Monday, September 23, 2013

Lesson Plan 5: Preparing for Assessemnt of the Purple Cow: DO THE WORK

Go over criteria for:

1) written purple cow proposal,

2) presentation, and

3) journal

See below...remainder of class, assist, coach, motivate...



Comm 302 Introduction to Purple Cow Communication Research Methods Fall 2013
Name__________________________________________________________

____Written Proposal (20%) 

Include the following headings in this order—typed, double spaced, staple (no 
folders/binders):
             
        What is your purple cow dream in 1-3 pages?—use the following sub-headings:

                        Title (something creative)

                        Motivation (why do you want to do this?)

                        Big Dream (context)

Piece of the Dream (what you’re focusing on for 4 weeks in this class)

                        Genuine purple cow (how so?)

            How will you accomplish the piece of the purple cow dream proposed in 4 weeks—1-3 pages?

                        Detailed flow chart with each of 4 weeks labeled and concrete/specific activities listed

            Attachments (sub headings labeled and in this order)—1 page each—3 pages total

                        Pic: Picture of purple cow dream that fits on the back of a napkin

Lit Rev: 1 page “Literature Review” of most important things learned and sources in APA style

Method: List & describe how to use one research method to obtain information about your target audience (innovators/early adopters) to create persuasive message…include best 3 of 10 questions


____Oral Presentation (changed from 10 to 5%):

Picture and Description of:

What is your purple cow dream? (1 minute)

How do you plan to do it? (1 minute)

            Other factors:

Delivery, Time, Clarity, Creativity

Responses to questions from class/professor (2 mins)


___Journals (10% = average of 3 items below)-you rate these with 3 numbers—I’ll check

___(0-10) Quantity: 5 entries of what you learned and how you felt about what you learned

___(0-10) Quality: Import, Significance, and Personal Meaning of what you learned

___(0-10) List 3 most important things learned and WHY on separate page at the end      
  
THE BIG CHALLENGE: 

DO THE WORK   


Work straight through the written proposal, presentation, and journal assignment without stopping until you are finished (with this first draft).

Images to motivate you to DO THE WORK:

1) This is an in class examination on your ability to demonstrate what you have learned up to this point...do the work--you have till the end of class to complete the written dream proposal, the outline of your presentation, and the 3 most important things you learned from the journal writings and why...then, at the end of the class period, you must turn in whatever work you have completed for a grade.

2)  You paid for this class, you committed to this time period, why not take advantage of it, get the work done now, then you can relax and reward yourself with something special later...do the work now, play later...keep your priorities straight.

3) The devil (zombie, dragon, or...) is chasing you, breathing down your neck, poking you in the rear with a pitchfork...as long as you're doing the work, you can stay out of its reach, but once you give up, once you stop working, you experience the tip of the pitchfork, the bite of the zombie, the fire of the dragon...there is some consolation here: once you get to the finish line (the first draft is complete), the entity leaves you alone for awhile--till the next assignment.

4) You have inner resources within yourself that you may not even know about, or are only dimly aware of...these inner resources will come to assist you in times of need...believe in yourself, believe in your potential, believe that there are these underground resources that will come to your aid...some people think of these resources as: the muse, angels, spirits, deeper parts of your personality, your "higher self", ancestors, "God"etc...let these inner resources help you do the work.

NOTE:

You can probably think of other ways to motivate yourself to "do the work," but whatever the motivation, you need to:

DO THE WORK...get something done (no matter how flawed, imperfect, or rough)...there will be time to reflect and fill in the gaps later, the important thing right now is to work all the way through till you're finished with the first draft.

            You will be tempted to stop working, you will discover things inside you that want to SABOTAGE your success...RESISTANCE will strike you from every corner, creating every imaginable EXCUSE to prevent you from getting the work done...hungry, thirsty, tired, need to study for another test, need to answer an important text message, need to sleep, need to meet someone...fight these with the all the strength you can muster--bulldog tenacity, fierceness of a lion(ess), Spartan warrior, fire of the spirit...use whatever image you need to help you persist and DO THE WORK.

 For more encouragement/motivation along these lines, see  Steven Pressfield's book: Do the Work! (most of the above ideas are directly form his book, or inspired by his book).

A LOOK AHEAD:

Share proposal idea in groups of classmates that have similar dreams--get feedback.

Work straight through the rough draft in class today.

Reflect and fill in the gaps for your proposal, polish as needed. 

Print and staple the "criteria for assessment" (on bb under "assignments")  to the top of your proposal and journal writings.

Next class, turn in your package *before* you present your proposal to the class--you only have 2 mins to present your picture and purple cow dream proposal (what and how)...think of it as your "elevator talk"--and only 2 mins of q/a from the class.

After the presentations, i will post an on-line schedule of 5 minute "feedback" sessions for the following class in which i will return your proposal, presentation evaluation, and journal assessment...ck under "assignments" on bb for the feedback sessions.

The following 4 weeks i w..ill hold in class "coaching" sessions for those that need assistance with their projects--if several students need assistance with a similar topic, i may give mini-lectures, otherwise this will probably be take the form of individual meetings--i will have a sign up sheet for this available as a wiki entitled "sign ups for coaching sessions"..record your name and what specific topic you would like to discuss...we will meet in the classroom during our regularly scheduled time...if no one is signed up for a stretch of time, i may relocate to my office (bal 3018) and will be available there on a "drop in" basis.

After the 4 weeks of work, you will turn in and present the results of your purple cow dream to the class--we will have 2 class periods for this, and i will have a sign up sheet (i anticipate 8 min presentations) for this posted on bb under assignments...at this time you will also turn in your second round of journal entries. I'll create another cover sheet listing the criteria for assessment and post it on blackboard at least 2 weeks before the due date. 

I also will change the schedule a bit to accomodate for a full 4 weeks worth of work before the presentations...i'll post this revised schedule on bb as the "new course syllabus" in the next week.





Thursday, September 12, 2013

Lesson Plan 4: Engaging the Methods and Message Strategy of the Purple Cow


Lesson Plan 4: Engaging the Methods

Meditate: Triangulation—discuss triangulation of methods

From dream to flow to picture to lit review to method

Overview: which methods will best help support you in achieving your dream

All products/services need MESSAGES to connect them with their users/audiences/markets
What kind of message should you create, directed at what audience, through what medium

Introduce the idea of communication campaigns
Value of audience analysis
The persuasion continuum from
Actively work against you through neutral (uninformed/unmotivated) to true believers that work for you in getting your product/service out there

The diffusion of innovations and the adoption curve:

Trying to target the mass market in the middle is difficult because they are less likely to try something new whereas the innovators and early adopters are more likely to try something new IF it’s a purple cow, that is, something truly remarkable…so rather than target everyone in the middle, FIND the people that already are excited about your idea and want to try it out…get your message out to them !

To craft the ideal message, you need more information about these people: here’s where methods come in: ethnographic, interview, survey, focus groups, experiments…combining 2 or more gives you the triangulation effect…

              Look for beliefs, attitudes, behavior, affect related to your purple cow dream…
              Discuss n of 1 (story) vs n of many (statistics)
 

Brief intro to the methods:

First discuss some of the ethics of research methods: privacy, consent, information about the study (experimenter expectancy effects), confidentiality (de-identifying data), do no harm (special populations), potential risks, cost/benefits analysis, debriefing (behavioral contagion issue), discontinuing the study, human subjects committees…

Different methods are like shopping for a new pair of pants, sometimes you have to "try on" several pair before you find the right "fit", color, design, etc...i'd like you to "try on" these different research methods to see which one(s) fit best for you.

Ethnography—hanging out in the environment where people are using your product/service and observing (note on the issue of hawthorne effect, more broadly the effect of knowing that one is being observed and how to minimize this impact in the field), taking field notes (variations: true observer, participant observer, going native), issue of privacy and confidentiality for recording audio/video

      think of examples of places you could visit where people are doing something related to your   
       purple cow dream, and how you would observe, take notes...

Interview—structured to semi-structured series of questions (funnel or inverse funnel) that are asked face to face, with potential for follow up questions, recorded or note taking (discuss the issue of knowing that one is being recorded and how that might bias the conversation toward more conservative or socially acceptable responses), only one person at a time, bias issues, leading questions, time commitment, 3 experts are better than one for triangulation

     who is an expert on your topic, where can you find them, what would be a good method for
      interviewing them

 Focus group-invite a small group (usually 4-8 people) with common interest to a specific private place to answer questions about a topic known ahead of time for a reward of some type (gift cards are popular in large scale funded research, but food is an old stand by reward with minimal cost for a 4-6 person focus group), issue of homogeneous or heterogeneous groups, time commitment, pre-planning of questions, record or not, mining the transcripts for themes, multiple groups for reliability, need a facilitator that participants can identify with

    where can you find a group of people interested in your dream that would be willing to meet up
     and talk for an hour or two over pizza and some drinks?

Survey—same type of questions as interview but not face to face, written vs on-line survey (facebook, surveymonkey-limit of 10 questions, google survey doesn't limit to 10 questions), best in groups for efficiency, bias introduced by person collecting the data, issue of confidentiality indebriefing with some types of automatic replies (de-identify the data)...advantage of statistical analysis of data from likert type (statement followed by agree-disagree scale) and semantic differential type (word or phrase followed by bi-polar adjectives) scales...give examples using their topics of: open/closed questions, likert/semantic...for open ended questions show how to do the beginnings of a content analysis of responses using one of their topics as an example (categorize, counts, themes)

     what kind of questions could you ask, who would you ask them to, what medium would you use?

EVERYONE should create 10 questions related to their dream topic for next week (show how these questions could be used in focus group, interview, and as a focus of attention for ethnography)

Experiment—theory, hypothesis, one or more independent variables and one or more dependent 
variables, known population, random sample, and random assignment to at least two experimental groups (or one experimental and one control) in a controlled lab type setting, valid and reliable measures for iv and dv, post test only versus pre-post test designs, time series designs…good if have two or more versions of a product or service that you want to compare, statistical analysis of data for similarities or differences at the .05 probability level (or 95% confidence level)

This is just a SAMPLING of some of the methods that comm. researchers use
Depending on your dream, one or more methods may be applicable.

Based on the information you obtain from the method, design a persuasive message—standard persuasive tactics:

Attention devices, 
credibility induction, 
explicit vs implicit conclusion, 
one vs two sided arguments, 
inoculation and counter arguments, 
central vs peripheral message processing, 
type of evidence: story vs statistical, 
organized vs unorganized messages, 
message order (primacy vs recency effects), 
number of arguments depends on ego-involvement, 
cognitive responses to message, 
message repetition (pt of diminishing returns around 4-5 repetitions), 
readability (flesh index), 
language intensity, vividness, 
use of metaphors, 
use of color, 
print to image ratio, 
text size, 
emotional responses to images, 
and so forth.. 
GOOGLE any of these topics for more info.
              
            If you want to test you message design strategy on the web, I recommend:
Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer  Bryan Eisenberg (Author), John Quarto-vonTivadar (Author), Brett Crosby (Foreword), Lisa T. Davis (Contributor)
The central idea is that you can take different versions of your messages, load them up on the web, and have the different versions randomly appear, then compare using some benchmark like number of views, or number of clicks on “more info” or “buy now” or…it’s a very powerful tool for those willing to invest some time with the learning curve.

You’ll need to consider the message medium as well…

Word of mouth, 
small group sharing, 
large group public speeches, 
posters, 
bumper stickers, 
buttons, 
cards, 
pamphlets, 
and the assorted mediated places: 
facebook, 
twitter, 
linked in, 
gmail, website, 
blog, 
podcast, 
youtube video, 
etc…what would work best for your dream?

WHICH medium will you use and why?

There are probably many other ways to use “methods” to support your dream becoming a reality besides designing a message campaign, but these remain unique to each dream and we will need to talk more in class…

Hwk: 

at this point, everyone should have some sense of how to approach creating a message strategy for their dream for a particular audience…

Research at least one “method” that you think might support your dream project—
find out everything you can about the method and develop a plan for how you will use it to create a message for a target audience and/or something else related to your project…

get your thoughts on paper, another flow chart and picture for next week to share in small groups and with the class…

then it will be time to bring it all together for your dream proposal and presentation…

one more journal entry

Lesson 3: Exploring the Purple Cow Dream: Lit Reviews


3rd class

Meditate: Exploring (related to literature review)

Preview: flow, focus, bck of napkin, share in sm gps, literature review (trad and creative), hwk…

Announce that there is feedback (in purple) for those that posted their dreams to the class wiki on blackboard

Ideally before you do the literature review, you:
need to know the general scope of your dream,
have a flow chart showing the progression/stages/parts of your dream,
what part of the dream you want to work on for one month in this class,
be able to draw a picture of the part of your dream you want to work on now and explain it to someone and get feedback
share your sample flow chart and picture:

flow chart for purple cow research methods in communication class:

 


Back of napkin picture for purple cow research methods in communication class:

Activity
(meeting with people around you to share your dreams last week is ok, but it would be better to meet with people who share similar dreams, more likely to be engaged and know of resources to help you…so let’s see how you might “meet up” with some classmates that share similar dreams)
Quickly go round the room and remind us of your dream in a brief phrase, then take out a sheet of paper and write you’re the phrase for your dream in BIG letters, hold it out in front of you so others can see, stand up, and mill around the room (pretend you’re at a party), try to find other students with similar dreams, once you have a group of 4-5 people, go find a comfortable spot on this floor and share your pictures (back of a napkin) and get feedback from others on: 1) does this make sense, 2) is it a purple cow…take 45 mins to do this

Break time

Literature Reviews…ways to EXPLORE to obtain more information about your dream (see what’s already been done, and if you can improve on it, or if you need to develop something from scratch):

              Before beginning to search the internet for literature/ideas, need a good conceptual set of “search 
              terms”

Make a web…webbing, conceptual brain mapping…ask if they know how…give a few examples…take someone’s idea and let the class help them web it…think of these as “tags” for your picture on the back of the napkin—need a good set of tags before you start…intro idea of “cloud” tags

              Traditional lit review for communication studies:

Begin with odu libr database Communication and Mass Media Complete…show where it is, how to use Boolean searches for prayer (make a list of keywords or tags for your topic area: e.g. for prayer, pray, praying, prayed, religion, spirituality, meditation, etc), show how it works and how to get the pdf, and how to use interlibrary loan—this is SILVER.

PROQUEST—theses and dissertations—value of a dissertation, top of the game, expert in the world, usually excellent references that lead to history of ideas related to your topic—this is GOLD

GOOGLE SCHOLAR---same idea as CMMC but much broader, also see other databases depending on topic: Psychinfo, Medline, etc…look for a meta-analysis (explain the statistical culling of studies)—this is DIAMOND

Demo this for them by going to odu libr. Site and searching for topics in all 3 areas above
               
             Dream Culture Exploration

Google your conceptual terms/tags---ways to search google like an expert website…AND OR - ~ site: extension, etc..and review ALL of the sites for the best ones which are not necessarily first (pay to be at the top, and most frequently cited isn’t always the best)…don’t rule out Wikipedia…you may want to create a wiki article for your topic if there is not one yet as a way to promote what you’re doing

Tecnorati index to blogs: http://technorati.com

YouTube videos realted to your topic

ODU library is not the largest library of books in the world…ck Amazon.com for books related to your topic…description of book, often table of contents, reviews, ck to see if odu libr has it, or public libr, or get from interlibrary loan at odu, or purchase it if looks good enough…also ck for free e-books (google Gutenberg project and see if it’s available)—show them how

Interviews with people working on the topic area…see http://ted.com  for experts

2nd life…go into virtual world and see if anyone is working on your dream…talk to people, see what you can learn…

Other?

Goal is to find out as much as you can about your topic and summarize the parts that are most useful…include documentation of sources so that others who follow what you’re doing and carry on the work…by convention we will you APA style for citations….Author (year) for in-text cites, and Author (year) title for references…show them the citation machine for apa: http://citationmachine.net/index2.php

Spend one hour on traditional lit rev, one hour on non-traditional (dream culture) review, then last hour reviewing and pulling together the best of the two literatures.

Take stock of what you have learned by listing “knowledge claims” and sources that back up the claims (evidence), and in your own words explain how the two are linked...see if you can create one page of your best “learnings” with sources cited in apa style to back them up by next class.

Take your dream to the next level—other things to “play with” before next class:

Before we cover how to EXPLORE, i.e., do a “literature review” (traditional and dream culture ones), let’s consider some ways to PLAY WITH your dream before you commit to a particular part of your dream (preview of methods):

STAKE HOLDERS Who is your audience (people involved in the dream), stake-holders…both those creating and working on the dream and those that the dream will influence…draw circles of influence? Interview, survey, focus groups for these people as an audience analysis

MESSAGE CAMPAIGN What are your message strategies for making the dream happen, who do you need help from, how will you convince them to believe in your dream and support you?

EXISTING PRODUCTS/SERVICES Are parts of your dream already being developed/enacted somewhere? Can you go there and observe and/or interview people about the process, product/service, outcomes (e.g., ck out reviews of a product on amazon)? Survey and ethnographic methods

PROTOTYPES If product or service, what types can you build as a prototypes to test out to see how they work in practice…pilot test…think of as an experimental method…assessment to see which works best, possible focus groups

ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION/FEEDBACK How do you know if your dream has become a reality? Feedback, assessment, evaluation—interview, survey, focus groups, on-line reviews…

One more journal entry before next  class…preview: talk about methods next time…