Introduction
Active listening is a crucial communication skill needed to work in the technology environment. When you practice active listening, you give others your complete attention when they're speaking so that you can understand their message, intent, and perspective.
Scenario: Neighborhood coding camp
Imagine that you've been volunteering at a coding camp in your neighborhood. You're teaching the basics of coding to people in your community who want to explore computer science and technology as career options. You're also learning a lot from coding experts who teach at the camp and have shared tips and tricks with you.
In one of your classes, participants have approached you with some feedback. When they tried to share ideas during camp, they felt dismissed or ignored, and were often interrupted by others. During some of the group discussions, you've also noticed that these participants aren't contributing as much as they could be. Thinking back, you realize that you also need to do a better job of understanding their perspectives and practicing active listening.
You decide to use this situation as an opportunity to work on your active listening skills with the camp participants. Your goal is to make sure that everyone's comfortable with sharing their points of view and also giving others the opportunity to do the same.
In this module, you'll learn about active listening as a crucial component of effective communication in computer science. You'll practice active listening strategies to better understand the people you interact with in a technology workspace.
By the end of this module, you'll know more about how to incorporate active listening in your communications with peers in computer science and technology.
What will you learn?
After completing this module, you'll be able to:
- Realize how active listening creates more effective communication.
- Improve relationships in your technology workplace by using active listening.
- Set ground rules for respectful and effective communication.
- Apply active listening strategies in computer science.
Prerequisites
To get the best learning experience from this module, you should have an open mind and a willingness to learn about the expectations and responsibilities of managing, mentoring, or collaborating with others in a technology workspace or educational environment.