and large
groups, including delivery, textual supplements, your own creative design and
the expression of your professional voice.
IV. Confidence: Celebrating Change and Looking Ahead
Week 10: For the last class meeting, we'll summarize and reflect upon what we've learned and how we can use these skills and strategies for any context or situation we might encounter in our personal and professional lives. We'll discuss the ways in which we've reached our goals for this class and how we can continue to harness our creativity for effective communications in all our future pursuits.
Sounds good. Where will we meet?
Our class meetings will be Wednesdays from 7 pm-8:50 pm in Wallenberg Hall's Technology Classroom. You are welcome to bring your own laptop; we will have wireless internet available for you to take notes, work on writing in class, and access materials that I will post to this website. No computer knowledge is necessary or required, however. You can bring a notebook and a favorite pen, or just come and listen. Please note that we have a cap of 25 people and that you must be registered for the course to participate.
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Who is teaching the course? |
Contact Information |
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Alyssa J. O’ Brien teaches
writing, research, multimedia, and oral communication in Stanford's Program
in Writing and Rhetoric. She has a PhD from the |
Alyssa J. O'Brien, Ph.D. Spring Office Hours for Continuing Studies Students: Mailing Information: |
Go to Alyssa O'Brien's Homepage
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