University of the Fraser Valley students and graduates interested in careers as professional writers will be treated to some free advice from local writers next month. Members of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) will be on the Abbotsford campus to talk about Writing for a Living.
Designed to help participants find the paths into professional writing, the March 12th evening event features panelists who will answer questions and network “speed dating-style” with writers who are just starting out.
“We’ve all been there,” said Lynda Grace Philippsen, President of Fraser Valley PWAC. “We all relied on mentors and know how important this is. Networking is a huge part of success as a professional writer whether you are beginning or established in your career. We’re excited about the chance to work with UFV students.”
This community-based event is a first for Fraser Valley PWAC but support for the event has been generous.
Lynda confirms, “The energy is great. Student organizations, the Alumni Association, and UFV Departments have come together with us to create the Writing for a Living event and provide sponsorship.”
Since its foundation more than 25 years ago PWAC has welcomed student and associate members who receive most of the benefits of full membership without being required to meet the criteria for publication. Those benefits include a press card, mentoring, networking, references, professional development, information about job opportunities and much more.
“Students get all that for the price of one calorie-rich specialty coffee a month. Really, it’s all win-win,” notes Lynda. As an added bonus, students who are already PWAC members in the year that they graduate can continue their student membership at the student price one full year after graduation.
All students and recent UFV graduates who love writing are welcome to attend this event. This is your chance to “get lucky” and make connections with people who share your passion.
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Time: 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Place: UFV Campus A225/229
Cost: FREE! Admission by pre-registration only. Wine and refreshments will be served at intermission.
We all interact with someone (or something) on a daily basis – it isn’t a new or groundbreaking concept. Social media, however, has allowed us to break free from the traditional methods of interaction. In the past, interactions between customers and businesses would typically be face to face or over the phone. Now, with the many social media platforms at our disposal, oftentimes we don’t even have to speak to anyone (in the traditional sense). We tweet our thoughts, we “like” Facebook posts and we “pin” stories and pictures with businesses all the time.
Companies have discovered how to latch on to the social media phenomenon and create an online presence with their content. Twitter and YouTube have pushed the concept of viral marketing into hyperdrive – if a marketing strategist comes up with the right idea, at the right time, on the right platform, exposure and attention directed at their business can increase dramatically.
For example, after Oreo stole the show during last year’s Super Bowl, JC Penney tried to cash in on some free marketing of their own. They interacted with their audience, who in turn interacted with their peers, leading to a successful marketing campaign. Here’s what the company tweeted on during the Super Bowl:
Exhibit 1:
This was followed by:
Tweet 2
And finally:
Effective? Judging by the amount of retweets, favourites and attention they received, I’d say it a marketing ploy well executed. I certainly don’t follow JC Penney on Twitter, but I was made well aware of their social media presence on Sunday.
This is just a brief example of interactivity on social media. Of course we can observe many instances of customer service and public relations type interactions over social media as well. A company’s ability to resolve customer issues and complaints through social media is one of the most effective ways to build and maintain a positive reputation. The truth is social media is still in its infancy and companies and consumers will continue to discover and innovate with new ways to interact through the medium.
Twenty-five students slowly got the hang of using Twitter to write their notes instead of pulling out pencil and paper, and took the opportunity to tweet questions for Wendy to answer. The classroom was rife with electronic/digital/mobile technology with one projector and screen for Wendy’s slides and another for the Twitter feed; not to mention all the laptops and cell phones.
In the upcoming sessions of the course, students from the Communications, Business, Computer Information Sciences, Global Development Studies and other departments will be a exploring topics from social media theory to the latest digital tools and applying their knowledge to various forms of social media writing practices. Each participant will be part of a small team that will pitch a social media plan to a local not-for-profit or social enterprise. Clients include the Abbotsford Food Bank, Yarrow Ecovillage, Fronya Boutique, Family Life and the Mission Folk Festival.
If you are tired of being told to put your cell phone away during class, think about signing up for a course that improves your social media game and encourages you to friend, like, and tweet while the instructor is talking.
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Dr. Marcella LaFever (University of New Mexico, 2005) is an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at the University of the Fraser Valley. She specializes in intercultural communication and brings that expertise to various subjects such as communication for workplace, instruction, social media, team and public speaking contexts.
(Article Written by Valerie Franklin, Student CMNS/JRNL 300)
John Vigna’s CMNS/JRNL 300 students got a chance to learn from one of Abbotsford’s most experienced newsmen when Mike Archer, editor and co-founder of the local news website Abbotsford Today, paid a visit to their class last Thursday. During his hour-long talk, Archer drew on his 20 years of experience in the media industry to answer students’ questions about editors’ standards, journalism ethics, the job market, and the world of online news writing.
Although he offered plenty of positive advice, it was often balanced with candid warnings of what young journalists might face. Because of the competitive nature of freelance journalism, he encouraged students not to be disappointed if they have to spend years working their way up.
“When you’re looking for work, your idea of being a journalist or a writer may always not conform to the thing you get offered,” Archer says.
A recurring theme in his advice was the importance of developing strong writing skills while in school.
“I’d like you to start thinking of yourselves as writers before you think of yourselves as journalists,” he says. “If you can tell a story, I can teach you how to tell it the way I want it told.”
The highlight of the class was a mock editorial meeting where we pitched and tested our news story ideas with Archer.
(For every class, we conduct mock editorial meetings in small groups, summarizing the news for our own “beats”. There are six groups of 4-5 students. Each group has a different beat that they cover and update the class on weekly: Local news, Provincial news, National news, International news, Business news, and Arts/Culture/Sports/Quirks & Quarks. We test our pitches within our own editorial groups and then present them to the class to receive feedback. The exercise teaches us how to breakdown basic news stories and how to critically reflect on and communicate those ideas in brief pitches as you would in a newsroom).
Archer received students’ pitches for news stories and organized them according to the newspaper section they would fall under. Pitches included colony collapse disorder among bees, racial tensions in Britain, Australian smoking advertisements, black market gasoline, and an escaped sex offender who recently slipped over the Canada/US border.
Archer marked stars next to two of the pitches, black market gas and colony collapse disorder. He explained why these topics might make the front page when others might not: each story had deeper implications, an element of the bizarre, possible human interest angles, and the potential for catchy headlines with words like “panic” and “black market”.
As editor of Abbotsford Today, Archer is naturally interested in the trend away from traditional media and toward online news sites. Students were asked what they use for their main news source, and, predictably, none of the answers involved print.
“I use Twitter or iPad apps,” said one student. Others agreed, saying that they used their phones and social media sites to follow the news.
“With the news on Facebook, you can leave a comment or see what other people think,” another said.
Archer enjoys online journalism because it allows editors and journalists more freedom in what they want to write about and when they can publish it. The interaction between writers and their audience also appeals to him.
“Media is much more driven by the audience today,” he says.
Although online journalism is becoming increasingly popular as a career, Archer warned students that journalists are often at the bottom of the food chain in the media business. He also cautioned students to do their research before plunging into a new job.
“Take your time looking at the newspaper, the television station, the radio station, the website that you’re thinking of applying for a job at,” he says. “Do they fit your worldview? Do they fit your opinions? Do they fit your idea of what media is about?”
Before leaving, Archer offered the class an open invitation to write for his website. Many of Abbotsford Today’s unpaid contributors are aspiring journalists looking for real-world experience – a perfect opportunity for students.
“I want you to write about whatever you’re interested in,” he says. “I don’t just want you to get published. I want you to get published in a way that’s going to help you.”
Jim has been travelling around the world, interviewing communication reearchers, cognitive psychologists and spiritual leaders (even the Dali Lama) on public trust. Jim asked them all why, when all the scientific evidence points to the need for urgent, global environmental action, are we doing so little?
Jim has put all of this into a new book, The Polluted Public Square. He got the name for this book after talking to Dan Kahan from Yale’s Law School, who believes that public conversations can be polluted in the same way that the environment can be polluted.
Industry public relations experts and environmental advocates are jointly to blame for this polluted public square, according to Jim. He says that the polarization and disagreement we see from scientists, government, industry and advocacy groups on environmental issues is equivalent to hearing people shouting outside our homes. He quotes Linguistics professor, Deborah Tannen:
When you hear a ruckus outside your house you open the window to see
what’s going on. But if you hear a ruckus every night you close the shutters
and ignore it.
People are tuning out because environmental issues seem unsolvable, and while Jim doesn’t profess to have all the answers, he’s devoted a good chunk of the last few years trying to tune people back in to public debate. But communicating in a polluted public square requires us to take different approaches. Jim quotes Psychology professor Jonathan Haidt:
“I’m right, you’re wrong. Let me tell you what you should think” doesn’t
work because we all think we are right.
From Jim’s conversations with Haidt, he came to understand that humans are wired for ‘group righteousness’, and that we need to step outside this frame to reach others. Jim says that not demonising the opponent makes sense in theory but people have a hard time resisting. Harvard Public Policy lecturer, Marshall Ganz told Jim to watch Al Pacino’s locker room speech scene for inspiration.
Jim wants to see a compelling sustainability narrative that incorporates environmental information but also focuses on fairness and justice — an emotional dialogue. Jim says that people need to tell their own story and then tell the ‘story of us’ as a population and what we stand for. We won’t find this story without listening.
“Ghandi had salt to bring people together,” Jim says. “Find the salt.”
Ghandi picking up salt after his march. Source=http://www.calpeacepower.org/0101/images/1930-pick-salt-GS_BG.jpg |Date=April 1930. |Author=unknown
September 18th has been designated as a “Day of Learning” by the University of the Fraser Valley, not only about the residential school experience of Canada’s First Peoples, but about the long-term and long-ranging effects of the experience of colonialism and the oppressive/degrading attitudes of the colonizers of North America. I am excited about being able to involve all my Fall 2013 students in some aspect of this learning as well as learning for myself and how I can use materials in future years.
Here are some of the ways I will be engaging in the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) dialogue with my students in my introductory CMNS courses: 125 and 155 Online, and in 180 (Intercultural Communication).
After doing some in-class orientation to the Day of Learning all students will have a related assignment:
– a choice of a) participating on campus in either Abbotsford or Chilliwack on September 18, b) engaging in an online activity related to the residential school experience (for online students) c) traveling to Vancouver to participate in the learning events taking place on the PNE grounds, d) participating in the walk from Coqualeetza, and e) volunteering to assist with the Sept. 18 events at the Abbotsford campus.
– For CMNS 125, 155 a requirement to write a workplace memo about their experience and learning
– For CMNS 180 to write a personal reflection essay
Most of all I am excited that the intercultural communication regular class time actually falls on Wednesday September 18 and will allow those students to participate in preparatory work, volunteering and a learning session designed specifically to fit into a topic they would be studying in class: identity and values. They will be helping to host a campus-wide learning session from 6-8 PM on that evening.
Have you thought about how you can get your students involved? It would be great to see some comments here about your ideas. Maybe they will spark other instructors to get involved as well in all disciplines and departments.
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Dr. Marcella LaFever (University of New Mexico, 2005) is an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at the University of the Fraser Valley. She specializes in intercultural communication and brings that expertise to various subjects such as communication for workplace, instruction, social media, team and public speaking contexts.
We’re very pleased and proud (but not surprised) to report Dr. Linda Pardy has won UFV’s Teaching Excellence Award for 2012-13. The official announcement came out on UFV Today, but we couldn’t pass up the chance to offer our congratulations for the well-earned honour to Linda here at the CMNS blog.
Linda’s dynamic and engaging teaching style, innovative course offerings and incredible rapport with students have been well-known within the department since she started teaching for Communications in 2007, and now her stellar reputation for excellence in the classroom has been recognized by the university as a whole.
Congratulations to Dr. Pardy for this well-deserved award.
“I was moved by her speech and story and felt she showed a real ability to connect and be responsive to the audience.” This quote from Oral Communications instructor Raymond Welch says a great deal about some of the reasons why Katherine Palmateer’s classmates nominated her for the Rise and Shine Toastmasters’ Annual Achievement Award; and why the selections committee agreed.
From each May until the next April, the students from every course section of Communications 235 (Oral Communications) take the time to nominate one of their own to represent the best in public speaking practices and skills. Students learn how to capture and keep the attention of their audience, backup their information with credible sources, put arguments together in a way that makes sense, and continually practice speaking clearly and confidently (among many other things).
If you’re interested in perfecting your oral presentation and speech-making skills, you can get ahead of the game by signing up for CMNS 235. The course is designed using the same proven methods that Toastmasters International has developed and championed since 1924. Even if you don’t have the time to take the course (or end up too far down the waitlist) you still have the opportunity to benefit by joining the Rise and Shine Toastmasters club, which meets on campus at UFV (Fridays from 7:20 to 8:20 am in A225). Katherine did both – and it paid off (literally).
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Dr. Marcella LaFever (University of New Mexico, 2005) is an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at the University of the Fraser Valley. She specializes in intercultural communication and brings that expertise to various subjects such as communication for workplace, instruction, social media, team and public speaking contexts.
What do group decision making, professional human guinea pigs, natural disasters, and scientific misconduct have in common? These were the topics that stood out to me at the Canadian Association of Research Ethics Boards 2013 National Conference: Fifty Shades of Research Ethics.
Presenters on these topics spoke passionately about the role of communication and language practices that can help or hinder researchers from conducting research in ethical ways.
Drawing on Barry Schwartz’s work from the book, The Paradox of Choice, Ivor highlighted some of the communication-related factors that may influence these different decisions.
“REB members, like all humans, tend to make decisions based on loss aversion,” he said.
“When people are faced with situations that are framed in how many people will survive, they are less likely to make a decision involving increased risk. But when situations are framed in terms of the number of deaths that could occur, people are more likely to accept increased risk.”
Ivor also found that words like ‘should’ and ‘shall’ in review guidelines invoked the desire for more deliberation in some REB members, in comparison to words that reflected ‘reasonableness’ or ‘a favourable balance’ of benefits and risks.
REB members can also influence each others’ decisions through processes such as reciprocation.
“If I agree with you now, you might feel obliged to return the favour and agree with me later on,” he said.
“Social proof, also known as ‘monkey see monkey do’ influences decisions. You can see this mimicry in practice when you watch street crossing behaviour. One person goes and the rest follow, even though a light may not be green.”
Ivor also discussed the human tendency for people to defer to authority and agree with people they like (or like the look of) as issues for REBs to be aware of.
Selling their bodies for science
Roberto Abadie, author of The Professional Guinea Pig spent years tracking people who make their living as volunteers for human drug trials in the United States. He found that these ‘professional human guinea pigs’ could earn a good living by ‘selling their bodies’ in clinical drug trials in comparison to what they could earn in other professions available to them.
The Professional Guinea Pig was recently published by Duke Press
“The financial benefits outweigh most of the perceptions of risks for these professional guinea pigs,” said Roberto.
He found that some of the professional volunteers saw the Ethics Consent Form for these trials as their job contract, rather than an informative document (describing the risks and benefits for participating in the research).
“Once it [consent form] was signed, they [volunteers] would be paid to work in the study. They would essentially know their job conditions.”
Roberto also found that some of the professional guinea pigs saw the consent form as a hurdle to jump. The form described the expectations of the researchers in relation to the participants as well as the risks but once it was signed, participants could forget about it.
These attitudes to Participant Consent Forms were a surprise to me. Participants need to be fully informed about the risks and benefits of a study to give truly informed consent. But if large sums of money are involved then this seems to override almost all other considerations. I was so impressed by this talk that I bought a copy of Roberto’s book (just published by Duke University Press).
Putting the community first
Anna Pujaidas Botey from the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research spoke about research she was involved in after the Slave Lake Fires in 2011. She and her collaborators visited the Slave Lake community in August 2011, only three months after one third of the town was destroyed by fire.
The team were interested in researching community resilience and rebuilding after the event, but received some initial resistance from a Slave Lake Council member to conducting the research.
Aerial image taken taken of the town of Slave Lake during the May 2011 fires. Retrieved from http://www.slavelake.ca/live/Photo+GallerySL/Fire___Recovery
“We spent a few weeks in the community, talking to people and working with Councillors and Emergency Planning staff, before starting to interview anyone,” she said.
“The needs and priorities of these affected communities have to come first in this research. Without direct benefit to them [community], it [the research] is not ethically sound.”
Anna and the team also invested research funds into making sure that the findings of the study would contribute to future emergency planning in the community—and involved those who would be most affected.
The group gave public presentations, wrote pieces for the local paper and other media outlets and posted the study findings on a website.
Retracting science
Adam Marcus, a journalist and cofounder of Retraction Watch, has been tracking scientific misconduct since 2010. He said he started the site with Ivan Oransky, MD as a way to give people a widow into the scientific process.
“Science takes pride in self correcting but it has no process for talking about that when it comes to the demise of a paper,” said Adam.
Adam and Ivan decided to create a blog rather than a print publication on retractions because they thought the blog was “more nimble”, less expensive, and more transparent.
Contrary to what researchers have believed, the majority of research paper retractions are due to misconduct rather than mistakes. Adam supplied examples of researcher misconduct ranging from plagiarism and falsifying images to poor graduate student supervision and ‘losing’ data once a paper has been published. Some researchers made up research participants or ignored the need for ethics approval.
“Researchers are under enormous pressure to publish, but we all need to represent ourselves fairly and honestly to people who are actually paying us and supporting us,” said Adam.
Not everyone is pleased with the Retraction Watch blog. Retrieved from http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/?s=damn+business
Not everyone is pleased with what Retraction Watch is doing. Adam said he has encountered resistance from some journal editors when he has inquired into the nature of a retraction.
“Just because we are seeing a rise in retractions doesn’t mean science is crumbling,” he said.
“The numbers of retractions are still small compared to output. Scientists are human, with human desires. Perhaps we are looking more closely at this issue than we were in the past.”
Retraction Watch is read by scientists and policy makers but is also useful for Research Integrity Officers, funding bodies and REBs.
Last week’s UFV Student Research Day got me thinking about research posters and the work that goes into producing a good one.
Tyler Schilbach, presents the research he conducted in CMNS 155 with Marcella LeFever at the UFV Student Research Day
I was a judge for the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts posters at the Student Research Day, so in this post I’ll talk about poster viewing situations and the difficulties of communicating complexity and substance in a research poster.
It’s all about the situation
I know, I know – you already understand that ‘communication is all about the audience’, but researchers producing posters need to think about the two situations where viewers will come into contact with their poster. Firstly, when a researcher is standing with their poster and secondly, when the poster stands alone.
When a poster is used as a visual aid during a poster session, viewers are more interested in talking to the researcher rather than focusing on the poster. The poster becomes a visual aid for the researcher to get their main points across and answer viewer questions. Informative visuals (diagrams, maps, graphs, tables etc.) are essential for making key points.
Poster placement might make it difficult for you to know if your visuals will be at eye level for viewers.
Viewers will only spend five minutes or so at a poster. Can the visuals help viewers get the gist of the research in a few minutes? Will viewers put their back out bending down to see a visual? Keep visuals at eye level where possible. The presenters of the three winning posters in my judging category at the UFV Student Research Day all used prominently-placed informative visuals (top left or top centre) to get their main findings across: a map of broad-leaf maple tree poaching areas identified in the Fraser Valley, a map of Blackfoot oral history sites using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and a graph depicting financial returns on Chilliwack seasonal agricultural enterprises.
Posters also stand alone. There will be times when the researcher won’t be there to ‘interpret’ their poster. Poster design needs to take account of attracting viewers and helping them navigate through the poster by themselves. Obviously, a title that can be read from 2-3 metres away and contains key words about the research (e.g. maple trees, Blackfoot, GIS, seasonal agriculture) is going to attract viewers interested the research subject. Specialised poster sessions allow researchers to use more technical terminology, but general poster sessions require generalised titles. I heard comments from some of my fellow judges last week that some of the posters on the Student Research Day contained too much text, and that the text was too small to read at a distance. In stand-alone situations, posters need text in a good size font and plenty of white space to encourage a viewer to move in closer to engage. It is tempting to try to say too much, but resist.
What will encourage someone to stop and engage with your research poster when you aren’t there?
Indicative visuals (that guide viewers) become more important when posters stand alone. Two of the three winning posters last week used the traditional three column format and all three posters were designed to be read up-down, left to right. The information was broken up into smaller, manageable sections. Descriptive section headings are essential so viewers can ‘scan’. I have seen some good posters formatted in a circle that take viewers through the poster sections in a clockwise direction. If you think viewers might be confused, consider using arrows to guide them.
Complexity and substance
A visually-appealing poster is not a good research poster without engaging research content. Researchers attend poster presentations to meet other researchers and add to their own state of knowledge about research – they want to see something new. All three winning poster presenters tackled significant issues for particular communities. The student researchers conducted some original research on an issue, presented some data or interesting findings, and discussed the implications of the work for the affected community and/or other researchers.
Until very recently, research posters were considered the ‘poor cousin’ to the research presentation. But with technology making it easier to produce a professional-looking product, and the flexibility offered for viewers to come and go in poster sessions, this format is gaining in popularity. One thing to keep in mind is that posters can only convey so much, and not all research content is ideally suited to posters. For example, some research in branches of philosophy, literary studies or history (that traffic in theoretical concepts) might be difficult to translate easily to poster form. If the information in each section takes more than a few seconds for a viewer to adsorb, then it may not belong on a poster.
What can you bring along to complement your poster? This year’s AVP Research – Humanities & Social Sciences prize winner, Steve Clegg, brought along some maple wood samples to show the kind of ‘chunk’ that poachers take from trees. He put a piece of this wood up to the light to show viewers the attractive wood grain finish that poachers were after. For me, this made the presentation more memorable than the poster text alone.
Paul Foth (left) won the UFV Dean of Science prize for his poster, Synthetic Steps of GFP Chromophore Analogue.
If you decide to produce a poster for a research day or conference, remember to include the names of your supervisor/s or collaborators, institutional affiliations and your contact details on the poster. If the poster is an advertisement for your research, viewers need to know who is involved and how to contact you for more information.
“We’ve all been there,” said Lynda Grace Philippsen, President of Fraser Valley PWAC. “We all relied on mentors and know how important this is. Networking is a huge part of success as a professional writer whether you are beginning or established in your career. We’re excited about the chance to work with UFV students.”
