COM3278 Deliverable 6 - Memorandum Regarding Verbal and Non-verbal Communications Latest 2023

COM3278

Deliverable 6 - Memorandum Regarding Verbal and Non-verbal Communications

Assignment Content

Create a memorandum detailing the issues for both verbal and non-verbal (symbolic) communications—with and without technological support—as an efficient method of communicating during a global infectious disease outbreak.

Competency

Evaluate the impact of critical thinking, communication, and diversity in the creation and use of coding as a language.

Student Success Criteria

View the grading rubric for this deliverable by selecting the “This item is graded with a rubric” link, which is located in the Details & Information pane.

Scenario

The Director-General of the WHO has told you that the response to your podcast on "Foreign languages vs. programming languages as a high-school requirement" was well received by the Executive Board of the UN's World Health Assembly—who listened to it during a session at UN Headquarters in New York.

But, as you might expect, despite your strong defense of the importance of human languages in communicating across cultures, there are still a few board members who believe that technology is the solution to preparing for a major infectious disease outbreak. The Director-General would like to address these members directly, refuting their belief that coding has limitless possibilities and that, as a constructed language, it could be rapidly deployed in a crisis.

The Director-General—as well as you—knows that this is not true, and that whenever a major outbreak occurs, as it will, eventually, the resources of the WHO will be stressed to the limit. To address the Board-level stalemate, she has requested that you write a memorandum requesting funding for a pilot program to "research the best cross-cultural communication." While explaining the potential and limitations of coding as a language, and the technical issues in translation, she also wants the Board to be reminded of other communication solutions including utilizing existing languages or constructed languages as lingua francas.

In her guidance to you, the Director-General added that one of the more stubborn Board members brought up the Wong-Baker FACES® pain rating scale—which evolved into dozens of 10-level, graphic-based pain assessment scales—as an example of a graphic lingua franca. "Create medical emojis or universal symbols," he suggested, "like the biohazard symbol or the symbols OSHA uses for a health hazard or workplace safety pictograms."

When he compared creating a symbolic language that could explain how to prevent an infectious disease to the pictograms created for sports events at the Olympics, the Director-General knew she needed to refocus the Board's attention on practical rather than blue-sky solutions.

Instructions

She asked you to create a two-page memorandum to be circulated only to the Board requesting immediate funding of a pilot program to explore several methods of cross-cultural communication, including technological solutions, lingua francas, and non-verbal (symbolic) methods.

She would like you to explain that while pictograms do have advantages for simple communication, such as IKEA instructions or pain scales, they quickly become problematic for complex explanations for treatment, prevention, or training. The pilot program she wants you to advocate in the memorandum would provide concrete data on the best methods of communicating health risks during a pandemic.

She provided you with instructions on how to develop specific sections of the memorandum:

Subject in the header: Pilot Study: Crisis-level healthcare needs—communication methodologies. Address the memo to: Members of the Executive Board of the World Health Assembly.

Opening paragraph: In two or three sentences, address the problem of communicating cross culturally during a medical crisis where the people do not speak one of the six formal UN languages—or a lingua franca based on them. In another sentence or two, explain the limitations of symbolic languages (including programming languages) compared to human languages.

Context: Acknowledge that technology offers future possibilities, but note the hurdles that might be faced in third-world countries. Address the challenges of communicating quickly in any of the hundreds of different languages by any means, whether lingua francas, constructed languages, or symbology.

Task: What the pilot study hopes to accomplish is to investigate the level of success of the different approaches to healthcare crisis communication in controlled settings.

Summary: Request authorization for a budget to perform the pilot study in selected cultures in Central Africa.

The memorandum should be clear and concise while still delineating the known issues and potential usefulness of the different cross-cultural communication methods.

The Director-General has suggested a minimum length of 350 words (excluding the header) and a maximum length of 500 words. "Make the points clearly and concisely," she texted you, "ask for the funds to be approved (don't worry about how much), and wrap it up."

"Let them think we're going to prove their own pet method is the best," she concluded, "while we acquire the funds we need to prepare for the inevitable pandemic."

Topics you are expected to cover (succinctly) in the Memorandum:

Summarize coding as a language.

Evaluate the usefulness of programming as a lingua francas.

Assess the usefulness of technology in creating a lingua franca.

Assess the advantages and disadvantages of an auxiliary language.

Discuss the issues technology still has with translation.

Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of symbology as a lingua franca.

Reflect on the difficulty of creating symbolic healthcare communication.