October, 2009

Overview
Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) integrate and connect the pedagogy taking place within the Noel
Studio with the larger academic community at EKU. The SLOs outlined here are intended to guide
the pedagogical approach and methods of consultation that inform the development of critical and
creative thinkers who communicate effectively through well-developed writing, speaking, and
research skills in a variety of settings, academic and professional, from across the disciplines. The
methods are intended to support consultation pedagogy taking place in the Noel Studio and
therefore designed to serve as methods and strategies students will use during phases of the design
and delivery of their content and message within intended contexts and across different media. In
turn, students will be able to apply these methods in class as critical and creative ways to think
about the development of their communication products. Accordingly, these methods take an
important interdisciplinary approach to consulting, with respect to foundations in writing, oral
communication, research, the informed use of technology, and critical and creative thinking and the
productive, scholarly integration of these areas.

Student Learning Outcomes

As a result of one or more visits to the Noel Studio, students will be able to improve, advance or deepen
their communication abilities in one or more of the communication phases that contribute to the
effective design and delivery of their message/content and mode of delivery:

1) Determine the information need.

2) Explore and gather ideas and information.
3) Evaluate the appropriateness of information based on audience, currency, accuracy, authority,
and scope.
4) Organize information, concepts, and ideas strategically.*
5) Evaluate communication options in message production and delivery.
6) Design a message to meet an intended goal.
7) Identify assumptions and differentiate points of view.
8) Synthesize information from multiple sources including one’s own ideas.
9) Demonstrate effective communication through an appropriate mode.
10) Assess the potential impact of one’s message on its audience.
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Methods
1) Methods/strategies students will use during phases of the design and delivery of their content
and message to determine the information need

· Use video gallery of communication situations to identify purpose and discuss the information
used to carry out the purpose.
· Respond to photographs or advertisements to identify the purpose and discuss the information
used to carry out the purpose.
· Use manipulatives, such as play dough, to have students create something, then discuss purpose
and information need.
· Use software, such as Inspiration
· Use questions (from consultants and self-generated) to identify purpose and information need
within own communication.

2) Methods/strategies students will use to explore and gather ideas and information-
discovery/investigation phase

· Brainstorm for synonyms that will aid in finding information.

· Use clustering to discover multiple approaches to a topic.
· Wordle
· Perform CATTt (Ulmer, Heuretics 8)
· “ Write to the nth power, the n-1 power, write with slogans. Make rhizomes, not roots, never
plant! Don’t sow, grow offshoots! Don’t be one or multiple, but multiplicities! Run lines, never
plot a point! . . . Have short-term ideas” (Rice and O’Gorman, NM/NM 16-7).

3) Methods/strategies students will use to evaluate the appropriateness of information based on

audience, currency, accuracy, authority, and scope—definition/refining phase

· Compare real and fake websites with bad information.

· Use visual information, such as pictures or graphs, to analyze audience, currency, accuracy,
authority, and scope (see “Cruel Pies” and Tufte’s data visualizations/Napoleon’s march by
Minard).
· Use student’s own communication piece to discuss audience, currency, accuracy, authority, and
scope.
· Draw from Topic/Question/Rationale (TQR) from Booth, et al.
· Map search terms
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4) Methods/Strategies Students Will Use to Organize information, concepts, and ideas

strategically—idea generation phase*

· Highlight “thesis” and supporting points

· Develop a cognitive map
· Perform visual/creative map of concepts/relationships (Opening Spaces)
· Create visual story board (look toward comic book theories of design/information desing)

5) Methods/Strategies Students Will Use to Evaluate communication options in message

production and delivery—idea selection phase

· Identify alternative modes/media/medium (Liu, Laws of Cool)

· Question the communication medium (McLuhan, Medium is the Massage)
· Perform media analysis (hot/cool media, McLuhan, Understanding Media)
· Perform fragmented reading/free drafting of specific aspects of the project that, together, make
the entire message (Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse)
· Communication as Jazz (Jarrett, Drifting on a Read)

6) Methods/Strategies Students Will Use to Design a message to meet an intended goal—

drafting/ translation phase

· Design a message (style) based on your signature (see TextBook).

· Discuss the rhetorical situation of a found photograph (see Mauer, Ray, or Foucault, This is Not a
Pipe) – determine goal of that piece of communication.
· Discuss message of TED talk (Lessig, Remix).
· “Locate a site of media work that never reached its potential or was never completed. Like
Cummings’s interest in Picture City, focus on the not-yet-created. Map your visitation and
recreation of that site. Your objective is not historical revelation (“what was here”) but
speculation (‘what could have occurred’)” (Rice and O’Gorman, NM/NM 13).

7) Methods/Strategies Students Will Use to Identify assumptions and differentiate points of

view—discovery/investigation phase

· Deconstruct picture/poem/audio file/video (see Jerome McGann, Radiant Textuality)

· Identify marginalia (Ray, Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy or O’Gorman, E-Crit)
· Build a story based on marginal detail. What is the message? (O’Gorman, E-Crit)
 Noel Studio | SLOs & Methods 4

· Build story/narrative (Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality)

· Locate image that encapsulates your arguments (Rice and O’Gorman, NM/NM 11)

8) Methods/Strategies Students Will Use to Synthesize information from multiple sources

including one’s own ideas-evaluation phase and part of the definition/refining phase/idea
selection phase

· Color code supporting points—highlighters, construction paper, Legos (Arnheim or Sturken and
Cartwright)
· Identify delimiters for “writing” machine (Kate Hayles)
· Respond to music (Barthes, Image-Music-Text)
· Associate sound with image/word/phrase (Kress and van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse)

9) Methods/Strategies Students Will Use to Demonstrate effective communication through an

appropriate mode—revision phase and part of drafting/translation phase

· Deconstruction—isolate ____ word (i.e. noun, pronoun) (Derrida, Writing and Difference)
· Game with multiple paths (Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us)
· Choose your own adventure—hypertext theory (see Landow)
· Explore forms of multimodal communication (see Kress et al.)
· Isolate modes in a communication product (see Ong, Orality and Literacy)

10) Methods/Strategies Students Will Use to Assess the potential impact of one’s message on its
audience—part of the audience analysis/publication phase and part of part of the evaluation
phase.

· Generate/discuss electronic monument (Ulmer, EM)

· Perform (Brecht, Brecht on Theatre)
· Engage in Color/painting analysis/discussion (Norman, Emotional Design)