Community Communication Research
Starting with the first COMM321 course taught in Fall 2009, communication students could take their research skills into the Winston-Salem community to work with local "helping" organizations to improve community life. Working with Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods in Fall 2009, we took communication research methods into communities -- neighborhoods -- that wanted research help. In spring 2010, we hope to work with Winston's Reynoldstown neighborhood to do an oral history and documentary project.
We're doing "project-based research" or "participatory research." That always means that people in groups or neighborhoods ask for help from communication researchers. So community members are participants IN doing the research, while we communication researchers continue to strive to make the research systematic and valid. We don't promise to FIND what the community or group wants us to find. But we ask the questions that the community group needs answered so that they can move forward -- toward change.
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