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Heads Up Signature Assignment Info

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10 views3 pages

Heads Up Signature Assignment Info

Uploaded by

superkashbritney768
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Heads-Up: Signature Assignment

Preparing for your Signature Assignment: In Lesson 8, you will deliver a presentation to
showcase your Lesson 7 technical report. The Lesson 8 presentation should illustrate a
technical topic tailored to a particular organization's leadership board audience.
Ultimately, your job as a technical manager requires you to share information with
precision and present that information in ways that help you achieve your
communication goal by tailoring it to your audience. The technical report needs to be
about a computer technology topic within your field. To prepare for this assignment,
please read the assignment descriptions for Lesson 6 (composing slides), Lesson 7
(writing a technical report), and the Lesson 8 Signature Assignment (presenting the
technical report to the leadership board). If you plan carefully, you might use the
graphics you created in Lesson 5 for the other assignments.

In preparation for the Signature Assignment, you need to choose a technical topic that
is important to an intended audience and determine what your communication goals
are. In Lesson 8, you will be asked a series of questions that will help you articulate
your thoughts. They are also included here to help you prepare for the Lesson 5
assignment.

 TECHNICAL TOPIC: What technical topic is of interest to me and would be


relevant to a leadership board at a chosen organization?
 LEADERSHIP BOARD AUDIENCE: Knowing that you are presenting to a
leadership board that may not work in technology or be familiar with your topic,
ask yourself,
o How does the organizational context, including mission and goals, impact
the leadership board’s need for information about the technical topic?
o What key insights should the board “take away” from the presentation?
o What is the appropriate level of detail I should provide?
o How can I tailor my graphics to highlight salient features in the graphics?
 COMMUNICATION GOAL: Communication goals can be based on the desire to
illustrate a phenomenon or problem, offer information that helps the board make
a decision, recommend action strategies as the result of your research, persuade
the board to take action, and more. Ask yourself,
o What is my communication goal, and how can I use graphics to help me
achieve my communication goal?
o How can I clearly articulate all relevant and essential points and exposition
of the technical concepts to an audience that may not have a technical
background?
Make sure that your technical topic, leadership board audience, and communication
goal are clearly articulated. Your audience-tailored communication goal should be
aligned with materials (graphics, reports, presentations, hand-outs, etc.). Key insights
should be optimally presented.
Using APA
The American Psychological Association (APA) published a new Manual in 2020 (7th
Ed). The manual provides guidelines, which include recommendations and standards
for creating figures. If you have not already, you might want to consider purchasing this
manual or accessing APA resources through the Academic Success Center. The APA
distinguishes between types of figures: graphs, charts, drawings, maps, plots, and
photographs. For this section, APA Manual (2020) guidelines relevant to figures are
included in this lesson's narrative. APA lists the principles of figure construction that
help designers create clear, concise figures and have information communication value.
A figure is defined as “all types of graphical displays other than tables.” According to
the APA Manual, a “good figure.”

 augments rather than duplicates text


 conveys only essential information
 omits visually distracting details
 is easy to read – its elements (e.g., type, lines, labels, symbols)
 are large enough to be seen and interpreted with ease
 is easy to understand-its purpose is readily apparent
 is carefully planned and prepared
 is consistent with and in the same style as similar figures in the same article
Further, the APA (2020, 7th Ed) also stresses that there should be sufficient information
in the figure (e.g., legends, figure notes, etc.) to be understood on its own without the
need to include a text to help readers understand. The text should be used to highlight
the salient features of the figure, not to help readers understand how to understand the
figure itself.

Your communication goal should drive your selection of the most effective data
visualization strategy. In your lesson resources, you are required to read Neidiger's
(2019), How to Choose the Best Types of Charts for Your Data. When deciding the best
way to present your data, the author emphasizes the importance of considering what
you want to accomplish with your graphic. While keeping the audience's needs in the
forefront, Neidinger recommends considering whether you are trying to inform,
compare, show change, organize, or reveal relationships. Think about what point you
are trying to illustrate with a graphic. Are you trying to show a pattern of change over
time? Are you interested in highlighting the percent make-up of the whole? Are you
comparing several categories? Are you attempting to describe a variable or a
relationship between variables? The type of figure you choose should be driven by your
communication goal, given the constraints of the type of data you are displaying.

In this lesson, we will focus on constructing figures following APA standards for the
following chart types:

 Bar Charts
 Line Charts
 Scatterplots
 Pie Charts
 Waterfall Charts
 Heat Maps
 Histograms
 Box Plots
 Area Charts
As you review the figures covered in this course, consider the communication goals that
you would like to achieve with each chart type. What type of chart would resonate with
the audience? The APA (2020) guidelines provide formatting standards that ensure that
visual displays convey the information clearly and concisely, helping you achieve the
goal of effective communication. When AA format is not specified, how can you
customize your graphics to pull out salient features that will help drive home your point
and key insights that you hope your audience takes away?

Please complete the interactive activity - Data Visualization: Common Figures and
Usage as part of your lesson readings. This interactive introduces data visualization and
a list of common tools, overview of APA format with checklist, tips for enhancing
accessibility, and guidance on choosing your graphic based on your communication
goal and the data/variable type(s) introduced in this course. Examples of the chart types
covered include bar, line, scatterplot, pie, waterfall, heat map, histograms, box plots,
and area charts) are included in this interactive.

References

APA Style. (2022). Accessibility of APA style. American Psychological Association.

APA Style. (2022.) Figure setup. American Psychological Association.

Hayword, E. (2021, October 6). The starter guide to data visualizations. Klipfolio.

Wilke, C. O. (2019). Fundamentals of data visualization. O'Reilly Media, Inc

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