Call for Participation ATTW 2017 Research Methods Workshops

ATTW 2017 Research Methods Workshops

Portland, Oregon March 14, 2017 12:30-4:30

Application deadline: December 15th

Scholarships are available!

Visit attw.org for the call for participation and full workshop descriptions

The Research Methods Workshops are an initiative of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) aimed at providing an opportunity for those entering the profession and those less trained in research to develop more sophisticated research skills.

This year, ATTW is sponsoring two Research Methods Workshops. Each workshop focuses on a methodology for data analysis and is designed to help researchers devise and try out an analytic approach.

Iconographic Tracking: A Digital Research Method for Circulation Studies

Laurie E. Gries, University of Colorado-Boulder

This workshop will introduce participants to digital research strategies for tracing the circulation, transformation, and consequentiality of new media artifacts (images, tweets, memes, etc.). Participants will specifically learn how do iconographic tracking (as modeled in Still Life with Rhetoric (Gries 2015)) through the strategic use of web research, Google Fusion Tables, and data visualizations. Participants will walk away from this workshop with printed guidelines for implementing iconographic tracking, which can be used for research and pedagogical purposes, as well as hands-on-experience in putting this digital research method into practice. 

Conducting Quantitative Content Analysis

Ryan K. Boettger, University of North Texas

Have you collected so much content for your research that you don’t know how to analyze it all?

Content analysis (CA) is a powerful empirical method for analyzing texts, images, maps, sounds, and symbols. Briefly defined, CA is the systematic, objective, and quantitative analysis of message characteristics (Neuendorf 2016). Researchers then make inferences about the messages within the texts, the writer, and the audience. The applied nature of CA has made it popular with academics, commercial researchers, and communication practitioners. However, the method is often misapplied or mislabeled in fields like technical communication.

These two half-day workshops will be held in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday afternoon, March 14, 12:30-4:30. This is the day preceding the ATTW conference (March 15) and the CCCC conference (March 15-18).

Registration for each workshop is $100. Ten scholarships of $200 each are available to graduate students to defray the cost of the workshop and hotel.