Effective communication is made up of three key components.
The first is relatability. When you are communicating about something, you have to make sure that people can understand the importance of what you’re communicating about and why it is important to them. This is critical in scientific communication because you must communicate the importance of complex topics that may impact many people and they all must understand its importance.
Communicating at a reasonable comprehension level is the next key component. Only having a lot of research in a specific topic and knowing the complexities behind what you’re trying to say is not effective in communication. To communicate complex topics to others, you should use many analogies, common verbiage, and define all important terms. This is also important because many times, the people who need to receive the communication are typically at a disadvantage to receiving the information.
Finally, utilizing engaging methods to communicate leads to great communication. With communication, you never want to over or under communicate. You must explore the most effective way to communicate what you’re trying to say depending on your audience. Utilizing pictures, graphics, diagrams, and videos many times is more effective than presenting a plain PowerPoint or reading a lengthy article. Also, it is important to note that with the influence of social media, people want to obtain information as quickly as possible.
In my environmental communications class my sophomore year, we were tasked with communicating about an environmental problem and why we wanted to communicate about it. Everyone was tasked with presenting their research and findings, through a personal narrative. In class, we would work in smaller groups to provide feedback as we moved throughout the writing and revision process. To this day, I constantly think about a fellow classmate who communicated about rising sea levels and recycling by presenting a narrative of how she visited a specific beach every summer and came back one summer and could not even recognize it. The chilling imagery she used in the narrative mixed with scientific information made the story so impactful, kept the class engaged, and allowed for more awareness around rising sea levels among the class.