BusinessUnited: Strategies to Overcome Online Communication Barriers

This individual report, prepared for BusinessUnited, addresses the communication barriers encountered during online classes, particularly those arising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report identifies various challenges, including technical, emotional, physical, noise, and cultural barriers faced by both students and teachers. It explores relevant organizational communication theories, such as Weber’s classic theory, Tompkins’s and Cheney’s theory, and Deetz’s Managerialism Theory, to provide a theoretical framework for understanding these issues. The main body of the report offers strategies to overcome these barriers, such as encouraging sharing, providing clear directions, setting reminders, and addressing technical and emotional issues. The report concludes with recommendations for BusinessUnited to implement stronger communication channels, drawing from Weber's theory, to improve the effectiveness of online learning and foster a more cohesive learning environment. The report emphasizes the importance of addressing these communication challenges to enhance the overall educational experience for students and faculty.

Individual Report

Abstract
In this report barriers of communication are discussed which are occurring while
conducting online classes due to covid-19 in BusinessUnited. Students of BusinessUnited are
facing many issues during online classes which are discussed earlier. Now this report is
provide some generic solutions to the administrative department so that they can improve the
efficiency and remove online communication barriers.

Table of Contents
Abstract......................................................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Main Body..................................................................................................................................4
General theories of organisational communication................................................................4
Barriers of communication at BusinessUnited.......................................................................5
Effective strategies for overcome the communication barriers..............................................6
Recommendation........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
Communication is one of the important tool in any organisation, it help an
organisation to perform effectively and remove barriers within organisation. Effective
communication is an ability to convey one message to another party in an effective and
efficient manner. Effective communication are helpful for the educational institute in order to
prevent some major barriers. In this report, a follow-up is conducted with some major
complainants of students and teachers during online classes conducted in BusinessUnited
(Abdul-Raheem, 2016). This report consists some general theories on communication, major
barriers of communication in BusinessUnited and different strategies which must be adopted
by the college in order to increase productiveness of online classes.
Main Body
General theories of organisational communication
Organisational communication is grown field in the industry as it is important in all
the sectors to follow communication channel for more effective result. In the BusinessUnited
college, communication process is good till the classes are offline but after covid-19. As
because of that classes are conducted online and its create lots of communication barriers
within an organisation. To solve this some of the theories are discussed in detail:
 Weber’s classic organisational theory: This theory is mainly used in bureaucratic
organisational structure. Weberian theory explain that organisation must have clearly
defined their goals and responsibilities and for that communication must be presented
through hierarchal, structured and clear way (Popular Theories of Organizational
Communication, 2021). While applying this theory in BusinessUnited, a clear
structured is followed by all teachers and other administrative staff. Which help the
students to follow up a proper guidelines and communicate their issues which they are
facing. By applying this theory the scope of confusion is reduced hence the role and
duties of the individual are clearly specified within the department.
 Tompkins’s and Cheney’s organisational control theory: This theory is further
extension of weber’s classic organisational theory. This is followed by bureaucratic
organisational but this theory is totally unstructured. This theory focus on mainly four
major communication channels which are simple, methodological, administrative and
concretive. While applying this theory in the college, this could be helpful as if the

application of this theory is implemented then, the progression of the organisation is
must be keep very simple models to implement in administrative departments to use
technical and finally a department where all employees know that what are expected
from others and they all are working to attain the same objectives.
 Deetz’s Managerialism Theory: This theory is the main evaluation of the
organisational theories. This theory is one of them which define how organisational
communication and their span of control is important and the same time most of the
classical ideas are replaced with respect to different external factors of an
organisation. This theory is beyond some ideas of organisational communication,
instead of this deetz’s posits a view of organisation which are taken into consideration
of democratic aspiration of people (Arvizu, and Saravia-Shore, 2017). Furthermore
this theory suggest that power of communication is must be kept in centre of an
organisation. While applying this theory in BusinessUnited College, it must be
consider that idea of communication is keep central so that everyone can
communicate easily with each other.
Barriers of communication at BusinessUnited
 Technical Barriers: This is one of important aspect in online communication, poor
Wi-Fi facility is one of the technical barrier as with this students can miss the lectures
during classes and not able to catch the information easily. Most of the teachers and
students are using old technology laptops which often take time to load new pages. In
BusinessUnited this barrier is facing by every second student and teachers also. Many
other technical problems are occur during online classes which have to solve by
organisation.
 Emotional Barriers: Students are at their homes, so they are missing the chance to
interact with peers’ classmates and get bored during the long lectures. Students feel
bored and isolated while studying from home. Furthermore there are many other
distractions are face by students and teachers while online classes conducting at their
home (Blanco-Portela and et.al., 2017). Like disturbance of TV’s, speakers or songs
noise, family appearance during classes and cell phones. All of these covered under
emotional barriers of online communication. Because of this students feel
demotivated and do not concentrate on their studies properly.
 Physical Barriers: This is important barrier which is actually faced by students as,
while sitting in front of laptop screen comes with the result of back pain, headache

and reducing eye powers. This issue is not solved until and unless, students are
changed their sitting and make themselves comfortable. They are not able to sit
properly on the basis of their online class’s tough schedule.
 Nosie Barriers: This barriers is mostly occurred by students during the classes, most
of students continuously interrupt the zoom lecture, which make distractions for other
students as well and they are not able to focus on teacher’s lecture. During online
classes, irrelevant material are waste the time of class and the course are not has been
completed on time because of annoying things and noise distraction from the class or
from the outer environment (Kholmuminov, Kholmuminov and Wright, 2019).
 Cultural Barriers: This barrier is occur due to some unsatisfied cultural barrier
occurring due to the difference and issues comes in online classes. Most of the
students of BusinessUnited, are come London before lockdown due to some
administrative work of college and now when they stuck in lockdown they felt
homesick. Many of students are not able to communicate with teachers because of
their different languages. Students are missing their home and friends with whom they
can communicate in their own languages.
Effective strategies for overcome the communication barriers
After knowing different type of barriers within an organisation, there are some
strategies which are used to overcome them in organisation. Online learning is the new trend
which are happening due to covid-19 impact. This is major challenges when it compared to
traditional classroom as because students are mainly separated from their tutor by learning on
computer screen.
 Encourage sharing: With the help of social media, teachers and organisations are
encourage students. Students can share different type of sources which are related to
different type of course through Facebook and twitter handle (Mukhopadhyay, 2020).
All these things are helpful for teacher and students as they are now become more
thoughtful and conscious which are related to their studies.
 Provide directions to students in different ways: Teachers should be clear and
concise with their directions and expectations with students related to their subjects.
Furthermore, they can provide different directions for studying such as email, online
classes and major video classes. Different forms of PDF, Google drive, and many
online E-books are work as the support of students from where students get support in
their learning.

 Set remainders: Teachers can populate their course content with high deadlines and
timely set remainders to students. This will help students to learn things and achieve
their daily targets. If a student may falls behind, then they can speak with other
students, by which they can easily get back on track. It further helpful for them as
what they have to complete and till when.
 Avoid technical barriers: In the organisation, they should provide a relevant support
related to technological barriers (Passey and Samways, 2016). With the help of
providing laptops, network supportability and proper pdf formats books and hard copy
must be deliver to students. These barriers are order to overcome the different
challenges which are occurring due to online classes.
 Avoid Emotional barriers: For this teachers can make another group for students
where they can talk freely and talk their personal issues to communicate with their
friends. Furthermore it will help the students to make strong motivation in order to
prevent major inefficiency.
Recommendation
After having all discussion, it can be recommended that in BusinessUnited College,
they should make some strong communication channel while following the Weber’s classical
organisational theory (Rutter, Lettice and Nadeau, 2017). This theory will be helpful for the
students and teachers to make a strong bound. When they follow up with definite solution, all
students and teacher know where they have to communicate while having some issues during
their classes.
Conclusion
From the above report it is concluded that, communication is an effective channel
where they can make strong bounding and increase their efficiency. Good communication
channel are helpful for the students and teachers to avoid major issues and barriers while
having online classes. Due to covid-19, there are various issues and problems are faced by
educational institution. And to overcome those issues, all of them are having some major
solutions and strategies in order to remove barriers. All these are somehow related to cultural
ethics within an organisation as to follow the culture is very important for the educational
institute.

References
Books and Journals
Abdul-Raheem, J., 2016. Faculty diversity and tenure in higher education. Journal of cultural
diversity, 23(2).
Arvizu, S.F. and Saravia-Shore, M. eds., 2017. Cross-cultural literacy: Ethnographies of
communication in multiethnic classrooms. Routledge.
Blanco-Portela, N. and et.al., 2017. Towards the integration of sustainability in Higher
Education Institutions: A review of drivers of and barriers to organisational change
and their comparison against those found of companies. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 166, pp.563-578.
Kholmuminov, S., Kholmuminov, S. and Wright, R.E., 2019. Resource dependence theory
analysis of higher education institutions in Uzbekistan. Higher Education, 77(1),
pp.59-79.
Mukhopadhyay, M., 2020. Total quality management in education. SAGE Publications Pvt.
Limited.
Passey, D. and Samways, B. eds., 2016. Information Technology: supporting change through
teacher education. Springer.
Rutter, R., Lettice, F. and Nadeau, J., 2017. Brand personality in higher education:
anthropomorphized university marketing communications. Journal of Marketing for
Higher Education, 27(1), pp.19-39.
Online
Popular Theories of Organizational Communication, 2021. [Online]. Available through:<
https://www.managementstudyguide.com/helical-model-of-communication.htm>.