Using the Muses to Ease Distance Learning Transactions

Abstract

A few months ago, for my professional job at Pearson Online Learning Services, I co-conducted a training that covered online engineering program accreditation, education requirements, and licensure. Yes, it was scintillating (full sarcasm intended). While the topic was not riveting for most people, the training was necessary to assist online student support advisors who needed to reference specific information as they talked to prospective engineering students. As a necessary balm for the heavy content, the end of the training included a short section titled “How to talk to an engineer.” The purpose of this section, while peppered with some humor, was to assist the online advisors with practical tips to converse with engineers. The online advisors had experienced difficulties in conversations and e-mails with these prospective students, noting that the engineers would be curt, find a conversation about the school’s sport teams to be a waste of time (small talk), or not include socially accepted niceties such as “Have a nice day” or “I appreciate your help.” It is no secret that some people with certain technical expertise and minds struggle with what others take for granted as normal communications and interactions. There have been a number of peerreviewed published papers which address scientific individuals who struggle with casual communication and social expectations. My short piece for the advisor training, however, relied on non-published online articles and informative blog postings. After the training, I moved on to other projects. But my mind kept returning to the item on communicating with engineers. I surmised that this issue might not be confined to just engineering, but to other disciplines and professions as well. As further inspiration that this was not a unique phenomenon, I was struggling with a very artistic person who seemed incapable of staying on track with his work. All our transactions, due to geographical location, were at a distance (phone, e-mail, text pictures). Phone communications were often strained because his explanations seemed to wander, as can occur with an open and fluid worldview. Frustratingly, the person would fail to take notes and direction, yet he was working on a major construction effort! This person had some of the best design skills I had ever witnessed, enhancing already created building plans with an artistic change here and there that resulted in beauty and function. His ability to see art and use science in his work was a definite asset. However, he seemed to bounce from task to task and often would not fully complete a project, much less on time. It seemed to me that his artistic, fluid, and open predilection interfered with completing a project. In a different span of time, I also seemed to be inundated with examples of poor communication in both verbal and written form: online applications and instructions that seemed to lead nowhere in very Kafka-esque fashion; directions for a community event that did not include basic information about times and parking; and my least favorite, a toll pass company which had created communication silos with its online billing wing so that neither group could access the others’ information and address my concerns. At first, I thought it was solely my problem, that I was the one confused or limited in understanding. But conversations with friends and family led me to believe