On Wednesday, you will be presenting your research as part of our Poster Presentations. I’ve made a supplemental video to help you with your poster creation.
Please, please, please create an appointment with me via my Calendly to work on your data with me if you are not 100% confident in your analysis. A reminder that your Final Research Paper isn’t due until Friday, but you are presenting your paper Wednesday.
In the words of Matthew McConaughey, “Alright, alright, alright.”
We are almost there. I have returned all First Half Drafts. If you believe you sent me a First Half Draft, please email me ASAP…though I think I got all of them, it’s not impossible that one slipped by my in my inbox.
This week we will be doing statistical analysis. Just as a reminder, have someone in your group start the 7-day trial of SPSS.
There are three recorded lectures that will help you: (1) Cleaning Data, (2) Statistical Analysis, and (3) Writing up data. We’ll go through as much as we can from these synchronously in class, but it is possible we don’t get to all three, in which case you can watch whatever videos will help you in your analysis. Alternatively, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly to work one-on-one with your data if we don’t finish in class. The project you’ve been working toward all semester is coming down to these two weeks, so if you’re unsure about anything, please contact me.
Week 13 To-Do List
❑ Attend synchronous class ( W) ❑ Read Chs. 8 & 14 ❑ Have one (or two) people download SPSS for a 7-day trial ❑ Bring your collected data ❑ If you want to get a head start on Wednesday’s class you can watch my Cleaning Data mini-lecture
If by the end of this week you are done with the following, you’re on a good track: Done with the data collection, begin analysis
This week we will finish our exploration of qualitative research, as we talk about data analysis. This type of data analysis is completely different than quantitative analysis.
This week we will be looking at data collection, with a particular emphasis on interviewing. By the end of this week, if you have the following done you’re on a good trajectory:
Wednesday: Read Ch. 13 & Lorenzano, et al., 2018 (please have read Lorenzano, et al.; we will be talking about it in class) Friday: Finish & turn in Group Update 4
We’re cruising toward the finish line, so please be in communication with me if you have any questions.
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
If by the end of this week you are done with the following, you’re on a good track: Done with the introduction, literature review, and methodology sections, and sent out your survey (Goal: at least 50 responses)
This week we will continue with our exploration of qualitative research. Last week we talked about the history of qualitative research, how it relates to the constructivist & transformativist paradigms, and the basic types of qualitative research.
This week we will be looking at data collection, with a particular emphasis on interviewing. By the end of this week, if you have the following done you’re on a good trajectory:
Wednesday: Read Ch. 13 & Hatt, 2011 (please have read Hatt; we will be talking about it in class) Friday: Finish & turn in Group Update 3 & have your survey sent out
We’re cruising toward the finish line, so please be in communication with me if you have any questions.
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
As a qualitative researcher, I’m so excited because this week we begin exploring qualitative research! Put away those calculators, this is a numbers-free zone.
To prepare, please read Ch. 12 out of your textbook. I will also be introducing Group Update 3 which is due Friday, April 23. Also, please submit a rough draft of the survey you will be sending out to complete your research by the time we meet Wednesday.
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
First of all, I hope you all had a nice Easter/spring break. I hope that it was a time of rest and rejuvenation, and that you’re ready for the home stretch of the semester.
Thus far we have been focused on quantitative research. This week we will play with quantitative data to help you see what you will be doing in a few weeks to analyze your data, but we will also examine mixed-methods research. To prepare you will be reading Chs. 7 & 11, and Hust, et al., 2008.
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
This week is the Midterm Exam. You can find the study guide here. A few items about the exam:
This is a closed notes exam
You have 120 minutes to complete the exam once you start
It will be open from midnight Wednesday morning to 11:59 p.m. midnight Wednesday night (all times Pacific) on Courses
The latest you should start the exam is 10:00 p.m., otherwise you will not get the full 120 minutes
Monday we will not be meeting in a formal class session. Rather, I will log on at our class time on our normal Zoom link and will just hang out in case anyone has any questions. No attendance is required.
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
This week is the Midterm Exam. You can find the study guide here. A few items about the exam:
This is a closed notes exam
You have 90 minutes to complete the exam once you start
It will be open from midnight Thursday morning to 11:59 p.m. midnight Thursday night (all times Pacific) on Courses
The latest you should start the exam is 10:30 p.m., otherwise you will not get the full 90 minute
Monday we will not be meeting in a formal class session. Rather, I will log on at 8 a.m. and will just hang out in case anyone has any questions. No attendance is required.
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
If you said “make slime,” you are correct. Whether you made this in your first grade classroom, or you did it as part of the Slime Craze of 2017 (TM), you are no doubt familiar with the idea of running an experiment to see what happens to items under certain circumstances–in the case of slime, mixing ingredients together.
While slime is clearly not a communication experiment, communication scholars do you experiments to see how people communicate or react to communication under certain circumstances. In some ways, prank TV shows like “Trigger Happy TV,” “Impractical Jokers,” or “Nathan For You” are like communication experiments for entertainment.
Also, please be thinking about: (1) how you are going to operationalize your variables, and (2) writing your literature review draft. I have offered feedback to your Group Update 2 outlines in your group thread in your Pepperdine email.
The Literature Review Draft due Friday is not worth points, but I’d strongly encourage you to take an hour or two this week to write your part of the draft. Anything on paper allows me to give you more concrete feedback. If you don’t turn anything in you won’t be penalized, but (and I can’t stress this enough) academic writing is a process of iterations–meaning you learn by doing, and you are constantly refining it. The only way you can begin learning and refining is by turning in a draft. This is the thing past students have said was among the most important assignments in this class, and is often the biggest difference between students who get an A and students who get a C.
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
This week we will be talking about surveys. You see this every day, even if you don’t think about it at the time. Think about the last time you went to the Apple Store. Within a few minutes you probably got something like this:
To collect data for your final projects you are going to use a survey. This week we will be discussing surveys in a little more depth. To help you, I’d encourage you to read Xiao, 2018 before we get to class because we will discuss this in class–in particular the methods section (so pay closer attention to that!).
As always, you can email me or schedule a time to meet with me via my Calendly.
COM 300: Introduction to Communication Research 