Bandar Lampung – Various efforts to provide additional knowledge insights to support the teaching and learning process in the Bachelor’s Programme of UNILA’s Communication Studies Department can be visibly seen inaugurated. One of them is through presenting foreign guest speakers to provide beneficial discussion climate for both academics and students through ZOOM app. On this occasion, the featured lecturers are Dr. Katherine Howard from University of South Australia and Merlyna Lim from Carleton University.
Dr. Katherine Howard has a flair for researching. She has been pouring her heart out in the field that requires high critical thinking for many years, which adds on to her reliability in providing training and advice to researchers on the best technology solutions to enhance their research productivity.
In “Research Collaborations Through Media: A Reflection of Radar Program in Australia” online lecture course, Howard shared her wise gems about the uses of media under the RADAR (Research Assistance and Development for Australian Researchers) program that are noteworthy for the attendees on Friday (09/30/2022).
“Collaboration doesn’t have to mean that everything is done together. Tasks and decision making can be done individually, together, or a combination of both. So, thinking that collaboration means everyone always agrees and knows what’s going on doesn’t always fit that in practice. Collaborative project doesn’t always have to mean everybody is in agreement.” explained Howard about what she had to say regarding research collaborations.
The discussion session went on for an hour and a half. Howard managed to make Communication Studies’ students immersed in the materials within the timeframe. She led the class with thoughts-inducing wisdom which naturally generated lively reactions from the students.
Another abroad speaker who was born in Bandung, Merlyna Lim, made her first on-screen interaction with Department of Communication Studies students several days via ZOOM after Howard’s class got dismissed (10/05/2022). Her full-fledged Canada Research Chair (CRC) status in Digital Media and Global Network Society made her to be fitting as a guest speaker of “Emoticon Services 2.0: The Rise of Algorithms and Our Future” class.
She brought rise to the tight knit between modern everyday life and Communication Information Technology (ICT) due to the constant growth in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the last 50 years or so. Especially ever since written forms of electronic communication lack the face-to-face situation attributes, emoticons are seen as socio-emotional suppliers to computer mediated communication.
“Emoticons are a type of expression. Based on research I’ve done in the past, there are many factors influencing text based communication to become emoticonized since life has took turn to be algorithmic.” She stated.
She provided plenty of informations in accordance with political, economic, sosio-cultural influences on the main topic she had to supply for the academics and the students. It took nearly three hours until the discussion session is being wrapped up.