Capstone Final Paper Final Draft

Lindsey Larsen

Capstone Final Paper

Professor Eric Young

Dixie State University

Introduction:

My first introduction to the capstone process was in my Communication Theory class. Our final paper was the first half of a tradition capstone research project. At the time I was really interested in the impact social media has had on journalism, so I made that the focus of my research. I did not like what I found. The problem with my findings was not the quality of the information, but its lack of timely relevance. It seemed that everything I could find on the impacts of social media on journalism was outdated. I felt like the subject was static. My Communication Research professor suggested I look into finding a new subject for my capstone. I spent a lot of time thinking about other traditional research subjects, but I could not find anything I was very passionate about.

Then I heard about media projects. I immediately starting thinking about different ideas for media projects, and I knew that it would be a better route for me to take. I had been hitting a wall trying to figure out a research paper topic, so I was extremely excited to have a door opened to do something I felt passionate about. I decided I wanted to attempt to teach communication theories to children. In my experience both working with children and learning about communication, I have found there is a lack of information about how to properly communicate. In comparison to other subjects very little emphasis is placed on communications. The majority of public schools do not specifically teach communication skills or theories. Even many colleges don't require a communications class for general education.

I think that knowledge of communication theories and skills is every bit as important as math, science, history and English. If we are not taught about communication at a young age we are exposed to very poor communication habits that are difficult to break later in life. Additionally because children's minds are growing and developing at such a rapid rate it is easier to lay a foundation during this time. The brains peak timeline for developing higher cognitive functions is between the ages of 2 to 10. I think it is important that as professionals in the communications field we capitalize on this time of accelerated development. I decided to do this by writing a children's book that introduces communication theories in the simplest forms.
Literature Review:

The research that I did for this project was a lot more informal than what I would have done for a more traditional capstone project. I spent a lot of my time focusing on the fundamental ideas of the two communication theories I decided to use. I also looked into what makes a children’s book successful and how to properly write one. My findings on these three subjects are listed below.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory:

 “ I am proposing that dissonance, that is, the existence of nonfitting relations among cognition, is a motivating factor in its own right.” (Festinger 3) The cognitive dissonance theory is stated to be one of the most important theories in the history of social psychology. It has roots in the cybernetic tradition and the sociopsychological tradition. The theory is centered on the idea that each communicator has a set of cognitive elements like attitudes, perceptions, knowledge and behaviors. These elements respond to each other to create different types of relationships including null, consistent and inconsistent. These relationships determine dissonance within a person or between people. Dissonance happens when elements don't react with each other in a predictable way. One example of this is people believing that being overweight is unhealthy but continuing to eat poorly. There are two assumptions to this theory the first being that dissonance creates emotional tension or stress that creates a desire to change. The second assumption is that the more dissonance that people have the more likely they are to wait to change it. Some ways that dissonance can be reduced are through changing actions, introducing variables that change opinions, reducing the importance of dissonant elements and finding information that backs the dissonant information.
Groupthink Theory:

“Defines "groupthink" as a psychological drive for consensus at any cost that suppresses dissent and appraisal of alternatives in cohesive decision making groups.” (Janis)

The Groupthink Theory is a product of Irving Janis. It is part of the sociocultural tradition. It is centered on the effectiveness of group conversation and decision-making. Groupthink happens when there is a high level of cohesion in a group. The cohesion creates a strong mutual identification, which binds the group together. The strength of this bond leads groups to become interdependent. The more interdependence there is within the group the more likely it is that there will be pressure on member to maintain cohesiveness. This can be beneficial as it can increase interpersonal relationships amongst the group. However it can also be detrimental because it can lead to decreased self-worth and can inhibit individual decision-making. Some way to combat groupthink are encouraging everyone to be a critical thinker and express their feelings during the process, allowing every member to consider their opinion prior to the leader disclosing their stance on the issue, dividing into smaller groups to discuss the issue and spending enough time on each subject to think of the different possibilities and complications
Writing a Children's Book:

I also spent a lot of time researching how to write children's books. I found a lot of information about length and pacing of children's books. Most of the sources I found said that children's books should be between 50 to 2500 words. I also found a lot of information on the importance of the stories introduction and having a low amount of modifier words. I also spent a lot of time looking at children's books that teach lessons and principles. I think the most beneficial tip I found was the tip to share your work with others. I had a lot of people review my work in an effort to clarify the story and the communication concepts.

Project Proposal:

For my project I wanted to work with teaching young children communications theories and principals. I was interested in creating a children's story that introduces children to the fundamental ideas of interpersonal communication while they are still in stages of early development. For this project I also created a webpage that served to promote and distribute my children's book. In the beginning I really wanted to write a whole series of books and have each teach a different theory. However due to time constraints I decided it would be best to concentrate my efforts on one story. I decided that I would write one children's book, create a website and social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) pages, and a survey for my project.

PLO:

Below I have listed the program learning outcomes and how my project will achieve them. 

 Explain and apply concepts from communication theoretical traditions in small groups, business, interpersonal, mass media, and public settings.

            This is the heart and soul of my project. My goal was to create a children’s book that would teach communication theories. I would not have been able to do that without the ability to explain communication theories. My project focused on this from an interpersonal tradition. I focused on the groupthink and cognitive dissonance theories. I used these as the base to my story in order to teach the principles. I think that this achieved the goal of explaining an interpersonal communication theory.
Create appropriate and effective messages based on skilled analysis of the audience and situation using mediated and non-mediated presentations with a variety of purposes (inform, persuade, entertain, advocate, and celebrate).

One of the most important aspects of this project was that I created a story that was appropriate for children. I knew that I had to create the book that would inform children while still entertaining them. To do this I introduced characters and a story line that would draw children into the story. The text had been established to teach the theories, but the story line was added to produce an effective message.
Apply good reasoning, critical thinking and problem solving skills in interpersonal, small group, organizational, public, and mass media settings, while incorporating ethical principles of the discipline.

This object came more from the challenges along the way. There were a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way for this project. I had to completely change my timeline for things due to delays with the illustration. There were things that I had to rush through in order to finish everything on time. It taught me a lot about problem solving skills especially in a mass media setting since some of the delays caused to be very behind of my social media campaign.  Fortunately I have a lot of really great friends who helped to get my campaign launched quickly by sharing my page.

Project Plan/ Objectives:

My plan was to create and distribute a children's book that teaches communications theories, in hopes to bridge the gap in the learning of proper communication skills.

My objects for this project were:

1. Explain Communications Theories in simplest form.
2. Apply Communications Theories to real life situations.
3. Demonstrate ability to run a multi-plat formed social media campaign.
4. Create media content that has strong visual design elements that follow style guide for target audience.
5. Analyze insights provided from social media sites and survey to see overall success of project.
6. Create a webpage for promotion and distribution of the story. 

Execution of Project Plan:

I knew when I started this project that my top priority had to be getting the book written as quickly as possible. I knew I would have to start with my research of writing children's books and the theories I wanted to include in the text. This step was rather simple. I got the majority of my research done quickly because I already have a pretty good working knowledge of the two theories I was going to use. I spent more time researching what makes a children's book successful.

My next step in the plan would be to write and illustrate the story. This was the Achilles heel of my project. I got the text done pretty quickly, but the illustration is where my project got quite held up. I originally thought I would create an interactive book, so the illustrations would be done using paints for the backgrounds and then other mediums to create the characters and details. I realized that this style of book would not be distributable in an online format, so I tried to just illustrate the book by drawing the pictures myself. I quickly realized I was out of my element. It took me around 4 hours to draw one character, so I shifted gears I thought I could play around with Photoshop using the characters as a base and then changing their faces. This did not work. I came to the realization that to make the book look professional I would need to find an illustrator. The first person I found spent 3 weeks telling me she would have it done soon. I finally ran out of time waiting for her only to find out she had only finished one page of the book. So at this point I was scrambling to get something, anything that would work for my illustrations. That is when I found Jon who did a great job especially given the time constraints that he was under.

After that was finally done I could create a webpage for distribution of the book. My next step was to create a survey and link it to my website. After that I created my social media pages and started a campaign for promotion of the book. Then I presented my book to two groups of children and had discussions with them based of the survey I had created. My final task was to analyze the results of my survey and the discussion to see if my book was successful in teaching communication theories.

Analysis of the plan's effectiveness:

My project plan definitely hit some bumps along the way. I think I underestimated how much time I actually needed for things when I was creating my schedule. That being said I think that my project turned out pretty well. My discussions with the groups of kids I read the book to were my favorite part. I think talking to them about the book made me realize how much people can learn from things that are presented to them.

In both of the two sample groups I read the book too I had one on one interviews and then a group discussion. It was fascinating to me to see how each of the kids understood the book. The first group I presented it to had 12 children, boys and girls between the ages of 5 to 8. Of these 12 10 of them answered the questions I had generated about groupthink and cognitive dissonance correctly. The other two got about half of the questions correctly. The questions I asked in these interviews were simplified versions of the questions I used in my survey.

The second group of children was slightly smaller with only 11 kids, boys and girls ages 4 to 6. They had a similar rate of understanding in their interviews. 9 out of the 11 answered all of the questions correctly and displayed an understanding for both of these theories. In this group I had one little girl that I talked to that gave me a near perfect definition of the cognitive dissonance theory. It was really amazing to see something that I created be so effective in teaching these theories. However I also had a little boy in this group get all of the groupthink questions correctly and miss all of the cognitive dissonance. I don’t know if this was just a fluke, but I will probably review the text and see if there are ways I can make the cognitive dissonance theory information more clear. I think that my results would be a lot more telling if my samples were larger because there were some skews like the boy previously mentioned, but given the time and budget constraints I think that my samples provided very good information about the overall success of this project.

I also got really great results from my survey. The majority of people who took said they hadn't heard of cognitive dissonance but had heard of groupthink. The responses they gave to the other questions showed they had an understanding for the theories concepts.

This project really challenged me and showcased what I have learned during my time here at Dixie. This project made me demonstrate an ability to explain communication theories in order to teach them in simplest form. It showcased my abilities to create a message for a very specific target audience. This project also tested my problem solving and critical thinking skills.

Discussion:

The good, the bad and the ugly, as with all projects there were things that were executed well and things that were not. I am disappointed with the way that I used my time over the semester. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the illustrations for this project. I think that I should have realized sooner that I needed to bring someone else in to help me, and I should have put more pressure on my first illustrator to be honest with me about what she was getting done because waiting on the illustrations put a really big hold on my project. This time I spent waiting could have been used for other aspects of the projects that had to be rushed though like my social media campaign.

 I think that my presentation of this book to my two sample groups was executed really well. I mentioned that this was my favorite part of my project because teaching them through this book really put things into perspective.  I realized that this project could really evolve into something that changes the way we look a communication early in life. In presenting this book and teaching my sample groups I fell in love with teaching communication. Overall I think that this project was successful. I obviously think that some aspects could have been executed better, but that is going to be the case with any project. There were things that did not go as planned, but ultimately I was pleased with the results because of the success of my project so far I want to add a few more illustrations and attempt to get the book published.

Attachments:

Website: http://lindseylarsen127.wix.com/thetoychest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetoychestchildrensbook/

Twiter: https://twitter.com/TheToyChestBook
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetoychestbook/
Survey:https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DJRYXYV
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsey-larsen-26038811a?trk=hp-identity-name

Work Cited

Cognitive Dissonance Theory:

Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Stanford university press.

Theories of Human Communication by: Stephen W. Littlejohn, Karen A. Foss

https://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Levels%20of%20theories/micro/Cognitive_Dissonance_theory/

http://communicationtheory.org/cognitive-dissonance-theory/

Groupthink Theory:
Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes.

Janis, Irving L. Oxford, England: Houghton Mifflin Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. (1972). viii 277 pp.

http://communicationtheory.org/groupthink/

Theories of Human Communication by: Stephen W. Littlejohn, Karen A. Foss

https://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20Clusters/Organizational%20Communication/groupthink/

Writing a Children's Book:
http://www.writing-world.com/children/backes1.shtml

http://writeforkids.org/2014/05/start-here-writing-for-children-step-one/
http://www.patmora.com/tips/