Tag Archives: applied Communication Research class

Google Analytics Assignment in the Communication Research Class. Lab Guide Included!

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A Google Analytics Assignment in the Communication Research Class? Yes!

The question of teaching Google Analytics is part of the larger conversation of what we can manage to get in amid the many skills we want our students to learn.  Beyond that, we’ve been talking a lot lately in the social media community about what certifications we should require our students to complete. The Google Analytics Individual Qualifying (IQ) Exam, which evaluates knowledge about Google Analytics, is commonly brought up.

But how do we tie the certification into the classroom? How do we teach our students to navigate Google Analytics in a hands-on manner?

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Communication Research Class Media Placement Assignment, Part 2: Doing Data Entry and Creating a Data Legend

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Communication Research Class Assignment Review

This post is long overdue (I feel like I say that a lot!).

It is a follow up to a post I published in January titled “Here’s my communication research class assignment on analyzing media placement.”  Recently, I received a public comment on that post from a professor I greatly admire, Kelli Burns, pointing out that project assignment (see the bottom of this post for that document) notes at the bottom of the document that additional work will be assigned the following day. But, I never discuss what that entails in the blog post.  I apologize to everyone who read that post because, in that sense, it was incomplete in terms of explaining the project.

Thank you to Dr. Burns for bringing this to my attention. With this in mind, I’ve decided to do a much-delayed follow up post, turning that initial post into a two-part series.

Continue reading Communication Research Class Media Placement Assignment, Part 2: Doing Data Entry and Creating a Data Legend

Teaching Students to Use iPads for Survey Data Collection (2 of 2)

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In my last post, I wrote about a Comm Research project where students use iPads for survey data collection.This is my favorite of the 3 projects we do in my Communication Research Class (see all posts on Comm 435; see syllabus).

This week, I want to follow up by discussing how to program the surveys to work on the iPads. I’ll talk through how I teach all of this in class and through activities.

Continue reading Teaching Students to Use iPads for Survey Data Collection (2 of 2)

Using iPads for Survey Data Collection in the Communication Research Class

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Surveys are a common method uses in communication research class projects. Since I started teaching this class at Shepherd University, I’ve added a fun, cool feature that really brings the survey data collection process to life!

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Applied Research Class: Sentiment Analysis Project Reflection

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I began this semester with the intention of blogging a bit about my applied research class. I provided an overview of it and a copy of the syllabus on an earlier post. But since writing that post, I’ve yet to do a follow up… until now.

Edit: There are 2 follow up posts to this post. 1) Looks at activities for this assignment, and 2) provides the assignment itself.

First, let me say that more and more I am trying to decrease my lecturing and spend more time in class with hands on learning, having my students learn by doing rather than just listening – sort of like the flipped classroom Gary Schirr has been discussing recently on his blog.   So this class is really pushing in class projects and experiential learning. Following this approach, in order to introduce students to research, I provided students with the instructions and a lot of structure for their first two projects.

I want to use our second research project as an example. Then, I’ll talk about the pros and cons. The second project was a sentiment analysis of Tweets about a brand I chose and a (realistic but not necessarily real) scenario.

My goals with this project were to teach students:

  1. About computer-assisted content analysis. We focused on how it is different from a hand-coded quantitative content analysis (which was the focus of our first project). And its strengths and weaknesses.
  2. How to do a basic computer-assisted content analysis using Yoshikoder, an easy to use, free App that works on Mac and PC. So my students can use it at home if needed!
  3. About sentiment analysis – what it is, why it is used by organizations to evaluate the online conversation about their brand, and its strengths and weaknesses.
  4. How to write up a research report (In the first project, I provided the project overview and requested results and discussion. In the second project, I added a literature review and methods section, and had them write the research objective and research question).

Why I chose to do this project this way: A number of social media analytics tools today are offering sentiment analysis.  There are also sites like socialmention.com that will provide you with a free sentiment analysis of a search term. But how are these analyses conducted? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Are they reliable? Do they mean anything at all? And what do we need to be careful of before accepting them, and thus drawing inferences from them?

So what I wanted my students to do, was to SEE how a sentiment analysis would be conducted by some of those high-price (or no price!) analytic tools. In other words, I want my students to get their hands dirty as opposed to allowing some distant and hidden algorithm to do the analysis for them. I believe gaining hands on experience with this project provides students a more critical lens through which to see and evaluate a sentiment analysis of social media messages.

The Set Up: I provide in the assignment: The Situation or Problem / Campaign goals and objectives (of an imaginary campaign that is ongoing or happened) / benchmarks / KPIs. In this case, the situation had to do with a popular online retail brand and rising customer complains and dissatisfaction as the brand has grown beyond its core base of loyal customers in recent years.

I provide students with the sample of about 1000 Tweets I downloaded and formatted to play nicely with Yoshikoder. The sample comprises of mentions of the brand. This ensures students are all looking at the same dataset, and streamlines (or eliminates I should say) the data collection process to help students focus on other elements of the assignment. For the sentiment analysis,

I rely on the AFINN dictionary, which was designed for sentiment analysis of microblogs. Students learn about what the AFINN is and a little about how linguistic analysis dictionaries are created through research. Students then analyze the Twitter dataset using the AFINN dictionary to determine the sentiment scores. There is no fancy stats being done here. By checking the sentiment analysis output, they simply determine if their KPI (which was a % of positive Tweets about the brand) was met. In this case, the result they are looking for is a % – so simple division. Not scary at all, no SPSS training needed (that comes with a later project).

They also look at the valence of the sentiment (with a range of + or -5) and explore the meaning of that. The students use this information, along with class lecture, other exercises on how to write research reports, etc., to produce their project #2 report.

Again, to reiterate an important point, we discuss the benefits and of this analysis as well as its real weaknesses. Students always bring up the fact that the results lack context – what if someone used the word “bad” meaning good? What about sarcasm? I show them how to use Yoshikoder to look at Keywords in context as a way of addressing this.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of This (and these types of) Projects As I said above,  I am really trying to move away from lecture in favor of experiential learning. Here are some things I’ve noticed. Some may be benefits, others drawbacks, and others a bit of both…

  • The focus on this project is not on the stats or the analysis and I provide a lot of the needed information – so it makes for a good ‘getting your feet wet’ project that teaches students other important elements of research.
  • It would be nice to teach them more advanced methods of analysis – but I do cover that a bit more later in the semester.
  • Students learn through their mistakes and from my feedback as opposed to me paving the way for them and simply asking them to drive down the smooth road.
  • I provide a LOT of handouts on how to write different sections of a research report, etc. They are detailed… sometimes too detailed and I fear students don’t read them because it is information shock.
  • Sometimes, I wish I had more time to teach them how to avoid the simple mistakes I see in their work, particularly their research reports. I say to myself, “oh man, I thought I told them how to do that.” Or, “Why didn’t you read the handout that explains how to structure this!?”
  • They likely won’t do sentiment analysis like this every again – but at least they’ll understand it!
  • They get to see the results for themselves and get a sense that they discovered the results.
  • Class time is busy – our class rushes by and we don’t always get to cover everything I want to. As a person who likes order and time management, I am having to “let go a little” and let things happen. This is helping me grow. I wonder if it is helping my students though…
  • I know I enjoy doing these sorts of projects a lot more than standing and lecturing, lecturing, lecturing about research. I feel it has made research a lot more “real” and hands on to them.

So that is my overview of the project in general, and some thoughts. It isn’t perfect but it seems to have gone well and I really enjoyed doing it. I’d love any feedback or suggestions you may have to make this the best possible experience for my students. And of course, feel free to adapt, modify, or improve upon this idea.

In an upcoming post(s), I’ll share the assignments (I want to move my documents over to SlideShare due to the pay wall on Scribd). And I will provide some basic info on how to use the Yoshikoder software.

Cheers! -Matt

Just a reminder: There are 2 follow up posts to this post. 1) Looks at activities for this assignment, and 2) provides the assignment itself.

photo CC by netzkobold

Here Are My Spring 2014 Syllabi: Writing and Research

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The snow is coming down here in West Virginia! Classes are canceled today so I will be catching up on research and some other things. But let’s talk classes and syllabi!

In addition to the applied Communication Research class I am teaching this semester (discussed in the previous post) I’m also teaching a few other classes. 🙂 I want to quickly share some of my syllabi for the semester. I’ve uploaded syllabi for these classes to my Scribd account, which is where I host past syllabi and class assignments. Click the link below to see the syllabus. (You can also see all the below-described syllabi as well as past syllabi via the menu on the left, by mousing over “syllabi.”)

Comm 435: Communication Research – This class is discussed in depth in my previous post. Please read it to learn more about that class.

Comm 335: Writing Across Platforms – Changes from Fall 13 include: A lab day for greater access to press release examples and working with peers on the first press release assignment, I’ve re-organized and updated the related social media and blog writing assignments, and have shifted a few lectures around to more effectively deliver material. Other minor changes to make sure content is up to date. I’m also super excited that for our PitchEngine assignment this semester, all of our students will be temporarily upgraded from the free version of PitchEngine to the paid level thanks to the awesome people at PitchEngine! So, students will get experience with advanced functionality.

Hope you find these new syllabi helpful! If you share your syllabi online, please share in the comments below!