"Convey This" A Multi-Activity Lesson Plan on Communication's Nonverbal Aspects

• In Event: 3423 - Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable
  In Informal Discussion Roundtable: Table 5: Active Learning II

Abstract

Covered Topic: Nonverbals in interaction—social interpretations and expectations
Approach Used: Discussion-based lecture interspersed with engaging student activities
Learning Objective: Understand how the physical and the cognitive work in concert to convey social messages, and how we continually interpret those messages
Lesson Format:
• Student exercise on backchanneling—showcases interpretations that result when conversation partners convey no nonverbal cues (interactive class activity)
• Introduction of expression and emotion with Facial Action Coding System (Ekman and Friesen 1978) (instructor demonstration, video clip)
• Explanation of implicit affective knowledge through analogy with implicit linguistic knowledge (class exercise repeating classic “Wug Test” (Berko 1958))
• “Convey This” exercise (interactive class activity)
 Students form two rows facing one another. All members of one row simultaneously attempt to “convey this” (e.g., “hurt and confusion”; “you are disgusted but trying to be polite about it”; “you know a secret and are a bit flirty”) to the other row, who attempt to interpret the expressions. After each attempt (alternating conveyers and interpreters), class discusses whether expressions and messages were easy or difficult to convey and why, what movements they made with their faces and bodies, how they knew what those should be, to what cues recipients attended in order to interpret them, and how they felt.
• Discussion of “putting on faces”—social expectations, holistic processing, and the physical-cognitive feedback system (class discussion, mini lecture, short case study, video clip)
• Discussion of limbic system and modern freeze-flight-fight indicators of emotional states as manifested in the body (instructor demonstration and short video clip)
Utility: This lesson may be adopted by sociology instructors looking for a fun and interactive means to teach students about the multi-faceted messages conveyed during interpersonal communication; can be used as jumping-off point for deeper messages of how these cues may be differentially interpreted by social class and status.

Author

• Chelsea Rae Kelly, University of Georgia