TASK

In my third year of Knowledge Integration, I worked on a collaborative five-member team for eight months to create a museum exhibit for my INTEG 320 and 321 course sequence. My team delegated tasks and it was my responsibility to write, edit and design the text for our exhibit. I demonstrated my written communication skills by using concise, clear and grammatically correct language to appropriately share our research and learning objectives with our exhibit’s visitors.

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MY ACTIONS

To successfully produce the text for my museum exhibit, I created a plan and timeline of the tasks that needed to be done to have our text prepared by March. I thought about task dependencies, and estimated how long each one would take by talking to my peers and professors. Firstly, I communicated with my team and suggested that we all do research to better understand our topic. I read academic journals and news articles, which put my research skills into practice. I tracked my resources in an online library and created citations for them along the way. Once our research was compiled, I fact-checked our sources to make sure that the information was appropriate and credible. I took notes during group discussions to keep a record of our ideas and learning objectives. After we agreed upon the educational message we wanted to teach our audience, I wrote preliminary drafts of text. To ensure that the message we wanted to deliver was clear, I critically reflected on creating a logical narrative for our exhibit. I also searched for images to help complement our text and visually illustrate key research concepts. I asked my team members and professor for feedback to test whether the text I was creating was easily understood. I had my peers edit and check the text for any spelling mistakes or errors. However, I had to handle criticism when one of my team members did not understand what I was trying to communicate. To better understand his opposition, I met with him to discuss our differing viewpoints. After meeting with him, I gained a new perspective and had better ideas for how to rephrase the text, so that it could be easier for our audience to understand. Once I created a text copy that everyone agreed with, I prototyped different fonts, sizes and text compositions to create an organized and engaging text layout (refer to Figure 1). Throughout the entire process, I considered the perspective of the audience and evaluated whether the text was skimmable, visually appealing and could be read from afar.

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RESULTS

In the end, my written communication skills greatly attributed to my museum exhibit’s success. My ability to summarize information, write succinctly and adjust according to feedback caused our message to be easily grasped by our museum visitors in the text displayed (refer to Figure 2). When I received exhibit reviews from my peers, I was told that our message was clear and that our text was neither overwhelming nor confusing to understand. Visitors had an enjoyable experience as our activities and text were engaging and complemented each other well. Since this project, I have become more confident in my writing skills and I see that being able to communicate effectively is an asset in all work inside and outside of the classroom.