Midterm Assessment

I guess we are at the midterm of this course, so I am taking stock of where we are, what we have covered and where we go from here. Your blogs about the relevance (or not) of what we are learning are most helpful in this enterprise, and I am also looking forward to "listening in" to your online discussion of the "Rethinking Negotiation" article. Does feminist theory seem outrageous to anyone these days? It seems like common sense to me that we get farther with collaboration than with competitive bargaining and keeping score.

I certainly feel like I am learning a great deal from our work together this summer! Your questions and expectations keep me on my toes, and I have had to push myself into new communication technology applications to keep up with the rest of you. Most of all, I appreciate the examples and experiences you bring to class that give us opportunities to apply what we are learning as we go.

Have a happy and safe July 4th celebration!

Draw Me a Picture

I love words. Love to read them -- big juicy novels, pithy little poems. Love to play with them -- scrabble, puns. I like to talk, and I even love to write (sometimes). I've made my living wordsmithing, one way and another, and yet I remain awed and delighted by the human potential to manipulate an alphabetical symbol system to make meaning, share ideas, and create beauty. Most of all, I love a good story -- the shining example, the telling anecdote, the personal narrative that shows why the message is important.

But when it comes to numbers, I'm suspicious. Recalling the joke about "lies, damned lies, and statistics," I've seen numbers masquerading as absolutes and disguised as irrefutable evidence when I was pretty sure they could not be trusted to tell the truth. Columns of numbers marching confidently across the pages of a report seem design to intimidate rather than inform. I want to pull them out of their ranks and question each number about its origins and authenticity. I acquired this prejudice against quantitative research during an undergraduate experience as a research assistant administering forced-choice questionnaires to hapless subjects of a medical compliance study. (We chose the words; they only got to choose a box to check.)

So it's no wonder I love the new "dashboard" graphics that package numeric reports into colorful tables, pie charts, and trend lines. Intellectually, I realize those same suspicious numbers are what's generating the graphics, but somehow the message is less intimidating than rows and columns of figures are to me. (Is this a "girl thing"?) Something about numbers seems pushy, presenting themselves as factual evidence even when the context is ambiguous. A graphic representation, on the other hand, well it's just a picture. It seems to invite interpretation in a more subtle way, even as it further masks the qualitative nature of its content.

Does this say anything about the quality of information? Probably not, but it does remind us that the audience for any message brings its own preferences and prejudices to the table. Whether you're writing a report or reporting the numbers, pictures help!

Humility Lessons

Whenever I or my students are required to write procedures for someone to follow, I am always struck anew by the humbling challenges embedded in a task that seems so simple. "Just write down what to do, step by step" we think to ourselves. And then there, lurking in the shadows of what we assume is a straightforward "how to," we find the culprit -- language. What seems so simple, so obvious to me (because I've done it before) is all Greek to you (because you haven't). How would someone who isn't computer literate understand the difference between "turn on the computer" and "log onto the computer"? How would a novice cook know that sauté means to cook something on low heat in a pan on top of the stove?

Writing a procedure for someone else to follow reminds us that what's inside our heads is not necessarily what's inside anyone else's. When we stumble over the confusion that differences in experience, motivation, and interpretation can cause in our attempts to communication mere informational procedures to another person, it's no wonder that language confounds us when we try to reach consensus about weightier issues.

Does anyone have a camera?!