MUNI

UNIVERSITY
TransformingLives

Chapter 1:Professional Communication

Ms. Salama Asikuru

+256788509910
[email protected]
 Chapter sub-topics
In this chapter, we shall discuss the following
sub-topics:
1. Oral Presentations
2. Technical Writing
3. Systems documentations
4. Technical Requirements
 Objectives
At the end of the Chapter, the student should be able to:
★ Understand the definition, types & rules of
professional communication.
★ Learn the principles of proper email
correspondence and phone etiquettes.
★ Use and apply many basic rules of technical
writing
★ Develop and deliver a well-thought out
presentation

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 Introduction
What is Communication?

➔ It’s the use of words, sounds, signs or

actions to exchange information or express
thoughts between individuals.
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Any one can communicate. But What makes
communication professional??

Professional communication incorporates

written, verbal, visual and digital
communication to provide factual information
that is useful in the workplace.

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 Con’t
Professional communication is characterized by several
key elements. These include:

● Clarity: Professional communication should be clear

and easy to understand. It should avoid jargon,
acronyms, or technical terms that the receiver may
not be familiar with.

● Conciseness: Professional communication should be

brief and to the point. It should convey the
necessary information without unnecessary details
or tangents.

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 Con’t
● Politeness: Professional communication should be
polite and respectful. It should avoid offensive
language, sarcasm, or other forms of rudeness.

● Tone: Professional communication should be

appropriate in tone. It should match the context
and audience of the communication.

● Grammar and spelling: Professional communication

should be free of grammatical and spelling errors.
It should be proofread before sending.

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 Con’t
● Context: Professional communication should be
appropriate to the context in which it is being used.
It should match the purpose and goals of the
communication.

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Professional communication is usually intended
to:-
★ Inform; provide information or education
★ Persuade; attempt to change a person’s view
or perceptive
★ Make a request; ask a question
★ Respond to a request by answering questions
★ Instruct (order); provide (give) direction or
guidance

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 Con’t
The four rules of Professional communication
for the science and technology domains:-

1. One should always be polite & professional in

communications
2. Personnel should avoid assigning tasks to people who are
not direct reports
3. Not every communication that one sends will reach its
target
4. One should be patient, but not too patient.

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 Con’t
Now let’s look at the different forms
of professional communications.

1. Emails:
● It’s very useful and convenient, considered a professional
form of communication, you can send large attachments
around the globe.

● Much as emails are highly reliable form of communication,

they are not very secure. WHY???

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 Con’t
Now let’s look at the different forms
of professional communications.

2. Texting:
● In professional communication, texts are often used to
notify/remind someone of an event that person is already
aware of. (Ex. “Class @ 8am on Tuesday”)

● Texts should be signed with a name even if the recipient

has already the sender’s contact. (“Class @ 8am on
tuesday. Salama”
● How do you acknowledge receiving an email or a text??

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 Con’t
Now let’s look at the different forms
of professional communications.

3. Telephone Calls:
● A person on the phone should be a good listener, give full
attention to the caller, and speak loudly and clearly.

● If one is not able to give the required amount of the

attention to the caller, one should not answer the phone or
answer the phone and say..” I will call back in 30 minutes”
● If you’re in a noisy place, it’s unethical to pick the call and
shout.
● What are other scenarios where its unethical to answer a
call?
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 Con’t
Now let’s look at the different forms
of professional communications.

Other forms of communications include;

● Taking a telephone message
● Memorandum
● Face-to-Face Meetings
● Video-Conference and Teleconference Meetings
● Status reports
●

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➔ One of the stereotypes of IT
professionals or scientists is that
they aint good communicators.

➔ Being a good communicator is paramount

for any professional.

◆ Being a professional means you’re working in a

team either as a team member or leader to
solve an organisations problems so it’s
important to communicate well

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 Oral Presentations
● Oral presentations allow for direct and
real-time interactions with the audience.
A good presentation can land you a job or
a sale.

● you need a practice to be a good

presenter.

● The general steps for giving a successful

presentation are as follows:

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 Con’t
1. Analyze the audience in advance
2. Research and gather information
3. Organize the content
4. Develop the slides
5. Practice delivery
6. Prepare for any unexpected circumstances

But there’s so much to presentations than

just those steps; let’s discuss some of
the fundamentals of oral presentations

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Fundamentals of Oral Presentations

As already mentioned, it’s nearly impossible to

give a perfect presentation. But there are some
constant factors to consider when selecting a
topic for a presentation.

These factors include;

● Area of expertise:
It’s not wise to choose a topic where your
expertise is limited because you might fail
to answer routine questions.
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 Con’t
But sometimes you’re not responsible for choosing
the topic, in such scenarios you must take time
and do intensive research before a presentation

● Audience
● Conducting an analysis of an audience prior to a
talk is a good way to gauge the appropriate
level of the talk.
● The analysis is also helpful in knowing how to
keep the audience’s attention during the
talk.

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 Con’t
● Time Constraints:
- allow yourself to know the time allocated for
the presentation before even developing the
slides, such that you know how long to stress
a certain point.
- if the time is very short, then let the audience
hold questions until the end of your
presentation.
- the presenter should choose a topic that can
be appropriately presented in the allotted time.

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● Resources
- the presenter should be aware of which
resources are available for her/him to
use.
- such resources include; the room size,
stage, lighting, podium, microphone, etc..
- all these resources constitute the setting of
a presentation.
- It’s important to make good use of the setting
and make the necessary adjustments at the
beginning of the presentation, you can ask for
technical support if you don’t know how to make
the adjustments. 21
 Con’t
Preparing for an oral presentation

A good presentation needs to have specific

objectives, such that the talk is directed towards
those objectives, so it’s necessary for you to
create a timeline to develop the presentation
content.

Some of the common aspects involved in

preparing for a talk include;

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● Rehearsal;
- For one to be able to have a presentation
close to perfection, one must rehearse the
talk, as frequently as possible.
- The rehearsal can be done in front of a mirror,
alone or even in front of a few familiar
individuals.
- however one should not over rehearse because
who has simply memorized the talk or even
appear to be bored with the material.

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● Notes;
- Notes come in handy if the speaker gets
stuck (happens or can happen to any speaker)
- The notes should be an outline comprised
of keywords and short phrases.
- They can be on index pages, sheets of
paper, stick pads, slides have provisions for
having speaker notes
- Beginning a presentation is nerve wrecking, so
make sure you have more-comprehensive
notes for the beginning of the talk.

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 Con’t
● Multimedia;
- Multimedia can be used to spruce up
a presentation.
- These include; figures & tables, hypertext,
audios, demos and videos.
- But including the multimedia in a presentation
requires an enormous amount of time, can
sometimes be spent more effectively on
improving the text on the slides,

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Supplementary Materials

- Even though a person has designed a great talk, there

may be other items that could enhance one’s efforts
and help the audience gain a better understanding of
the presentation.
- Examples of such materials include; glossaries, copies
of slides, forms and questionnaires, and exercises and
problems
- It’s impractical to provide these for larger audiences.
- It is wise to include contact information and a link
to a website in any materials that one distributes.

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Advertising the talk

- It is usually up to the speaker to provide advertising

materials.
- Advertising a talk properly can mean the difference
between having a respectable-size audience and
having essentially no audience at all.
- It can be a presentation abstract, fliers or email
notifications.

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Online (Virtual Presentations)

- Just like room presentations, virtual presentations need

to be prepared with tenderness and attention, the
beginning must be strong to attract your audience.
- So when you’re delivering a presentation online, you
should try to make your beginning as error-free and
smooth as possible.
- The following are some tips;
● Fix computer errors: ALWAYS double- or
triple-check your equipment before giving a virtual
presentation. Make sure your microphone, webcam,
and internet is working.

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Online (Virtual Presentations)

● Eliminate distractions: Silence your phone, turn off

desktop notifications, get rid of loud fan noises, and
make sure your room is kid/dog free.
● Dress appropriately
● Use statistics and surprising facts
● make use of multimedia; animations, short videos and
demos
You can read more about online communications…. Refer to
reference 2

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Class activity: Work in groups of 3

1. Read the email provided, Identify why the above email is

deemed fraudulent
2. Watch the 2 videos attached and identify why one is a
bad presentation and the other is a good presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv1HuXTWE5c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEPLjU8QLfI

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 Technical Writing
Introduction

- It refers to the practice of creating primarily

text-based instructional or informational
documents for users.
- It can be a;-
- journal paper,
- thesis
- dissertation
- product or an API documentation,
- manpages,
- tutorials,
- and guides.
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 Con’t
-
- It’s not limited to only software, it can include
user manuals for instruments.

- Better yet TW is more of explaining complicated

stuff, so it's more of a form of communication

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 General TW
- The writing process consists of 5 stages;
- planning,
- drafting,
- revising,
- editing
- and finally proofreading.
- However, it's important to know that these
stages are not linear. Sometimes, one must go
back and forth within the stages where
necessary.

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Con’t
 Con’t
● Getting started and staying productive /planning

- Spending time on the preparation stage of technical

writing has great value.
- Because, it’s at this stage that you get to know
the;-
- audience,
- the purpose,
- background and
- objective of the research.
- Jumping right into writing will affect (limit) the
quality of its potential success.

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 Con’t
- Although preparation is essential, it is necessary at
some point to begin producing material that will go
into the finished document.

- There is a balance to be maintained between

preparation and actually writing.

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 Con’t

- Always remember writing projects will always take

at least four times as long as the time one expects
at the outset of the project (Always referred to as
Rule of four).

- The following are some of the factors to consider

during this stage; the audience, purpose, setting,
document types and process

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 Con’t
● Analyzing your audience
- Because the purpose of a technical document is
to;
- inform,
- educate and
- persuade
- it’s important to know the audience you
intend to convey the information to.

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 Con’t
- Questions to consider here include;
● Who is your reader? consider the level of
education or expertise, job experience,
skills in reading english cultural
characteristics….
● What are the readers attitudes and
expectations
● consider why and how will the reader use
the document

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 Con’t
● Analyzing the purpose of the writing

- The purpose of a document is very important,

the writing phase can not start unless the
purpose has been clearly defined.

- It can be stated in simple phrase, eg “The

purpose of these slides is to provide
supplementary materials for the lecture”

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 Con’t
● But the purpose doesn’t appear like that
anywhere in the document..the problem
statement is properly stated

● If you are writing about a problem, clearly state

and define the problem.

● A problem statement has three elements;

○ the problem
○ the method for solving the problem
○ purpose {Why are you trying to solve this
problem?}
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 Con’t
● But the purpose doesn’t appear like that
anywhere in the document..the problem
statement is properly stated

● If you are writing about a problem, clearly state

and define the problem.

● A problem statement has three elements;

○ the problem
○ the method for solving the problem
○ purpose {Why are you trying to solve this
problem?}
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 Con’t
● Example
● Poor problem statement;
“We are behind schedule.”

● better problem statement;

“We are two weeks behind schedule. It looks
as if we will miss our customer’s required
finish date, which is four weeks from now, by
two weeks unless we do something. If we do
not make the customer’s required date, she
will be entitled to a 10 percent price
reduction according to the contract.”
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 Con’t
● Analyzing your Setting
- You might need to consider how your document
will be used and the situation surrounding the
problem you’re trying to solve.

- Exple; Will your document be used to make a big

decision or it’s just a guide to help users install a
software

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 Con’t
● Analyzing the writing process
- It’s important to analyse the resources such
as existing processes, time, budget, tools,
collaborations, documents testing and ongoing
maintenance.

- All the above mentioned determine, how long

will it take to produce the document.

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 Con’t

● Generating Ideas about the subject

● This helps you to come up with information to
include in the document and it can be achieved
by;-
○ Asking the 6 journalistic qtns; who, what,
why, where,why and how.

○ Exp “What would the program do?”

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 Con’t
○ Brainstorming; spending some few minutes a
day just listing short phrases and questions
on the subject.
■ Exp “Why we need the system”

○ Free writing; writing without plans, without

taking in to caution the question marks.
■ Exp: “the current trend involves social
marketing in order to achieve big profits
thus the need for this program”

○ Discussing the topic with someone else

○ Clustering and branching

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 Con’t
● Researching additional information
- This is usually done by reviewing documents,
reference books, articles, websites.

- some can be got from questionnaires,

observations and experiments.

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 Con’t
● Notes on Notes
● While in preparation stage, it's important to take
notes, when something or idea comes to mind, but
these notes should be make sense such that they can
be referred to at a later stage.

● Before the writing stage, arrange the notes such

that, notes about related topics are grouped
together.

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 Con’t
● Drafting
it involves the following activities;
➔ Organizing and outlining your document
➔ using templates, eg if you’re writing a user manual,
there’s usually templates to follow, however the
shortcoming of using templates is that you might not be
able to answer the most important questions
➔ Using styles, these save time and come in handy during
editing process

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 Con’t
● Outlining a Writing Project
○ It’s usually a good practice to start a writing project
with an outline.
○ breaking a large task into smaller tasks (sections or
chapters) makes it manageable
○ most of these outlines most times look the same;
■ Introduction
■ Preliminaries
■ Experimental Work
■ Results
■ Conclusion and Open Problems
■ References

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 Con’t
● Revising
○ It involves looking through your draft to see if
it works and to see if it has conveyed the
information
○ usually focuses on 3 things;
■ Audience; has the understanding of the
audience changed? how can you still address
them
■ Purpose; has your understanding of the
purpose changed? What changes can you
effect
■ Subject; should you address more topics or
less topics
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 Con’t
○ You can seek help from others, like subject
matter experts
■ to verify if the facts are true and
accurate or
■ you can involve reviewers which
include actual users or prospective
users of the documents.
○ Don’t forget to acknowledge the reviewers
responsibily.

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 Con’t
● Editing
○ After revising the draft and changes have been
made, you need to proceed to editing, where you
improve the grammar, punctuation, style.

● Proofreading
○ To make sure that what you have typed is
what you meant to type
○ It’s focus is usually to look for minor problems
caused by carelessness or haste.
○ Most times, it’s better to read to proofread a hard
copy than a soft copy,

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 Technical Report Writing
The elements of a Technical Report

Title
Abstract (Executive Summary)
Introduction
Theory and Analysis {Sometimes referred to as
literature review}
Experimental Procedures
Results and Discussion
Conclusion(s)
Acknowledgments
References
Appendix
Con’t
 Con’t
Title and Abstract
Title gives understandable label for area of inquiry

Abstract or Executive Summary:

● Abstract is a mini-paper (often around 200 words)
● Think of it as a substitute for the report for a
busy reader: what if your reader has only access
to the abstract?
● Purpose, Findings, Impact
○ Sentence One: expand on the title
○ Sentence Two: why the work was done
○ Remainder: key results, with numbers as
appropriate, conclusions, recommendations
 Con’t
The Introduction

Sentences that serve the key purposes of an introduction

Example: Savage, S. Eraser: A Dynamic Data Race
Detector for Multithreaded Programs. ACM Transactions
on Computer Systems, 15 (4) 391-411

Describe your field:

Multithreading has become a common programming
technique.

Explain why your problem matters

Unfortunately, debugging a multithreaded program can
be difficult.
 Con’t
Summarize prior research:
The difficulties with using threads are well
summarized by John Ousterhout{The reference}.

Propose your solution:

In this article we describe a tool, called Eraser, that
dynamically detects data races in multithreaded
programs
 Con’t
Experimental Procedures

● Describe softwares, hardware to be used

● Open with an overview of the experimental design

● Show test setups or simulations
● This section should allow any electrical or computer
engineer to duplicate your results:
● Repeat experiment
● Validate experimental design
 Con’t
Literature Review {Theory and Analysis}

In writing the literature review,

○ your purpose is to convey to your reader what
knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic,
and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
○ As a piece of writing, the literature review must be
defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research
objective, the problem or issue you are exploring, or
your thesis).
○ It is not just a descriptive list of the material available,
or a set of summaries.
 Con’t
○ It must have ;
■ Briefly describe the theory relevant to the
work
■ Provide design equations
■ Include calculations and computer
simulation results
■ Provide values for all key parameters
○
 Con’t
The Conclusion

● Similar to abstract or executive summary

● Must be concise

● Reinforces key ideas formed in discussion

● Includes recommendations for future work, such

as implementation of a design
 Con’t
References

● Various formats have been developed. Pick one

you like such as the IEEE Transactions format
● Decide on a sequence, such as the order
they appear in the text
● Always give full references such that others
may find the item
 Con’t
Plagiarism {Will be discussed MORE in chap 4}

● Never take the work of others without giving

proper credit
● Never take verbatim sentences/paragraphs from
the literature
● If you feel that you must use verbatim material,
use quotation marks and a reference. Do this
sparingly!
● There are search engines that can find if verbatim
material has been stolen. Professors fail students
who do this. Additional disciplinary action may
follow.
 Con’t
Class Activity

Assign students to groups, Each group is given One

project report from previous student reports.
Students are tasked to identify;
1. To identify the key elements of the technical
report according to class notes
2. To identify the purpose of the report from it’s
abstract and compare it to the content of the
report presented
3. Observe the language being used.
 System Documentation
- It represents documents that describe the
system itself and its parts.
- It serves as the technical specifications for the
IS and how the objectives of the IS are
accomplished.
- Users, managers and IS owners need never
reference system documentation.
- System documentation provides the basis for
understanding the technical aspects of the IS
when modifications are made.

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 Con’t
- It describes each program within the IS and
the entire IS itself.
- It describes the system’s functions,
- the way they are implemented,
- each program's purpose within the entire
IS with respect to the order of execution,
- information passed to and from programs,
and overall system flow.

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 Con’t
- It includes data dictionary entries, data flow
diagrams, object models, screen layouts, source
documents, and the systems request that
initiated the project.
- Most of the system documentation is prepared
during the system analysis and system design
phases….Refer to lectures of SAD

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 Con’t
- During systems implementation, an analyst must review
system documentation to verify that it is;
- complete,
- accurate,
- and up-to-date,
- and including any changes made during the
implementation process
- Systems documentation is technical.

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 Technical requirements
- Another example of a technical writing is a
technical requirement specification
document.

- It defines the purpose, functionalities and

the behavior of the information system.

- Therefore it defines what the system is

for, what it should do and how

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 Con’t
● Components of a technical requirement
specification document.
○ Purpose of the IS; describes what your what
the IS is for, what problems it solves, what
visions and expectations are associated with it,
etc.
○ Input / Output Requirements; these can be
softwares or hardwares and they must be
clearly stated.

○ User stories (features); User experiences can

also be included.
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 Con’t
Some tips on Writing a good technical requirement
document include;

- Make it concise and informative at the same time

- Make it easy to read
- Give it to your stakeholders for review

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 References
1. https://www.scienceofpeople.com/online-presentation/
2. Raymond Greenlaw. Technical Writing, Presentational
Skills and Online Communication: Professional Tools and
Insights. Information Science Reference. 2012
3. Mike Markel and Stuart A.Selber. Technical
communication. 12th Edition
4. Quinn J. Michael. Ethics for the Information Age. 4th
ed., Addison Wesley, 2010.
5. Penny Duquenoy, Simon Jones and Barry G. Blundell.
Ethical, Legal and Professional Issues in Computing. 1st
ed., Cengage Learning Business Press, 2007.

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