Guest Post: Kelvin U. Mbatu

Kelvin is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about virtual communication.

Virtual communication technology refers to any means of interacting with others in virtual reality or cyberspace brought about by computer-mediated communication (CMC).

In our society today, technology has globalized the communication process by making interacting with others more accessible; we can now communicate with a friend or co-worker in another country or continent cheaply and instantaneously, too. We can earn a college degree or take continuous learning classes over the internet with the click of a few buttons. The proliferation of information and communication tools, like e-mail, instant messaging and Internet telephony has revolutionized the way we work and live.

Virtual communication has brought about a myriad of new opportunities and challenges. There has been an increase in communication flow and knowledge sharing, businesses have evolved new strategies for communication and marketing, huge savings have been made on travel cost and time, etc. However, one problem that virtual communication is faced with is how to incorporate nonverbal communication?

Nonverbal communication, such as facial expressions and hand gestures, plays an important role in effective communication and relationship building. In face-to-face communication, we generally tend to search for signals when verbal messages are unclear or ambiguous. This important element of validating understanding is taken away in most virtual communication. Virtual communications tools such instant messengers have attempted to solve this problem by incorporating smiley faces (such as the :) smiley face) and some other new "texting language" as some individuals call it; however, it does lack the emotion of a face to face interaction with someone.

Today, virtual communication skills are being taught in several organizations as virtual communications tools - e-mail, social networks, and instant messengers – are increasing in capacity and global acceptance.

References:
Effective Virtual Communication, eHow.com
Virtual Communications