- Kenneth A. McNett
Statement of Purpose
Department of Communication at UCSB, PhD Program
Entering Fall 2010 - As technology trends toward real-time communication across all devices, many people hope for their online dialogues to mimic the alacrity of face-to-face conversation. Yet, in my professional work, I have noticed varied resistance to the newest services that would accomplish that wish, resulting in both positive and negative consequences for companies and non-profit organizations.
- I am interested in performing doctoral research about the effects of the adoption or non-adoption of online collaborative technologies. Specifically, I intend to focus on real-time document sharing services such as those offered by Google Docs, Google Wave, Windows Office Live, and independent open-source projects. The Department of Communication at UCSB is the ideal environment to cultivate my ideas and allow me to leverage the necessary resources to answer my questions:
- Which entities most benefit from real-time collaboration? What advantages are maintained by an organization that refuses to go to a synchronous cloud? Will large social networking platforms introduce simultaneous editing as a standard? What would happen if every document on the internet had the option to be shared collaboratively? How does a team best compensate for the inability of one of its members to work in a real-time environment?
- Dr. Miriam Metzger and Dr. Andrew Flanagin are a tried and true team whose association with the CITS and overarching interests in technology and new media make them ideal mentors for me. Their studies of user privacy and information organization are complementary to my focus on collaborative workspaces. One example is the recent book chapter to which Dr. Flanagin contributed regarding the possibly destructive nature of communication technologies (Flanagin, Pearce, & Bondad-Brown, 2009). His general classifications, when applied more narrowly to real-time shared work environments, could yield the motivations businesses have for shying away from such environments.
- Their ongoing work via the Credibility@UCSB Project is particularly relevant to my research interests as well. How does a person’s perceived authority affect others’ decisions to share and edit documents with them? Moreover, constantly assessing the reliability of rapidly changing real-time content is as challenging as knowing which theories to believe during a lively academic roundtable. If the most trusted advisor contributes flawed information, what safeguards will best maintain correct information on the fly while preserving users’ confidence in the collaborative process? As a research assistant for the Credibility@UCSB Project, I would be able to investigate these facets of my intended focus and add breadth to the project as a whole.
- Ultimately, my career goal is to teach at the university level. In all of my teaching opportunities—from sharing life skills with strangers in Brazil to instructing high-level professionals about computer technology—the sparks of knowledge have burned brightest when my students were able to put principles into practice. I hope to sharpen that approach via teacher assistantships at UCSB.
- As a demonstration of my zeal for applying technology-based collaboration, this essay itself is the result of collaborative editing. I invited the online community to make edits and comments in an open forum I created at kennymcnett.com/mystatementofpurpose. Since this is ultimately a personal essay, I took care to remain the sole author of each draft and I was in complete control of what advice I incorporated. The community commentary was enlightening and I invite you to visit the website to survey the process.
- In my professional and volunteer work, I have led hundreds of people spread across California and beyond. I have developed shared communication infrastructures for them and given guidance about new technologies, enabling distant teams to work together in the face of demanding deadlines. Through my artwork and public performances, I have culled valuable lessons from diverse forms of group collaboration and communication. Indeed, my life experiences have led me to identify my passion. However, I have learned for myself as a first generation college graduate that the key to pursuing my passion is more than identification; the key is education.
- At UCSB, I look forward to continuing my education, perpetuating my passion for communication, and contributing to the field of collaborative technologies.
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- Flanagin, A. J., Pearce, K., & Bondad-Brown, B. (2009). The destructive potential of electronic communication technologies in organizations. In P. Lutgen-Sandvik & B. Davenport-Sypher (Eds.), The destructive side of organizational communication: Processes, consequences, and constructive ways of organizing (pp. 229-251). Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.
UCSB v1
Posted at 4:31 am on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Words: 728 • Gunning-Fog: 15.4, Flesch-Kincaid: 12.2 • Readability (Flesch): 33/100
Random detritus: a. there’s a giant orb-spinner spider that has taken up residence outside my house; my husband and I named it “Kenneth” so as to make it seem less frightening, a bit more distinguished. He makes a beautiful web and all, but that doesn’t stop me from pairing your name with a negatively valenced stimulus and cringing a little bit. I wonder if this type of association happens with the committee members, too? b. you posted this at 4:31 am, so already I can tell you’re used to not getting any sleep, which will ease your transition into any grad program. c. Community editing seems like a great idea, but what about the saying “too many cooks spoil the broth?” I imagine that applies with something like this essay, where people may feel completely at liberty to write any random, irrelevant thing they’d like, as I have. How do you decide which comments you’ll use to amend your essay, versus those that are considered, then discarded? d. I see you’re a web-designer interested in online collaboration. Want to help my husband redesign his webpage out of the goodness of your heart? ;)
Anyhow, on to the actual editing!
1. Aside from the whole “Kenneth-the-spider” thing (which, admittedly, is more my problem than yours), this section is fine. Maybe “Entering Fall 2010″ is a little presumptuous, but it also demonstrates confidence, so good for you.
2. You miss a nice opportunity here to mention what exactly it is that you do in your professional work, and could easily add a clause in here to specify your job.
3. It seems as though there should be a transitional sentence between 2 and 3. You lay out the issue well enough, but I’m not yet sure how it relates to you or how it would drive your work in this program. While I like that you avoided the pedestrian recounting of “The Moment I Knew That I Wanted to Be a Researcher” that ruins so many applications, I’d like to see a connection between you and your topic of interest articulated so as to get a better sense of who you are and why you care about this in the first place.
4. “What would happen if every document on the internet had the option to be shared collaboratively?” Sounds like a nightmare to me. :p I’d also wonder if there are certain types of content that are more amenable to this whole “everyone edits” business than others. I’d also be interested in understanding how the skills of each individual editor play into the editing process–some people think big picture, others are more focused on the details, etc. And by “I’d be interested” I mean, I’m not at all interested because this isn’t my area, but maybe you’d be interested?
5. “Tried and true” feels a little informal; I’d refer to them more as a “superhuman academic duo of amazingness.” Or I’d just avoid this phrase entirely. Again, the transition from your research questions to the faculty members you’ve identified as most able to help you answer them is a bit lacking. Can you glue these two sections together better? Also, I wonder if it wouldn’t be best to switch the ordering of your phrases up so that you say your research interests would be complementary to their work. It seems more, oh, I dunno, deferential that way. And instead of saying “one example is” you can say “the recent book chapter…is one example…” And maybe “potentially” instead of “possibly” to modify “destructive.”
6. “How does a person’s perceived authority affect others’ decisions to share and edit documents with them?” If you want to use the language of credibility here, you might change “authority” to “trustworthiness and expertise.” Though, there’s nothing inherently wrong with “authority,” especially if that’s one of your variables of interest.
I’d recommend changing “what” to “which” in reference to safeguards. Also, it’s interesting you discuss “flawed” information as though there is always “correct” versus “incorrect” information — I’d imagine perception of correctness plays a huge rule here. For instance, it’s maybe not necessarily that theories are right or wrong, good or bad, flawless or flawed, but that some are just better at predicting or explaining certain phenomena than others. The theories that work for one advisor may not work for the other — as one example, maybe in other departments, professors really like the Technology Adoption Model (TAM), but Flanagin openly HAAAATES it. I’m not sure I’m conveying the point I want to make, which is basically that professors fall in love with certain theories, but that doesn’t mean that the theory is good or bad, it can largely be based on perception and what is useful in their work. I’ll move on…
6.5. I actually wonder, given your interests, if you wouldn’t be a better fit working with Ron Rice? He does a lot of cool research on diffusion of innovations, which seems to speak to your interests more directly than the credibility stuff might. He has two grads advisees, Katy Pearce and S. Courtney Walton, who look at these issues, and I feel like with his expertise in this area, he has been an excellent mentor for both of them (as a side note, I’d be really surprised if one/both of them don’t edit this, too). I’m not trying to sway you away from MM and AF, because they’re great and you could learn a lot working with them, rather, I am just giving you another faculty member to look into in terms of potential research collaborations.
7. Can you give examples of your students putting principles into practice? I’d be interested to see some illustrations of this.
8. I’m not sure how I feel about this section being so far toward the back of your essay. I mean, what if they stop reading and never get to this? (Just kidding). I know you’re probably positioning it here because it comes as a neat surprise, but I wonder if it might be more effective closer to the top of your essay? It’s the centerpiece, the main idea, the piece de resistance, or whatever, but it’s buried toward the end. (I mean, when I asked if you’d want to help redesign my husband’s webpage, I put that right at the top of my comment, because it’s the most important thing, I didn’t leave it for last.) Did you try it out in the beginning and see how it worked, or are you completely against that idea?
Also, I wonder if you could provide some examples of things you added versus things you cut in the essay or of some of the comments (e.g., “Some weirdo talked about spiders for a paragraph”)? This would give your idea more dimension, and also let the committee know the types of edits you considered, versus the random notes you had to sift through. It will give them some idea of the process of collaborative editing, rather than just the idea of it.
9. You’ve led thousands of people? Led them where, the promised land? Haha… I dunno, I think you kind of drop the ball in this last section. It reads like you know you have to wrap it up, so you say some general things about the usefulness of education and how you’ve had a lot of experiences that have led you to where you are now. That’s all well and good, and it is written nicely, but it’s just a relatively dull way to end the essay, especially when you were all “surprise! this is an example of collaborative online editing!” It’s a bit of a letdown to end with something so common as “education is the key.” It feels like you go back to playing it safe, just in case maybe someone might not like your idea. I could be reading too much into it, but that’s my take.
In general, you do spend a lot of time focusing on the faculty with whom you’d like to work, which is good. I believe these essays function best, for the most part, when they are persuasive arguments intended to convince the committee that you’re a great match with Professor X, Y, or Z. You do that quite well. I also think you avoid some of the pitfalls of SOP writing, which makes this read more interestingly than oh, 80% of the other essays in the pile. My main criticisms are that I feel like I don’t get a sense of who you are or WHY you’re interested in this topic, you potentially bury the gem too far back in the essay, and you end weakly relative to even the penultimate paragraph. None of these are fatal flaws (though the first point is probably the most critical), but if you can think about what your essay would look like after making these changes, it wouldn’t be a bad use of your time.
Anyhow, good luck, and I hope you end up at the school where you’ll be able to do the best, most interesting work.
Abby, you are AWESOME. I lol’d all over your comments. Kenneth is a fine name for spider and I’m happy to share the name with such an industrious and scary insect. I do, however, hope the admissions board will reserve any random, negative associations for something other than my application.
I can’t thank you enough for your feedback. It’s the point of view I had no way to attain on my own. And your speed and detail was top notch. I agreed with practically all of your edits and I did my best to incorporate them into the final draft before time ran out and I needed to seal up the overnight envelope.
I posted my final draft here, though admittedly I would have liked to keep working on it. On the other hand, most of me is relieved to have everything submitted, especially since this was my last app.
Since I’ve already submitted the final, I won’t discuss your feedback point by point. But please know that I read and valued every word you wrote. You were so gracious to give your time and thoughts to me, a stranger, and I absolutely appreciate it.
I’ll be sure to let you know how everything pans out for me. Best of luck in all of your work! Thanks again!
I think there needs to be a better introduction to your essay. Some type of statement that details the various main points. Your questions in paragraph 4 need a better transition. These are pertinent questions, but maybe you have too many, and you need to transition into the significance of this section with some type of statement. You can frame it as your area of interest.
I don’t like the term “tried and true.”
Good job detailing the research of Metzger and Flanagin. However, there needs to be a better connection between your interests and how it matches their research.
You might also highlight even more the online collaboration you used to write this essay. Again…connecting it back to your research interests.
Here’s some more advice. Things are pretty tight around here regarding funding. There will be a number of qualified applicants who will not be accepted because of no funding. If you have any external sources of academic funding you can brag about, that will help tremendously. Your interest in the credibility project with metzger and flanagin is good. Especially because they currently have funding for research associates. I don’t know if they’re in need of any more, but that might help.
Good luck!
Charles, thanks a million for your time and thoughtful edits. My deadline hit and I needed to submit the final draft, but I had time to incorporate a few of your ideas before the last grains of sand fell in the hourglass. Thanks for the info about funding; I didn’t have any way to know that so I’m glad you told me. I wish I had more external sources to tout, but I’ll have to let it fly as-is. At least I’m aware of the situation, though!
Thanks again for your help!