Knowledge Paper 1

Knowledge Paper

Sean Freeman

Beadle

CO 496

31 January 2019
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Knowledge Paper

Throughout my time at John Carroll University, there have been many classes that have

brought me to where I am today in terms of my knowledge, skills and abilities across four

separate fields. I have taken numerous Business, Political Science, Peace Justice and Human

Rights and Communication classes. Nonetheless, the lessons I have learned and information I

have gathered in my Communication classes have greatly surpassed my expectations and

provided me with useful and fundamentally-crucial skills that I can harness to my advantage not

only at John Carroll, but out in the real world as well. Three of the Communication courses

which stand out to me the most are CO 125 Speech, CO 140 Communication Technology and

Society, and CO 130 Audience Matters. While all of the classes I have taken within the

Communication & Theatre department have proven essential to the construction of who I am

today and my knowledge heading into my capstone, these three courses stick out in my mind as

having a strong sense of influence.

In the spring semester of my first year here at John Carroll, I was not a Communication

major. At that time, I was still taking most of my courses through the Boler School, pursuing a

Business degree. I was, however, taking the required Speech course for all Students with adjunct

professor, Carly Germany. Professor Germany remains one of the most articulate and well-

spoken persons I have ever met in my life. For what felt like for the first time in college, I was

engaged in the class because the teacher drew you in with their speech. Professor Germany

understood and constantly reaffirmed in her actions the incredible importance of making your

words interesting and engaging. Through her class, I learned and saw how beneficial and

interesting information is not enough to draw in an audience. Speech, tone, eye contact,

purposeful movement, facial expressions, hand gestures, volume, among so many other small yet
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significant components made any type of oral communication captivating and intriguing for

people to listen to. Her example of how to properly draw in and maintain an audience sticks

with me to this day because it has informed all of the communication I have done since her class.

Upon entering the course, I was not a confident speaker. However, through her classes and

critiques of my speeches, I was able to emerge from the course more confident and

knowledgeable than I ever had in terms of speech giving. Throughout my John Carroll

experience, I have been able to draw in audiences, provide effective communication, and make it

fun and engaging for my audiences, a skill I know I will need when I present my research at the

culmination of my Capstone.

In the fall of my sophomore year, among several other courses with Professor Will Weaver,

one of the classes I took taught by him was Communication Technology and Society. Honestly,

I did not know what to expect heading into the class since it was such a wide topic that covered

many different arenas. Nonetheless, Weaver conducted the course in a way that was incredibly

appealing and informative to my knowledge of media and its power in the world. I had always

been taught the cautionary tales of social media and how it can negatively affect you in many

ways. Despite that, I could not have accurately predicted or prepared for what I would learn in

this course to shape my understanding of the sheer power certain companies, and the internet in

general, hold. I learned that social media and the internet’s affects and influence extends to

every single facet of life and is not just limited to sports and entertainment. For just about

everything, there is a Twitter handle for it. Innumerable amounts of companies, businesses, and

non-profits rely upon the World Wide Web to get their information out into the vast cyber world

in the hopes to attract positive attention, power, money, customers, advice, and donations among

countless other desires. This is essential for me, especially for this Capstone assignment, due to
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the fact that I believe I will be researching into non-profits and their ability to draw in donations

through various forms of media and how it is presented. The power of word of mouth is still

incredibly strong in our world today, but it has taken on a seismic shift, coming in the form of

online ratings or referrals from people you may not have ever meet, but still trust to get you the

information and materials you need to make the best decision. How will the future of donations

and giving to charitable organizations change as media advances? Will the changes be beneficial

or detrimental? The power and scope of the internet was not lost on me in this course and has

greatly impacted my view of the world in which we live, displaying the ways in which

individuals, as well as organizations, currently present and need to present themselves in order to

have the best and most fruitful impact they can on any and every viewer.

Finally, in the spring of my junior year under Professor Brent Brossmann, I was enrolled in

CO 130 Audience Matters. This class worked well with the previous classes I had taken and

mentioned throughout this paper. It combined the oral speaking skills and abilities necessary to

draw in a particular audience with the vast unknown that can exist in the internet of things.

Through case studies and presentations, Brossmann showed us the impact certain messages can

have on a particular audience and their effectiveness in getting the desired audience to do what

the creators wanted them to do. We analyzed augmented videos and looked into the different

ways in which people gather and perceive information. This is incredibly vital to my Capstone

project. In a world that is currently caught up in the heat of the moment with little ability to

maintain focus on a topic, movement, situation, or really anything for an extended period of

time, NGO’s and non-profits have faced both a challenge and potentially limitless opportunity.

While it has become drastically more difficult to get your cause not only into the vision of the

public because they have to fight through all forms of information to reach their desired
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audience, certain organizations have brief periods of time where they can take advantage of the

craze and hysteria that comes with the internet. If your topic or subject matter is the rage in the

news or viral on social media that day, you have an opportunity to hit all of your fundraising

goals in one day with the right marketing and reaching the right number of people. This

obviously has its pros and cons and comes with a multitude of questions. Will specialization

come into play for non-profits as they attempt to increase giving from those they reach? In a

world that is becoming harder and harder to identify reality from created work, can online

fundraisers be trusted? How will be know where our money is going? This class showed me the

importance of knowing your audience and crafting messages that will specifically incentivize

them to your desire, and I hope to continue to expand upon that within my project.

John Carroll has taught me a great deal over my three and a half years at this institution. I

have learned from a variety of subject matter and particularly honed in on my Communication

skills and knowledge. Through certain classes like “Audience Matters”, “Communication

Technology and Society,” and “Speech,” I have garnered a particular understanding of our

world, useful skills, and methods by which communication is conducted in our modern society. I

am excited, through this Capstone assignment, to expand upon my knowledge of the field and

utilize it to learn more about and analyze a field that is incredibly important to me: non-profit

organizations.