A few months ago, for my professional job at Pearson Online Learning Services, I co-conducted a training that covered online engineering program accreditation, education requirements, and licensure. Yes, it was scintillating (full sarcasm intended). While the topic was not riveting for most people, the training was necessary to assist online student support advisors who needed to reference specific information as they talked to prospective engineering students. As a necessary balm for the heavy content, the end of the training included a short section titled “How to talk to an engineer.” The purpose of this section, while peppered with some humor, was to assist the online advisors with practical tips to converse with engineers. The online advisors had experienced difficulties in conversations and e-mails with these prospective students, noting that the engineers would be curt, find a conversation about the school’s sport teams to be a waste of time (small talk), or not include socially accepted niceties such as “Have a nice day” or “I appreciate your help.” It is no secret that some people with certain technical expertise and minds struggle with what others take for granted as normal communications and interactions. There have been a number of peerreviewed published papers which address scientific individuals who struggle with casual communication and social expectations. My short piece for the advisor training, however, relied on non-published online articles and informative blog postings. After the training, I moved on to other projects. But my mind kept returning to the item on communicating with engineers. I surmised that this issue might not be confined to just engineering, but to other disciplines and professions as well. As further inspiration that this was not a unique phenomenon, I was struggling with a very artistic person who seemed incapable of staying on track with his work. All our transactions, due to geographical location, were at a distance (phone, e-mail, text pictures). Phone communications were often strained because his explanations seemed to wander, as can occur with an open and fluid worldview. Frustratingly, the person would fail to take notes and direction, yet he was working on a major construction effort! This person had some of the best design skills I had ever witnessed, enhancing already created building plans with an artistic change here and there that resulted in beauty and function. His ability to see art and use science in his work was a definite asset. However, he seemed to bounce from task to task and often would not fully complete a project, much less on time. It seemed to me that his artistic, fluid, and open predilection interfered with completing a project. In a different span of time, I also seemed to be inundated with examples of poor communication in both verbal and written form: online applications and instructions that seemed to lead nowhere in very Kafka-esque fashion; directions for a community event that did not include basic information about times and parking; and my least favorite, a toll pass company which had created communication silos with its online billing wing so that neither group could access the others’ information and address my concerns. At first, I thought it was solely my problem, that I was the one confused or limited in understanding. But conversations with friends and family led me to believe

中文翻译：

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使用缪斯来简化远程学习交易

几个月前，为了我在 Pearson Online Learning Services 的专业工作，我参与了一项培训，内容涵盖在线工程项目认证、教育要求和许可。是的，它很耀眼（完全是讽刺）。虽然这个话题对大多数人来说并不吸引人，但培训对于帮助在线学生支持顾问是必要的，他们在与未来的工程专业学生交谈时需要参考特定信息。作为沉重内容的必要安慰，培训的结尾包括一个标题为“如何与工程师交谈”的简短部分。本节的目的虽然带有一些幽默，但旨在帮助在线顾问提供与工程师交谈的实用技巧。在线顾问在与这些潜在学生的对话和电子邮件中遇到了困难，注意到工程师会生硬，发现关于学校运动队的谈话是在浪费时间（闲聊），或者不包括社会公认的好话，例如“祝你有美好的一天”或“我感谢你的帮助。” 众所周知，一些具有某些技术专长和思想的人会与其他人认为理所当然的正常交流和互动作斗争。有许多同行评审的已发表论文针对那些在随意交流和社会期望中挣扎的科学个人。然而，我关于顾问培训的简短文章依赖于未发表的在线文章和信息丰富的博客文章。培训结束后，我转向其他项目。但我的思绪一直回到与工程师沟通的项目上。我推测这个问题可能不仅限于工程，但也适用于其他学科和专业。作为进一步的灵感，这不是一个独特的现象，我正在与一个非常有艺术性的人作斗争，他似乎无法跟上他的工作。由于地理位置的原因，我们所有的交易都是在远处进行的（电话、电子邮件、文字图片）。电话沟通常常很紧张，因为他的解释似乎有些飘忽不定，而开放和流动的世界观可能会发生这种情况。令人沮丧的是，这个人不会做笔记和指导，但他正在做一项重大的建设工作！这个人拥有我见过的一些最好的设计技能，通过在这里和那里的艺术变化来增强已经创建的建筑计划，从而产生美感和功能。他在作品中看到艺术和使用科学的能力是一项明确的资产。然而，他似乎从一个任务到另一个任务跳来跳去，经常不能完全完成一个项目，更不用说按时完成了。在我看来，他对艺术、流畅和开放的偏爱妨碍了完成一个项目。在不同的时间跨度里，我似乎也被口头和书面形式沟通不畅的例子所淹没：在线申请和说明似乎以卡夫卡式的方式无处可去；不包括有关时间和停车的基本信息的社区活动指南；而我最不喜欢的，是一家收费通行证公司，该公司通过其在线计费部门创建了通信孤岛，因此两个团队都无法访问其他人的信息并解决我的问题。一开始，我以为这完全是我的问题，我是一个困惑或理解有限的人。