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Saul Carliner
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In this List of Speeches
Experience
Speeches Available
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Speech

Description

Intended Audience

A "Consumer's Guide" to Research Results: How to Determine Whether You Can Trust the "Experts’ Data?

Have you ever questioned the results of a research study, usability test, evaluation or other research-based data that someone presented to you? Or has someone questioned yours? Because organizations make business decisions based on this data, people must trust its credibility. This session presents guidelines for people who are "consumers" of research-based data. It provides guidelines for evaluating evaluations and explains how you can apply these guidelines to make sure that the data you deal with is credible.

Graduate students.

Lessons for the Virtual World from the Bricks and Mortar One: Different Types of Experiential Learning for Web and Design Courses

Explores ways to adapt a number of activities from the classroom for distance learning. Specifically, this session explores ways to adapt case studies, reference-based learning, paired and group learning.

Professors, college-level instructors, and continuing education instructors who teach online.

ROI for E-Learning: Can You? Should You? How Do You?

Because e-learning usually requires a heavy up-front financial investment, organizations have a strong interest on calculating the return on that investment (ROI). This session explores some common approaches to calculating ROI, and identifies some of the challenges involved in calculating and reporting ROI. It also suggests the types of projects for which you should calculate ROI-and which ones aren’t worth the effort.

Administrators, professors, college-level instructors, and continuing education instructors who have financial responsibility for online courses and programs.

Choosing the Content for Your Course Website

You've developed websites for your courses, but now you'd like to make them good ones. Learn how in this interactive session. Explore a variety of ideas for creating a course website that your students will find valuable. Learn how to use websites to enhance the classroom experience, provide remediation and enrichment, and to manage your course. Also receive practical advice for designing attractive screens, managing the endless maintenance of course websites, and dealing with the thorny issues of copyrights.

Professors and college-level instructors who develop course websites.

Research-based speeches

Presentations based on my research. Examples include:

• Management Practices from the Field: What Really Happens in Larger Technical Communication Departments. Provides an insight into the professional practice of technical communication from the results from a survey of the management portfolios of larger technical communication departments (20 or more staff). A management portfolio specifically refers to the workload (number of projects, genres covered, media), staff (percentages of writers, editors, illustrators, usability engineers, and managers), and resources (funding, equipment) available to a department, as well as the relationships with sponsoring organizations, marketing practices, business processes, and quality metrics. This paper first presents a brief background on other attempts to assess the work efforts of technical communication departments (such as Bandes 1986, Hackos 1994 and 1994, Redish 1995, Carliner 1997, Mead 1998, Spilka 2000) and other types of communication departments (Dillon, Madden & Firtle 1990, Dozier, Grunig and Grunig 1995, J. Philips 1998). Next, it presents the methodology and quickly reviews the results. Last, this paper explores implications of the research to teaching, such as extending the layered literacies proposed by Kelli Cargile Cook (2002). It also suggests additional research.
• Design Lessons from the Field. Presents interim results of an ongoing qualitative study that looks at professional information design practices. Specifically, this study uses in-depth interviews with core and peripheral team members, and artifact analysis of design plans to explore the design of individual communication products. Guiding questions include: What is design practice in the real world? What is design? Who actually participates in design? What are their roles? In the course of designing and developing a project, what issues do people consider? How do organizations assess the effectiveness of their work? Their productivity? Cases covered in this reporte include a user assistance project and an educational simulation. Interim results offer insights into the early design process and the limited levels of collaboration that occur then. Preliminary results also offer insights the development of prototypes, including the role of leading-edge technology, the value of “making a difference,” concerns about intellectual property ownership, and the tension between the ideal and the affordable. Insights are offered, too, into development issues, such as the impact of funding, the issue of coordination versus collaboration, how technology glitches figure into design, and the high level of turnover that can occur between design and production. This study also explores the ways that organizations evaluate their work. In addition to presenting the results, this presentation also explores the implications of this study to teaching and research.

Scholars in information and instructional design, and technical communication.