When I was taking part in GenConnect for term 4 of this year, the learning capability I improved the most was effective communication. GenConnect is a program run by All Saints’ College and focuses on connecting the students with the Amana living residents through teaching them technology. As the residents did not grow up with technology like us, we had to make sure that our communication was simple and clear for them to effectively understand. The main way that we tried to effectively communication was by avoiding technology related words while speaking to them. This included words such as “click”, “search bar” and “app”. To overcome this, we had to define these words in a way that the residents would understand. It’s a challenging task to teach people without using words which are second nature to us, so effective communication was definitely a capability we improved on.

Another way we made sure our communication was effective with the residents was by getting them to complete the tasks by themselves. For example, when we were explaining to the residents how to complete a task on their phone or laptop, the first thing we would do is show them us doing the task while explaining it to them. This gives them a better understanding of where they start and how they can reach their final goal. After this, we ask the resident to try doing the task themselves on their device. This helps the residents to retain the information for a longer period of time as it involves muscle memory. Teaching them this way helped us to improve our effective communication capability as we had to think of the most memorable way that we could get the information across to the residents.