Browsing by Author "Lovejoy, Kim B."

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    "Discovering" Writing With Struggling Students: Using Discovery Learning Pedagogy to Improve Writing Skills in Reluctant and Remedial Learners
    (2016-03) Bohney, Brandie Lee; Lovejoy, Kim B.; Fox, Steve; Brooks-Gillies, Marilee Elizabeth
    Few writing teachers will disagree that teaching writing conventions in isolation is a fruitless, even harmful, pedagogy which does little, if anything, to improve student writing. Teaching conventions, style, and usage (often collectively referred to as grammar) in context, however, proves difficult when struggling secondary students develop good ideas and evidence but fail to clearly articulate them because of their lack of understanding of various writing conventions. The purpose of this study is to test the efficacy of a carefully designed discovery learning activity which intends to push students into metacognition about what they read, how it is structured, and how that structure affects the reader. Three sources of data were used to determine whether students who had learned by discovery were better able to avoid and revise run-on sentences than students who did not learn through discovery pedagogy. The data sources include two sets of essays, surveys taken by the students, and teacher analyses of essays for readability. The results of the data analysis indicate that use of run-on sentences, especially early in an essay, detrimentally affects the readability of student written work; discovery learning activities improve student understanding, application, and transfer of skill; and while students believe they understand more than their written work indicates, the results provide teachers direction for further instruction. The findings of this study indicate that use of discovery learning for writing instruction with struggling learners holds great promise: a group of students generally regarded as academically weak showed greater understanding and application of run-on sentence avoidance than slightly stronger students who learned without discovery methods. This indicates that discovery learning is a method that improves learning among reluctant secondary students, a population many teachers struggle to reach effectively. Discovery learning is not limited to conventions, though: the promise of its application potential extends into a variety of writing skills and concepts. In addition to the run-on sentence discovery activity studied here, discovery activities for various other skills—from semicolon use through creating characterization with dialogue—are included.
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    In Black and White: The American Media’s Construction of Police Killings
    (2016) Johnson, Morgan Kristine; Rossing, Jonathan; Shepherd, Susan C.; DiCamilla, Frederick J.; Lovejoy, Kim B.
    With several highly publicized police killings during the latter half of 2014, the issue of police violence has been re-ignited in the United States as emotionally charged a topic as ever, dividing Americans politically and socially and racially. From Eric Garner to Nicholas Robertson, the media has been greatly influential on public perception of police killings. Based on 163 digital news articles about cases of police killings from the top ten visited American news sites of 2015, this study analyzes how the American media’s language contributes to readers’ perception of police killings, focusing on patterns of race-related modifiers, passivization, and evaluation. Use of these linguistic features can influence public perception of the role of race, police accountability, and societal expectations. Considering the findings, I advocate for media literacy education as professional development for journalists.
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    Teaching students how to tailor messages: lessons learned from a technical communication course
    (2016-12-05) Baechle, Mary Frances; Lovejoy, Kim B.; Buchenot, Andre; Renguette, Corinne
    Tailoring messages is the process of customizing messages that are more relevant for the receiver, with the aim of improving the recipient’s engagement with and understanding about information in the message. Little research has been done to look at tailored messages in technical communication about healthcare technology, even though the use of technology in healthcare, and the complexity of that technology, continues to increase. Research was performed to investigate if students who plan to work in the healthcare technology field can demonstrate an understanding about tailoring messages and can tailor messages in their technical communication. A four-phase Action Research Cycle for inquiry into teaching and learning was used to modify course materials and analyze work for six assignments submitted by 14 students enrolled in Technical Communication for the Health Care Professions, TCM 38000, during the 2015 spring semester. Although TCM 38000 has always been open to students in other majors, the majority of students who take the course are in the Health Engineering Technology Management (HETM) program at Purdue’s School of Engineering and Technology on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in Indianapolis. Overall, the modifications made to TCM 38000 were successful in helping students begin to learn about tailoring messages and create messages tailored for a specific end-user in their technical communication developed for some course assignments. In their Reflections for a User Manual assignment, the majority of students explained that they used what they learned through course materials and discussions to reach beyond their learning and come up with techniques for tailoring messages on their own. Students used word choice, information content and role-play techniques to determine the end-user’s information needs and then to tailor messages in their manuals to address those needs. After reflecting on the results of the research, some course materials will be modified so that students can gain a deeper understanding about tailoring messages and can have more opportunities to practice writing tailored messages in course assignments. Research implications expand beyond the classroom into workplace training for organizations that have both technical and non-technical employees that must effectively communicate.