Environmental scanning is a useful tool to create awareness and knowledge of how information relates to current environmental conditions. It is usually specific to a topic.the topic is business communication, or any aspect of that topic that is discussed in the text. The process involves perusing and gathering articles from various media sources that pertain to that topic. The sources must be as reliable as possible and should be current (not more than one week old if possible). Sources can include all news web sites, business databases from the library web site, newspaper and magazine sites, and any other source that can provide up-to-date, reliable information. The article does not necessarily have to apply to any particular chapter information, it just needs to pertain to business communication in some way. This should be specified in he summary and/or the impact statement. The whole purpose of this is to tie the text book to real life and to explain how the communication process affects all of us in various ways. The process includes preparing a page of information that includes the following:

1. The title of the article

2. The source of the article

3. The date of the article

4. The url for the article

5. The author of the article

6. A good, strong summary of the article

7. An explanation as to how the information in that article could possibly impact you, now or in the future.