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.