This assignment is your final assignment for the class. The project is grounded in your ability to use in-depth interviews to explore a topic related to communication of your choosing. Your objective is to conduct 5-6 in-depth interviews with people who share a commonality and to explore questions of communication with them. Your project can range from exploring the way doctors or nurses communicate with patients to understanding how effective leaders run an organization. You can also explore the communication challenges and opportunities that people face in a number of contexts.
The process for this assignment is straigtforward (albeit challenging) and is as follows:
1. Identify a topic of communication that is of interest to you.
2. Develop an interview schedule of 12-16 open-ended question to explore.
3. Conduct in-depth interviews with 5-6 people.
4. Analyze your data to identify common themes or learning points.
5. Develop a 5-7 minute presentation (More on this soon!)
6. Write a 6-8 page paper (which is due on May 2nd 2023)
The paper needs to be organized as follows:
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Introduction
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Concise sentence to start.
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Develop the main idea of the paper.
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Thesis statement: “In this paper, I argue that…”
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Preview: First,… Second,… Third,…
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Theoretical Background
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Introduce 2-3 concepts from the course and/or readings connected to your topic.
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Cite appropriate literature (connect to scholarly articles and sources)
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Methodology
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What is the story of your project? What are your questions?
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What data did you collect? How did you collect it?
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How did you analyze the data?
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Results/Analysis
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Organized around the 3 most important findings
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Give examples from the interviews. You need at least 2 quotations per main point.
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Implications
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One implication related to communication.
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One implication related to what people can do.
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Conclusion
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Review everything.
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Thesis statement.
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Conclude with a final thought about professional communication.
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