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Communication can be:
- Synchronous or Asynchronous: Communication where everyone is present (either online or face-to-face) and interacting simultaneously (synchronous) or where people pass on their information to be received at a later time (asynchronous). The guidelines Synchronous Web-Based Communication and Asynchronous Web-Based Communication give further information about the pros and cons of these when using web-based technologies.
- Ad hoc or Planned: Some forms of communication (e.g. face-to-face meetings, chat room meetings) may be planned and others (e.g. chat in the corridor or MSN Messenger) may be more informal and unplanned.
- Push or Pull: These are terms used to describe two different modes of communicating information. Push technologies provide information in a form where no extra effort is required to access it, eg sending an email to your email address, ie it comes to you. Pull technologies require you to search out the information, eg putting it onto a website which then
requires the user to access that website, ie you have to go to it.
- A combination of conveyance and convergence: Media Synchronicity Theory (MST) (Dennis et al 1998) examines various modes of communication depending on which is most appropriate for the situation. Conveyance is the MST phrase for transmission of information, eg passing on information about the time and place of a meeting by email. Convergence is when
different opinions are exchanged and brought together to form a document or decision, eg working out the best time for a meeting, or at a face-to-face meeting or videoconference.
Different communication tools offer different opportunities for:
- rehearsing (thinking through what is to be communicated before it is said or sent)
- revising (changing something once it’s sent)
- archiving (recording what has been communicated)
- the speed of feedback
- the likelihood of feedback
This tool is important in choosing which communication tools to use.
Back to Communication Strategies and Tools - Overview
