Instructions
Item 1 of the Portfolio: Report on the Communication in My Field of Study (due in week 2)
Before you do anything, open the template and save it. You will use this to complete the assignment.
Review the sample.
For this assignment, you will complete a form providing information about four things:
The program (discipline) you are studying (examples: Intelligence Studies or Criminal Justice).
Some ways you learned about folks in your discipline (looking at your program’s research guide, journals, websites, organizations, books, blogs, podcasts, etc.).
Tips for communicating with folks in your discipline gathered from Artificial Intelligence (AI).
YOUR tips for communicating with folks in your discipline (merging AI observations with your own).
Read the information below for a broad understanding of the purpose of this assignment. Refer to the attached template for more specific details on what to do.
What is a discourse community?
You learned earlier that writing does not exist in a vacuum; it is a conversation between the writer and the reader. One scholar, Erik Borg, says, “We do not generally use language to communicate with the world at large, but with individuals or groups of individuals…these groups are gathered into communities.”
We belong to several of these groups (called discourse communities). You are a community member if you stop at a coffee shop routinely. Members know the “rules” for communicating with each other, what kind of greeting is used, what the standard length of comments is, what kind of comments are acceptable, and what kind are not. Other discourse communities might be related to activities with children, fitness, or church. You can probably think of examples of a conversation topic or a greeting that would be acceptable at the gym but not at church. In this assignment, you will look at the communication that occurs in one of your discourse communities, formed by an interest in your field of study (major, program, or discipline).
How do I learn about the discourse community in my field?
What will you be looking for? You will be looking at the kinds of reading and writing members of the community do, the expectations and rules (conventions) for communication, how they communicate online, and other tips that help you understand this group.
Here’s an easy way to gather this information.
Click the link in the classroom to the APUS Library.
Click the link Subject A-Z.
Click the alphabet letter starting your degree program’s name (N for Nursing, F for Fire Science, A for Accounting, etc.).
Click the name of your degree program (Nursing, Fire Science, Accounting, etc.).
Look through the many choices listed: databases, multi-media, podcasts, websites, careers, associations, government agencies, and social media. Click numerous links in these choices and see what you can learn about how these professionals communicate with each other and those outside the field. Look at how these professionals write by reading items on the sites and tips offered for persons new to the field.
Once I’ve learned about my field’s discourse community, what do I do with that information?
After you have looked at your program on the library’s page, do the following steps.
Go to a generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) site, such as ChatGPT or Google Bard, and type a question like this into the site’s chat box:
What style of writing do professionals in the field of ___(type in your program)___ use?
Example questions to ask AI:
What style of writing do professionals in the field of nursing use?
What style of writing do professionals in the field of sports fitness use?
Copy and paste the answer from AI into a Word document. Be sure to write in the name of the AI tool you used to get these results. You will be pasting this information in the template to be turned in.
(NOTE: This site is a comprehensive catalog of AI tools: Futurepedia, The Largest AI Tools Directory. It is updated daily. Search for General Writing to get started.)
Open the template for the assignment and save it as a Word file with the title “(Your last name) Report on Communication.”
Answer the questions on the template with the information you have gathered and the analysis you have done.
