Project Update 3: CCCC, Revising the Participants List, Waiting for Responses
CCCC: Context for following sections
This past week I’ve been attending CCCC which has impeded my ability to progress on this project a bit, and advance it in other ways. The biggest hurdle that CCCC presented was that I ended up delaying sending out my survey because I knew there would be people at the conference that would be able to provide key stakeholder positions on the site’s development, and I wanted to avoid over-scheduling interviews which would inhibit my ability to reach those primary stakeholders and get their detailed feedback for the platform.
Revising Participants List
In addition to the previous stakeholders that I sent the survey out to, I also connected with the Literacy Studies Special Interest Group at CCCC and sent the survey to an additional 5 potential users of the archive (more likely to use it than some of the previous participants). While I wait for responses from these stakeholders, and from others, I am going to plan out interview questions based on the survey responses I’ve already gotten (only two which are at odds with each other’s opinion). It’s worth noting, though, that CCCC just ended. It will pay to be patient and not stress about not receiving responses just 24 hours after sending the survey to potential new participants.
Waiting for Responses and Alternative Plans if Needed
Since our last class meeting is scheduled for the 22nd, I intend to also analyze existing scholarship, the researchers behind it, external contributors to the blog and their current positions and research interests, and the user data that we have from site analytics to develop personas. I think a multifaceted approach like this should give us an opportunity to develop the site in a way that responds to stakeholder needs when the stakeholders don’t have the time to respond to survey regarding those needs. The concern is that by developing such personas I will be leaving out graduate students, however graduate students seem to be the only ones currently responding to the request I sent out! As such, it seems pertinent to develop personas primarily for the participants I wished for but haven’t been able to get ahold of.
I already acknowledged such researchers like Deborah Kuzawa, Moira Connelly, Kara Poe Alexander, Alison Turner, and Jessica Pauszek, all of whom serve in different roles at their respective universities with literacy studies being a connecting thread. These personas may help inform blog content development, archival content curation, meta data that should be included in each narrative (from keywords utilized in publications and search terms used), and future conference and publication planning according to interdisciplinary cases such as writing center, WAC, FYC, rhetoric, and professional/technical writing crossovers.