The cSquares project is an extension of the iSquare project and the draw and write technique to study conceptions of communication amongst students in France
Welcome
Information and communication are at the basis of how we know things (epistemology), as such, they are omnipresent in every field of activity. This also makes them very slippery concepts or realities: they often mean different things to different people, hence their exploration is endless. An enormous amount of theoretical discourse has been devoted to defining these concepts but often from the point of view of a specific discipline or of a specific context.
Many of us grapple with how to convey what we think information and communication mean in our teachings or in our research. Teaching information and communication theories in a pure academic manner, by recalling the many varied definitions found in the literature can be dead boring for instructors and students alike. At the very least, this theoretical foray is often frustrating and inconclusive because it leaves both instructor and students confounded by the dozens of nuances and variations in the definitions without any way of reaching an agreement on what these concepts mean once and for all.
The idea of applying an arts-informed approach in exploring the concept of information was initiated by Jenna Hartel (2014). She formed an interdisciplinary and international research team with a base at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto and employed a visual approach known as the draw-and-write technique. This resulted in the iSquare protocol for collecting drawings and textual representations of information from students.
This arts-informed innovative approach so intrigued me that I decided to explore it in a French higher education setting not only to study the concept of Information but also to study the sister concept of communication, hence the title of this website "cSquares". I have successfully deployed the draw and write technique in my classroom teachings to study the conceptions of both information and communication by students. I have collected samples of drawings and their textual definitions on the concept of information (iSquares) which form part of the international iSquares collection currently being analysed by the iSquare team.
This page is dedicated to the application of the draw and write technique to the concept of communication (cSquares). The questions we tried to bring answers to are the following:
It can be useful for scholars, educators, doctoral students and professionals and in many fields including information and communication studies, mass media and journalism.
I welcome any feedback from visitors on similar experiences or on possible extensions of this project. Please use the contact menu.
Happy visiting!
Many of us grapple with how to convey what we think information and communication mean in our teachings or in our research. Teaching information and communication theories in a pure academic manner, by recalling the many varied definitions found in the literature can be dead boring for instructors and students alike. At the very least, this theoretical foray is often frustrating and inconclusive because it leaves both instructor and students confounded by the dozens of nuances and variations in the definitions without any way of reaching an agreement on what these concepts mean once and for all.
The idea of applying an arts-informed approach in exploring the concept of information was initiated by Jenna Hartel (2014). She formed an interdisciplinary and international research team with a base at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto and employed a visual approach known as the draw-and-write technique. This resulted in the iSquare protocol for collecting drawings and textual representations of information from students.
This arts-informed innovative approach so intrigued me that I decided to explore it in a French higher education setting not only to study the concept of Information but also to study the sister concept of communication, hence the title of this website "cSquares". I have successfully deployed the draw and write technique in my classroom teachings to study the conceptions of both information and communication by students. I have collected samples of drawings and their textual definitions on the concept of information (iSquares) which form part of the international iSquares collection currently being analysed by the iSquare team.
This page is dedicated to the application of the draw and write technique to the concept of communication (cSquares). The questions we tried to bring answers to are the following:
- How did the students render the notion of communication, i.e, what type of graphic representations were mobilised to represent communication?
- What is the relation or correspondence between the textual definition and graphic representation of the same concept in the students' drawings?
- How do representations of information (iSquares) differ from those of communication (cSquares) as perceived by the students?
- What can these differences this tell us about possible cultural, linguistic, geographic or intellectual biases in students’ perceptions of the same phenomena (information and communication) worldwide?
It can be useful for scholars, educators, doctoral students and professionals and in many fields including information and communication studies, mass media and journalism.
I welcome any feedback from visitors on similar experiences or on possible extensions of this project. Please use the contact menu.
Happy visiting!
The Corpus
The participants were first year masters’ students majoring in communications and media studies at the School of Journalism and Communication of Aix-Marseille University. Following the iSquare protocol, students were given a 4.25" by 4.25" piece of paper and asked to verbally express their understanding of communication on the front side and in the form of a drawing on the blank side of the paper (see image below) . The draw and write exercise was performed at the very first class, thus before the students received the course contents, in order to capture their prior conceptions of the concept under study. I have been using this arts-informed approach since 2014 in my course on Theories of Information and Communication to collect students' conceptions of communication. I have collected over 150 drawings of communication (24 cSquares in 2014; 74 cSquares in 2015 and 65 cSquares in 2016). In the winter of 2015, I also collected representations of information (52 iSquares) in a course entitled "Information, resource for the enterprise" which have been analysed here and published in CoLIS 9. |
Profile of Fidelia
I am a Full Professor at the School of Communication & Journalism (EJCAM), Aix-Marseille University - Marseille FRANCE.
My research interests revolve around theoretical and applied issues pertaining to how data and information are accessed, represented, utilised and disseminated. An earlier part of my research career focused on building methods and prototypes to process textual data so as to to produce knowledge enhancing artifacts and map the evolution of research topics contained therein. This was done using automated techniques, namely a mixture of symbolic (Natural Language Processing and Computational Terminology) and numeric approaches (statistical and mathematical models). Applications targeted were text mining, knowledge acquisition, terminology structuring, information Visualisation and Information Retrieval. In recent years, I have stepped back from this applied research to try and examine critically the theoretical and epistemological underpinnings of such traditions of corpus-based empirical research. This has led me to become interested in the history and philosophy of science, in epistemology and in the theoretical foundations of Information and Communication Studies, the discipline under which my research falls in France. The cSquares initiative is part of my foray into the the conceptions of communication as seen by students, using an arts-informed approach which is novel for me. I have also been looking at the uses of ICTs and became interested in how the current phenomena of Big Data and Open Data are transforming entire sectors of the society and their impact on scientific inquiry. Hence, haven been involved in empirical research on developing information systems, I am now looking at how this technology affects the way we do things as a society and as scientists. The questions that I am particularly interested in are: i) what transformations are underway that can be attributed to advancements in the field of ICT? (ii) What are the epistemological and theoretical implications of a data-driven scientific discovery or decision making? Of course, one cannot make sweeping statements about the impact of ICTs for the entire society or for all of the scientific disciplines but there may be recurring patterns and implications across entire sectors and fields which I am keen to uncover. More information on my research activities can be found here. |