CSCA with the Dimensionators: Drew's Experience

Last week our group had the opportunity to share our G.I.F.T with various communication studies professors at the Central States Communication Association conference. This year’s conference was held in Minneapolis, MN and was themed around elevating communication studies. This was my first conference and I honestly I was a bit nervous about attending. However, once we got to the conference my anxiety was gone I was able to thoroughly enjoy the whole experience. It was an exciting and interesting four days; filled with panels, presentations, networking, and a bit of bar crawling fun. While I’d love to share my entire experience, I’ve decided to highlight my favorite moments of the convention.

As previously mentioned a major portion of our trip  was attending various panels. Over the four days, I viewed 5 panels each of which was very interesting and insightful. However, there was one panel in particular that really peaked my interest and provided me with some great insight for my next 3D project. 

On Saturday I viewed a panel on how to teach and reach students with the use of the video-sharing site YouTube. In this panel 3 panelists shared their experiences of using this site in the classroom. Overall, I felt that the panel was very well organized and each presenter provided wonderful insight. What I found to be the most interesting was that all three presenters found that user generated content can be a very powerful tool in education. It allows students to use their creativity to convey a message or a meaning, rather than simply regurgitating information. This made me think of our own project. All three of us are creating our own individual models, and in the process of creating these models we’ve gotten more of an understanding on various communication concepts. It was interesting to me to see that another group utilized user generated content and I hope that this trend in teaching will continue to grow.

Along with the panels we attended, we were also able to attend a G.I.F.T session. During this session we listened to professors and graduate students share the activities they are using to better teaching. During this session there were 3 various presenters that really stood out to me and their ideas I hope to pass on to the instructors in my department.

The first G.I.F.T that I was rather impressed with was a classroom activity proposed by Stevie Stewart a Graduate Student from Ball State University. This graduate student has been incorporating the use of the social media site Twitter into his curriculum, by having students tweet about various televised speakers. His goal is to have students critiquing the public speaking abilities of others and in return reflect on their own skills. For this proposed assignment, he gives his students a list of questions and a class specific hashtag and then has his students answer the questions through tweets. Since Twitter has a character limit of only 140 charters per tweet, it provides the students with an interesting challenge of fully explaining their answers in a short and concise manner. Personally, I feel that is a great way to utilize a technology that student’s are comfortable and skilled with, and breathes in a new life to stale classroom procedures. It is also important that as communication scholars and professionals that we understand how this current generation of students is communicating with one another.

The second G.I.F.T that I found to be very intriguing was an activity proposed by Debbie Chasteen, of William Jewell College called “Alternatives to Self-Disclosure”. This activity was used in an interpersonal Communication course and was used to demonstrate the various means in which we avoid open self-disclosure in various unsettling situations. In her activity Chasteen divides her class into various teams of 2-5 students and each team is then given a scenario in which they will have to act out for the class. For this scenario the students are then tasked to brainstorm how they would respond in these situations. Students then categorize their responses as either examples of silence, equivocating, hinting, or lying. Once their responses are categorized they then are asked to write down the ethical implications of their actions and then give a performance of their responses to the class. Personally, this seemed like a very interactive and fun assignment. I find that I learn a lot more whenever I have opportunity to hear how my own peers handle themselves in various situations. It provides with a fair amount of insight into a situation and allows students to make better choices whenever I’m trying to communicate with others.

The final G.I.F.T I found to very interesting was a class assignment developed by Rose Helens-Hart a Doctoral Candidate of the University of Kansas. In her classroom activity Rose Helens-Hart utilizes an old Hawaiian tradition of “Talking Story” to introduce students into public speaking. As someone who isn’t the most confident public speaker, I genuinely feel that this activity is a great way to ease students into speaking in front of a crowd. Students are broken up into smaller groups and are given time to prepare and present a “story” of their lives to their peers. This story can be about anything, but must be centered around a central theme which the instructor provides to the class. After each student presents their story to their group members, the class then votes to find the best storytellers of the group. Students are then asked to critique these storytellers and learn how they can better their own speaking skills. What I love about this assignment is that it is a great ice breaker for students to get to know one another. I feel that it is a bit more involved than the standard improvised introductory speech that most classrooms push upon their students.

To everyone I met and to all who shared their experiences, I just want to say thank you. As I mentioned before this was my first conference and I am still surprised that I enjoyed it this much. It was exciting to see how the field of communications is changing and adapting, and meeting the individuals who are responsible for this change. I hope that our small project is able to bring inspiration to those who shared their work with us. On behalf of the other Dimensionators and myself I want to just thank you all for making this a wonderful and memorable experience.

Marcella's Elevate Experience

My first experience at the Central States Communication Association conference, Elevate, was certainly one to be remembered. I attended a G.I.F.T. (Great ideas for teaching) session, 4 panel sessions, and presented a G.I.F.T. with my classmates. I hope to return to another conference in the future as a presenter or just an attendant. This conference is a great way to network, learn, and change the way that you may think about different things.

Drew, Me, & Lexi

On Friday, the first day of the conference, we thought that it would be beneficial for us to attend a G.I.F.T. session because on Saturday we would be presenting our own G.I.F.T., and we thought it would be good to kind of know how the sessions go.  I was very pleasantly surprised by the way the session was set up.  It was a little bit different than I imagined, but it works well for the session.  Basically, in a G.I.F.T. session there are up to ten groups or individuals presenting G.I.F.T.s.  Each group is assigned a table that has six or seven chairs around it for session attenders to sit at, and the attenders have a list in their program of the different G.I.F.T.s that are available to attend at a given session.  The session that we attended was at 11:00 in the morning, and I had the opportunity to hear about five different G.I.F.T.s.  The G.I.F.T.s that I heard were called: Elevating Speech Evaluations through Twitter, Analyzing Target Audience, The Cups Game as Small Group Communication Activity, “Elevating” Students’ Understanding of Communicator Style: How Would Each Communication Style Manage Organizational Conflict?, and Talk Story: Developing Thematic Narratives.  One thing that I noticed at the G.I.F.T. session is that there were no other undergrads presenting G.I.F.T.s.  All of the presenters were grad students or professors.

After the G.I.F.T. session we took a break for lunch, then at 2:00 in the afternoon the three of us chose panels that interested us and attended them.  Drew and I ended up picking the same one: “All Immigrants are Artists”: The Artful Negotiations of Diverse Immigrant Experiences.  During this panel we heard five individuals speak about their experiences as immigrants or as children of immigrants.  The first speaker was Alberto Gonzalez from Bowling Green State University.  He spoke about his work at the non-profit organization called La Conexion.  This is a place that Latinas in Bowling Green, Ohio can go to feel connected to their culture as well as the community they live in.  Gonzalez discussed the issues that La Conexion is facing as it becomes more public and well known because of immigration laws.  Immigrants may come to La Conexion and not have the legal papers to be in the United States.  The second speaker was named Eddah Mutua.  Eddah is from Kenya, Africa.  She spoke about a non-profit that she is involved in called Prairie Garden.  Prairie Garden is a garden that refugee women from Africa work together on.  The garden is in St. Cloud, Minnesota which is also where Eddah teaches.  Prairie Garden allows the women refugees to speak their own languages, grow their own food, and interact with other immigrants.  Eddah described the Prairie Garden as a place where the women can be free to be themselves in their new country.  The third speaker on the panel was Ahmet Atay.  Ahmet Atay spoke about a film director from Italian and Turkey descent who is also queer.  He spoke about how this director is changing the film community with his films.  The fourth panelist was Sunny Lie.  Sunny Lie is a Chinese Indonesian, and she works closely with Chinese Indonesian students who are pursuing higher education in New York City.  She spoke about how even though they try to hang on to their culture and not assimilate to American culture, they show signs of assimilation. The last panelist to speak was David Hanley-Tejeda.  He spoke about being the son of an immigrant.  His mother was Mexican.  She also happened to have schizophrenia. He spoke about her struggles as an immigrant with a mental disorder.  He also shared that she committed suicide, and he shared a poem that he wrote about his experience being his mother’s son.  This panel was interesting and I enjoyed listening to the panelist’s stories.

The next day was our big day to present our G.I.F.T.! We woke up early, got ourselves ready, and went to the room that we were presenting in. We set up the table the way we wanted it to look for our presentation.  I am personally very pleased with the way our presentation went.  Considering we had an early morning eight o’clock session, we had quite a few people show up.  All of the people who sat at our table and listened to our presentation seemed very interested and engaged in what we had to say.  Everyone had questions which is a good thing.  After our G.I.F.T. presentation we each went to two other panels that day.

The first panel that I attended on Saturday was called Elevating from Problems to Solutions: Transformative Theory and Methods in Interracial and Diversity Communication.  I LOVED this panel.  There were four panelists. The first panelist was Rachel Griffin.  She is an interracial black and white women.  She spoke about the binary that American culture is bound by.  The binary between white and black in particular.  The second panelist was Stephanie Young, an interracial Korean American woman.  She also spoke about the binary, but she spoke about putting herself out there in the classroom to help students open up about race and understand race and ethnic identity better.  Then Eddah Mutua spoke as a panelist again.  She spoke about her experience as an African in America and the way that she relates to African Americans as well as white Americans.  The last panelist to speak was Dorothy Pennington who is an African American professor who spoke about her past experiences and how things have changed since she first became a teacher.  She also touched on the idea that some people believe we live in a post racial society.  This panel was very interesting to me.

The second panel that I chose to attend was called Competitive Papers in the Women’s Caucus: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.  There were two panelists who spoke during this panel.  The first one to speak was named Molly C. Turner.  She spoke about Hillary Rodham-Clinton and Bill Clinton.  She expanded upon their different leadership styles and how Hillary has become a role-model for women everywhere in the world.  The next speaker was named Kelly Soczka Kaiser. She spoke about working on a Wisconsin dairy farm and the trials she faces in the farmer community because she is a women. Because of the trials she has personally faced, she decided to conduct a study on other farming women.  She presented her results to the panel as well.

The view from the Hyatt

I learned something important at all of the panels that I attended.  My experience at the Elevate Conference was one that I will never forget.  Not only did I get to experience part of the country that I had never experienced, I also got to experience parts of the Communication Studies field that I had never had the honor to experience.

Lexi's Experience at CSCA's "Elevate" Conference

Our group’s time at the Central State Communication Association (CSCA) “Elevate” Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota was personally, professionally, and academically very rewarding. Not only did we gain experience by presenting at our Great Ideas for Teaching (GIFT) session, we attended several different panels and events based upon our own interests and gained more insight on topics within the field.

It snowed a wee bit our first night in Minneapolis!

First, on Friday, as a group, we attended a GIFT session in order to see how these presentations worked. This proved to be very beneficially to us because the setting was different from what were anticipating. Rather than presenting “at” people during the session, everyone is seated in a round table discussion, are given the handouts prepared by the speaker, and then they listen to the breakdown of the activity. We realized as we participated that our GIFT was unique due to the fact that we, the students, were presenting it. All the other presenters were instructors discussing activities they have done in their classrooms that could be adapted by other teachers. We were given the opportunity by Dr. Carlson to give our own perspectives on the benefits of using 3D technology to understand communication concepts as a class project or activity. 

I had a couple favorites from this session that as a student, I know I would have enjoyed in my own classes. One instructor, Kristen Manthei from Lyons Township High School, had her students create their own commercial for a fictitious advertising company according to the specifications of different target audiences. This GIFT allows for students to use research and creativity in order to promote a product based upon its unique features for their customers. I saw a benefit in this exercise since I have a graphic design background and we often had to think about what designs, color choices, etc., would appeal most to certain demographics. Defining target audiences is also a very important skill set within public relations (my major) as well. Another activity presented by Rose Helens-Hart from the University of Kansas actually connected back to my work visualizing Burke’s Pentad Theory. Helens-Hart described a cultural tradition in Hawaii called “Talk Story” in which people engage in narrative storytelling to describe community or personal history. The Talk Story activity helped the students create a strong narrative structure of beginning, middle, and end by practicing the same story over and over with the students ranking the best speakers. I thought this activity related to the Pentad Theory because it could be adapted so that the students analysis each other’s narratives using the pentadic elements as a guide to discover things about the speaker’s motives and speaking styles.

After seeing Friday’s GIFT presentation, I attended a panel presenting a critical analysis of the HBO show, “Girls”. I found this to be very entertaining and thought-provoking for my own personal interest in media and popular culture studies and also because I am a fan of that particular show. Another panel I attended on Saturday directly correlated with the “Girls” session because it discussed how popular culture (television, film, and music) helps in constructing personal identity.

My final session I attended on Saturday included the top papers in Media Studies.

This session discussed how social media is used to maintain family relationships, a study about a new app that helps college students monitor their risk taking behaviors caused by alcohol consumption, as well as examinations of framing, broadcasting through twitter, and selective exposure on Youtube.

The first presenter was the most relevant to the work we have done throughout the semester.  Yifeng Hu from The College of New Jersey, discussed a study she and her students participated in two years ago using the Virtual world, Second Life. In the beginning of our work this semester, we discussed the implications of using Second Life, a virtual reality in which users create avatars that represent themselves and create the world around them in order to engage in activities and interact within this virtual world. Hu and her students were experimenting to see if common “real life” communication theories held true within the virtual “reality” as well. One example talked about Noelle Neumann’s Spiral of Silence theory where minority viewpoints can often be discouraged to speak out when there is a strong majority viewpoint already doing so. During the 2008 elections, Second Life users were hosting parties for the different candidates, when the researchers opposed their differing opinions at these events, they were rebuffed, just as they would be expected to be in reality. This got me thinking about the objects we have been making in LeoWorld and whether or not we could place them into the Second Life space in order to receive feedback from other users as to whether or not they are useful in teaching certain concepts. It would be interesting to see if and how the representative avatars interact with our models and learn from them.

Our session of GIFT was on Saturday morning at eight o’clock in the morning. From our printed 3D objects, colorful handouts, FHSU freebies, and the candy (which is always a good idea), our table was definitely not one to miss. We were able to share our work with at least 12-15 different educators (not including just passing out our brochures), and all the feedback we received was of genuine interest and intrigue. Many professors stated that their university’s also had 3D printers on campus. We were so happy to tell them that they could print off any of our free .obj files from our blog in order to start experimenting with visualization in their own classrooms. Watching them all interact with our objects was very rewarding because it proved the cyclical nature of our project. One instructor, as we were demonstrating the sender/receiver communication models, picked up a 3D print out of a T-Rex head and started holding it over the communication model saying, “And here you have noise!”. That is exactly what we wanted at the end of our project, to be able to present representations of communication ideas so other people could bring their own new and unique interpretations to build upon them. It was a silly moment that incited a profound sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Overall, this experience was so fulfilling. This was the first time I attended a conference of this nature and I found it very refreshing to find so many sessions I was interested and participated in. I also enjoyed conversing with like-minded individuals about topics they also know about and to be able to share ideas within the field. I was especially elated at the response we received about our work and feel confident about its relevance for the future.