Technical Communication Graduate Applied Projects

The purpose of this project was to evaluate the State Bar of New Mexico's (SBNM) new podcast series, SBNM is Hear. The podcast was initially developed as a member outreach tool and a new platform for professional development and survey questions were developed to gauge the podcast’s effectiveness in these two areas. An electronic survey was deployed to active members of the SBNM through email. Respondents were asked questions regarding their demographics, whether they had listened to the series, and what content they would like to hear in the future. The survey resulted in 103 responses, of which 60% indicated that they had not listened to the podcast. The results showed that listenership was evenly divided between generations and that more females listened to at least one episode. The open-ended responses indicated that the two cohorts of respondents (listeners and non- listeners) viewed the podcast a potential connection to the New Mexico judiciary. Future recommendations include conducting an annual survey to continue to understand the effectiveness of the podcast and solicit feedback for continued growth and improvement

For more than 50 years, my aunt was a professional chef and baker who catered hundreds of events and owned a bakery before retiring. Her recipes have never been formally documented and are rarely shared because only she knows them. The purpose of the cooking website content strategy was to document five decades’ worth of my family’s recipes and write a cooking website content strategy report that will be used in the future to create the cooking website. Creating the website preserves the recipes and provides a resource that can be cited and referred to by future generations of my family. The cooking website applied project consists of a website content strategy report, including a social media strategy and website designs, documented recipes and oral histories, content audit, and content analysis.

In this case study, the formal feedback process of the PCC was researched to determine if the process causes a potential threat state within PCC representatives, and, if so, identify aspects of the process that are potential causes of the threat state. Researched was complete via survey, and data was analyzed using open coding and various quantitative methods. Based on the data obtained in the survey, a threat state was determined to exist due to the feedback process, and two potential causes were identified. A recommendation report was built from the data, and two recommendations were presented. The first recommendation was to adjust to process of how feedback is sent to a PCC rep, and the second was around how often that feedback is delivered. Also included in the recommendation report was discussion around limitations to the research and how those are potential options for future research.

Information can be created and shared online instantaneously. While this means that users can be informed faster than ever, it also means that inaccurate or fabricated stories can spread just as quickly. Newsgroups have become more scrutinized than ever. With this in mind, I wanted to research how an independent publication like The State Press can get the retain their reader base and I provided recommendations that are based on three key concepts of Technical Communication: write for an audience, provide an efficient user experience, and establish an ethos. I researched academic and professional articles related to communication and analyzed data that was provided by an editor from The State Press. The recommendations pertain to five categories: content output, operating systems and service providers, user demographics, user behavior, and search engines. The content is ethical and feasible for an independent publication and will bolster the readership and increase the overall level of engagement between the staff and the readers.