Steven M. Walters, M.Ed.

How miscommunication happens (and how to avoid it) - Katherine Hampsten

Lesson created using video from TED-Ed YouTube channel
Kent State University

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TED-Ed lesson
URL: How Miscommunication Happens (and how to avoid it)
Introduction
The primary reason I chose the topic of miscommunication for this TED-Ed flipped
lesson is because young adults are not being taught all of the necessary skills to communicate
effectively beyond texting, snap chatting and tweeting. This lesson is designed to develop a
conscious awareness of how and why messages are not understood and do not always go as
planned through practical application of exposure to the symptoms, the diagnosis, the treatment
and the cure. The exposure is the video. The diagnosis is the questions and answers. The
treatment is the discussion. The cure is the final presentation showing subject proficiency and
understanding.
Students will be able to engage this TED-ED lesson through a mobile device, tablet, or
desktop computer at the time of their choosing outside of the classroom. After watching the
themed video they will be able to answer the six questions that are aimed at developing critical
thinking of the subject matter in the video. Students will also discuss an article that is specific to
the topic and then create a presentation based on what they saw and listened to in the video, read
in the article, and discussed with classmates. The only part of this lesson plan that will occur in
the classroom is explanation of the assignment, answer questions about the assignment, and the
delivery of the final presentations. This lesson is self-contained and readily available to students
with an Internet connection. This lesson is also ideal for students who like to work alone and at
their own pace.
The topic of this TED-Ed flipped lesson is on Miscommunication. As a college
instructor I teach mainly first-year students who arrive to my classes from a myriad of
backgrounds. Their listening skills range from selective hearing to trying to write down every

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utterance in class. I have students with hearing impairment, visual impairment, and learning
impairments that I must take into consideration with every class on a per diem basis as notified
by Student Accessibility Services. I engage each and every student as many times as possible in
every class as part of my teaching style. I am a natural speaker who is able to make eye contact
with every student who is looking up and I have ways of getting those not looking up to do so.
In the flipped classroom this engagement is crucial in the development of lesson that is
performed from offsite. I can see direct evidence in the classroom whether or not a student is
listening but are they understanding what I am saying? Facial expressions, body language, and
work produced for assignments provides me appropriate feedback that my messages are being
understood. The flipped classroom will provide me feedback with my answers through
completed work, discussions, quiz answers, and emails asking for clarification.
One way I make sure students understand the details of a lesson is to ask the question
Are there any questions? That is what I call my just in case question. Just in case someone did
not understand me. If nobody asks a question I still expect at least one student to ask in private
or send me an email for further explanation, which of course I gladly do to clarify myself with
feedback from them that we are both in understanding.
The rare student who does ask me But I dont know what you mean? usually only
heard me and was not listening. That is why this lesson is so vital!
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:

Identify what miscommunication is and know how to avoid it by understanding that

communication is an participative transaction not just a passive activity.

Recognize their own perceptual filters and how those filters impact their

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communication abilities in sending a message as well as understanding the feedback.

Modify their thinking to understand that hearing is passive and listening is an activity
that requires practice.

Explain that they know how to improve communication skills through the
development and delivery of a class presentation using verbal, non-verbal, and
graphical representations.

Target Audience
The target audience for this lesson plan is college students enrolled in the Kent State
University Introduction to Human Communications course, COMM 15000. The students in this
course range from High School students enrolled in College Credit Plus program, first-year
college students, sophomores, and juniors. First-year college students can include nontraditional age students and veterans. I have not yet had a senior in this course but it is always a
possibility. The ability of these students varies based on their unique experiences, personalities,
traits, fears, successes, and motivation.
Abilities and experiences include being able to speak comfortably in front of groups,
designing and creating presentations with PowerPoint or Prezi. Personality traits are whether or
not the student is an extrovert, introvert, or combination based on situational conditions. Fears
of speaking in front of people can be real from an experience of embarrassment of self-image or
a litany of psychological and sociological background concerns that I deal with on a one-to-one
case. Successes are positive instances that prove to the student nothing happens when I do this.
The motivated student can have any or all of these traits but at least tries and that I can build on
to help develop their skills further.

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The Lesson Layout

The first phase of this lesson plan begins with an in-class introduction to the topic followed
by the first exercise. A debrief should immediately follow exercise #1 so that students can see
for themselves that listening is not as simple as it sounds. When the discussion is exhausted,
promptly start exercise #2 followed by a debrief and discussion. Because students may have
moved around the room for this exercise make sure to allow all students to get back into their
normal seats before continuing on to the next step.
The second phase of this lesson is to review with a live demonstration of how to access the
TED-Ed lesson. This live demonstration will show students how to begin by seeing exactly what
they need to know to sign-in to access their lesson.
The third phase of this lesson is for students to engage with and complete all of the TED-Ed
lesson outside of the classroom. They can work from home, the library, or anywhere their
mobile devices or computers can access the Internet.
The TED-Ed lesson begins with students signing into the website and opening the lesson.
They will know they are on the correct lesson plan by seeing the title of the lesson with their
instructors name as seen in this screenshot.

Students should then understand where to begin the lesson by seeing the directions and
expectations of the lesson:

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Students will then play the 4:33 video. The length is suitable for almost any attention span and
time constraints. The Closed Caption is set to on to meet Student Accessibilities Services
requirements.

After the video students will then have to answer 6 questions. 3 Multiple Choice and 3 Open
Ended questions that require critical thinking, introspection, and examples. The point value of
each question is listed with each for a total of 50 points.
All six answers can be derived from the video. The multiple choice questions offer video
hints to help students choose the correct answer with a time stamp that takes them directly to
where they can listen to the possible answer. The opened ended questions are designed to force
the student to think beyond information delivered in the video and apply it to real world
situations. The estimated time to complete these questions will probably range from 20-60

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minutes, but will vary based on each students abilities.

In the Dig Deeper section students will read the article Resolving Miscommunication written
by Jessica Hartung, CEO of Integrated Work. This article provides three levels to resolving
misunderstanding that students will then discuss in the Discuss section of this lesson.
The Discuss section will help lead students into a deeper discussion about the article and their
thoughts about this topic is another 50 points. The Guided Discussion section in TED-Ed will
help students develop further understanding and greater scope of this topic. All of the
information in this lesson can then be utilized for students to build a five minute class
presentation using PowerPoint or Prezi.
In the And Finally section students will discover what their final project is, not just for the
lesson, but for the course worth 100 points.
The Final Project - 100 points!
You are going to create a presentation that is designed to help first-year college
students become more aware of how to avoid and or deal with miscommunication.
Task: Design and create a 5 minute PowerPoint or Prezi on how to avoid
miscommunication with: Family, Friends, Classmates, Professors, Co-Workers,
Drivers on the road, Cashiers, Police, Bus Drivers, International Students or come
up with your own scenario that you feel is important.
Be creative with photos and graphics (keep it clean & professional!).
Use responsible and well thought out situations involving college students showing
both sides of how the sender and receiver each contribute to
avoiding miscommunication.
Use the video, the article or other sources to help you communicate your message.
Avoid plagiarism! Cite all of your sources!
You will be presenting your 5 minute presentation to our class as your final!
Be prepared to answer questions at the end of your presentation.

Your recommendations for using the lesson

My recommendations for using this lesson in a flipped class are to integrate it into a class
discussion that demonstrates, through direct student interaction, just how easy it is to have many

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people hear the exact same thing but interpret it differently and to misunderstand what is being
said due to the nature of coding and decoding meaning. The two exercises in this lesson require
less than 10-15 minutes of class time depending on the length of debrief and discussions.
Exercise #1 is called Paper Folding. This exercise involves the entire class listening to a
specific set of instructions from the teacher to perform the same task at the same time. Each
student, based on their own results of the exercise, will begin to start realizing the need for
understanding this topic on a deeper level when they compare their outcome of the hands on
results with their classmates results. The full instructions, conclusions and credits for the Paper
Folding exercise are in Appendix A.
The second short exercise involves students pairing off . The Draw what you hear exercise
challenges students in a one-to-one situation to perform a task. The noise in the room will offer
some extra resistance to being understood and will layer the knowledge needed to develop skills
in listening and avoiding misunderstanding. The full explanation and instructions including
variations, debrief, and credits are in Appendix B.
Reflection on my design experiences and suggestions for improving my TED-Ed lesson
In the designing of this lesson I went behind the thought process that this is just another
assignment to get a grade. I disdain that line of thinking and believe that students who verbalize
that notion and or even think it are setting themselves and their students up for lower motivation
in life.
When I first looked over this assignment and set up my work files, I deleted the minimal
requirements of the rubric and left only the top end requirements. Rubrics are great but why
settle for baseline minimal? My personality is if I do something, do it all the way and to the best
of all of my abilities! That is how I won 7 National Championship gold medals in martial arts

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competitions!
What I found challenging about designing this lesson was the time needed to review and find
the right topic. The time needed to search for and watch videos become an issue as I have two
other courses demanding considerable time and energy, my wife who wants to get out of the
house every day and go places with me, and then there is the Communications course I am also
teaching this summer. Once I found what I was looking for I started building the quiz. It
seemed natural to do this with the way the TED-Ed platform is presented. Once I figured out a
few issues with design on the platform, the rest was just creative thinking and researching for the
perfect article to include in the Dig Deeper section.
I will have to wait for feedback on this lesson before I could even think of making
improvements. The lesson appears straightforward and practical. The only way to really know
if I need to improve any part is to try it out with students and see where the unforeseen issues
pop-up. I did have a bug in one of the questions so I deleted it and started over. An easy fix!
I am confident that this lesson could be added into my Introduction to Human
Communications course this summer as an extra credit module in about the 11th week. I could
not use this lesson as a primary lesson since it is not in my course syllabus. My course runs until
August 17th so there is still plenty of time.
I also could lobby to have this lesson added into the Destination Kent State: First-Year
Experience course as it does not require any further training for even the least experienced
instructors at the Kent Campus. We had our organizational meeting last week for this fall, but I
do have the ear of my supervisor who believes my students have benefited greatly from the
course material I have created to meet the curriculum requirements.
I enjoyed working with the TED-Ed platform and if I have time will convert some of my

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future lessons into it as a layering of knowledge process with my own videos I could use as a
basis for those lessons.

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Appendix A
Exercise #1 - Paper Folding
1. Give everyone a sheet of paper.
2. Tell everyone to close their eyes and follow your instructions.
3. Start giving instructions about what to do with the piece of paper examples :
4. fold it in half fold the lower left corner over the upper right corner turn it 90 degrees
to the left fold it again rip a half-circle in the middle of the right side etc.
5. Once you have given quite a few instructions (more than 10 at least for a great
success), tell everyone to open their eyes and unfold their piece of paper.
6. Even though they all received the same instructions and had the same starting
material, pretty much everyone will have a different result.
Conclusions:
We dont all start with the same base (some held their piece of paper vertically or
horizontally) so we dont all have the same results
Some interpreted to rip a piece of paper as removing a big piece, some as a small
piece
Having eyes closed = not receiving feedback on our performance
Some instructions appear vague to some and clear to others.
Many other conclusions can be drawn on the fly from this
http://blog.trainerswarehouse.com/communication-and-listening-exercises/

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Appendix B
Exercise #2 - Draw What You Hear
Pair people up and ask your couples to sit back to back. One person in each pair should have a
piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Once everyone has settled, give the other person in the pair an
abstract drawing (different shapes maybe joined up together) to describe to the other person in
the pair. Give them two minutes to describe and draw without asking or answering any
questions. Then you allow another minute for the drawer to ask questions.
Debrief: When the time is up, ask them to compare the drawing to the original. Discuss why
there were differences (there always are!). Was it the describing or was it the listening? Was it
because they couldnt ask questions to clarify what was being described and what about not
being able to see the person to get the visual clues of looking for understanding of what one is
saying e.g. nodding or frowning etc What about the noise in the room is it a distraction when
you want to listen to someone properly? What should you do to create a good environment for
listening; how should you behave to show you are listening? etc . Posted by Sandie Gay
Variation: Conduct the exercise in a series of rounds. In every round the communicator will
describe a picture we give them of assorted geometrical shapes. In the first round the
listener/drawer cant ask any questions, just listen and draw based on what they hear. The second
round a different picture of geometric shapes is described and the listener/drawer can only asked
closed-ended questions. The third round a different picture of geometric shapes is given and the
listener/drawer can use his/her active listening skills. We discuss how accurate were the pictures?
How well the communicator describes the picture will determine how successful they want to be
with a customer. Posted by Annette West
http://blog.trainerswarehouse.com/communication-and-listening-exercises/

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References
Draw What You Hear, Retrieved June 28, 2016. Posted by Gay., S. & West, P., (Original
posting date unknown) http://blog.trainerswarehouse.com/communication-and-listeningexercises/
Folding Paper, (Original posting date unknown). Retrieved June 28, 2016. (Unknown creator).
http://blog.trainerswarehouse.com/communication-and-listening-exercises/
How miscommunication happens (and how to avoid it) - Katherine Hampsten. TED-Ed Lessons
Worth Sharing. Retrieved June 28, 2016. https://youtu.be/gCfzeONu3Mo.
Miscommunication, (2016). How to avoid miscommunication (in TED-Ed GIFs). LaBracio.,
L.March 31, 2016 in TED-Ed Lessons.