Reflection on Dossier 2nd on February 7

Here are the list of things I retrieved from the observation of the presentations.

Principles for Successful Dossier 2

• Dress nicely
• Energetic body language and facial expression
• Effective use of pause and intonation
• Emphasize keywords
• Practice a lot (I was able to tell that the presenters practiced a lot)
• Effective use of transition words: phrases such as “In terms of services,” was helpful
• Explain technical terms
• Emphasize and contrast important parts
• Limit the number of words per slide; texts should be big enough
• Explain about important things in detail: research interest, career goal
• Make variety; saying “thank you for asking" every time we get questions is bit awkward
• Cite authors instead of saying “several studies” or “my thought is”
• Use diagrams to make the content easier to understand
• Use clear slide titles such as “First Authored Study” or “Research Questions” to help the comprehension of the content
• Describe the first author study in detail
• Emphasize transition words such as “However”
• Effective use of transition slides; the slide of “Philosophy about Teaching” with a couple of citations seemed to be a great transition between teaching and research
• Rephrase questions in order to assure the understanding of the questions

Don'ts for Successful Dossier 2

• Don't make too much body languages as they distract attention
• Don't talk too much about the fact that your papers were accepted by journals
• Don't make the presentation too entertaining; it is academic presentation
• Don't keep speaking about something less important: detailed explanation on the content of service
• Don't speak too fast

Questions Asked - Things I Need to Prepare

• Clarify the role of academic services
• Describe how the research interest has been narrowed
• Be clear about the terminologies when writing the dossier: describe terminologies in the dossier
• Justify the significance of the research and the issue
• Be clear about the relationships between variables or concepts
• Provide supports or evidences for your way of thinking
• Clarify who are the authors for the theoretical framework
• Describe the overview of the area
• Explain the factors make the process successful
• Explain in the broad level; not only about individual level but also about organization level
• Address the names of authors who support the idea

About the Literature Review

• Explain about the method
• Synthesize: no key take away, or just addressing what they say is not good idea

About the Qualitative Research Method

• Provide the thick description of the participants; who they are?
• Justify the validity of analysis
• Explain how to ensure the validity and reliability of the study
• Triangulate: how to rely on the self reported data?

Theoretical Framework

Principles of Visual Design

Balance

Balance is “an even and aesthetically pleasing distribution of elements” (Lohr, 2008, p. 158).

Unity

While using various kinds of elements make visual design interesting, excessive use of them mess up visual design, and thus, controlling variety or achieving unity is important (Evans & Thomas, 2013).

Proximity

“Proximity is the position and space given to the placement of elements in a composition” (Evans & Thomas, 2013, p. 15).

Contrast

“Whereas variety describes small differences within a design, contrast describes larger differences in the elements of a design” (Gatto, Porter, & Selleck, 2011, p. 168).

Emphasis

Related concept to contrast is emphasis. Emphasis makes certain object stand out and thus attract more attention (Evans & Thomas, 2013).

Alignment

Placing elements along common imaginary line is called alignment (Lidwell, Holden & Butler, 2003).

Culture

Culture is a very important factor that shapes our perception (Bruner, 1990; Hedberg & Brown, 2002). Norman (1988) emphasizes the importance of considering culture when people design products.

Multimedia Principle

“People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone” (Mayer, 2009, p. 223).

Coherence Principle

Avoiding “interesting but irrelevant” and “unneeded” things (Mayer, 2009, p. 89).

Motivation Principles

There is also a series of visual design principles that help to achieve optimal level of motivation (Keller & Burkman, 1993). While Rieber (1994) acknowledge the possibility of appealing graphics to enhance motivation, like Mayer, he also points out their possibility of distracting learners’ attention from elements important for learning.

Visual Design Decision

To sum, there are several principles of visual design that could guide designers to create effective instructional materials. However, these principles just provide brief guideline and do not provide answers to specific design needs. Indeed, “design is not a collection of formulas that, if followed and applied, ensure effective results” and it is “a fluid process that is guided by the designer’s sense of intuition, reason, and aesthetic judgment” (Evans & Thomas, 2013, p. 4). Observing and analyzing actual visual design process could bring new knowledge to the field and would help designers to make optimal design judgment along with existing studies and principles of visual design.

Elements of Visual Design

In order to help description and analysis of visual design process, it would be useful to identify elements of visual design. The elements of visual designs are ingredients designers can use (Gatto, Porter, & Selleck, 2011). Evans and Thomas (2013) identify line, texture, shape, space, and type as tangible elements, and size, color, value, and volume as conditional elements (Evans & Thomas, 2013, p. 18). The elements identified by Gatto, Porter and Selleck (2011) are line, color, shape, form, value, space, and texture. Such elements will be defined and explained in the following section.

References

• Brown, A., & Green, T. D. (2011). The essentials of instructional design: Connecting fundamental principles with process and practice (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Prentice Hall.
• Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Evans, P., & Thomas, M. (2013). Exploring the elements of design (3rd ed.). Delmar, NY: Cengage Learning.
• Gatto, J. A., Porter, A. W., & Selleck, J. (2011). Exploring visual design: The elements and principles (4th ed.). Worcester, MA: Davis Publications.
• Hedberg, J. G., & Brown, I. (2002). Understanding cross-cultural meaning through visual media. Educational Media International, 39(1), 23–30. doi:10.1080/09523980210131123
• Keller, J. M., & Burkman, E. (1993). Motivation principles. In M. L. Fleming & W. H. Levie (Eds.), Instructional message design: Principles from the behavioral and cognitive sciences (2nd ed., pp. 3–53). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
• Lidwell, W., Holden, K., & Butler, J. (2003). Universal principles of design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport.
• Lohr, L. L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
• Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia Learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Rieber, L. P. (1994). Computers, graphics & learning. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.

Summary of the Feedback I Received

• The abstract talks about the problem. The introduction session does not talk about the problem.
• Check out competencies of designers. Look at Randa's reference!
• I'm interested in how graphic designers make design decision. I need to cite more design decision literature.
• My literature is outdated. I need to cite more recent literature.
• Address concepts in visual design such as balance. That would frame my research.
• Address visual design principles and describe them. Cite studies which support them.
• As I do observations, I would see which principles or concepts I'd like to focus on.
• The difference between graphic design and visual design is not clear.
• Who is the target audience of the study? (I'm writing this paper for researchers)
• The description of the number of participants is not clear. Who are the primary and secondary participants?
• The difference between observation and shadowing is not clear.
• Will you use analysis of care? I need to identify which analysis strategy I would use.
• I wrote too many research questions. Which one is the focus of the study?
• The relationship between media developers and stakeholders is good research question.
• However, regarding the literature I have, the research question of which principles they use seem to be more appropriate.
• Which aspects of the reality of the graphic designers I want to know? It seems I want to know how they make decisions with given constrains.
• How the data will help me answer the research questions?
• The media developers might have principles in their minds, even if they do not explicitly use something.
• What did they learn in the courses they took?
• What do I expect to find? What do I expect the answers to the research questions would be?
• Do I try to evaluate their design? (NOOOO!!!!! I just want to know realities of designers.)
• How many people I would observe? The description is not clear.
• How did I able to get such an old literature!!?? It seems that I need to go back to the future!
• Use Google Scholar and EBSCO.