Hello and welcome to the third installment of The Making of the Digital Literature Review. The Digital Literature Review is created through the hard work and contributions of all of its individual undergraduate members. These members are divided into three teams (Design, Editorial, and Publicity) at the start of each issue, and collectively work throughout the semester in order to edit, produce, and publish the Digital Literature Review. The start of the school year begins with the teams studying a particular theme designated for that year, under the guidance of a professor. The next semester involves receiving submissions for the journal and readying them for publication.

In this post, we will cover the duties and responsibilities of the members of the Publicity team, as well as have the team members share their personal thoughts and experiences about the immersive learning class. They will cover the challenges they’ve had to endure as well as their triumphs throughout the semester as they collectively worked to improve the online presence and visibility of Ball State’s Digital Literature Review.

The responsibilities of the Publicity team:

  • Review submissions to the DLR blog
  • Ensure proper distribution of advertising materials
  • Post and advertise for events concerning the DLR
  • Maintain Twitter, Facebook, and blog presence

Responsibilities and course work as a student in this immersive learning class:

  • Study the material of the designated theme for the year
  • Assign blog entries for our DLR blog
  • Write for the DLR blog and possibly for the English Department blog
  • Create a capstone project

Our Publicity Team members:

morgan

Morgan Aprill (Team Leader), Senior

jeff

Jeff Owens, Junior

niki

Elisabeth (Niki) Wilkes, Senior

What was your best experience as a member of the Publicity team?

 

Niki: I really enjoyed working on the DLR blog. It was a project within the project, and it felt really good to be able to delegate what was going where. Having been in charge of that is going to be really helpful in my job searches, and just knowing that I have that skill now is great.

 

Morgan: I really enjoyed putting together the class visits we took part in. It was a great experience to reach out to potentially new members for next year’s DLR as well as trying to get more submissions for that issue. That was basically our main goal as the Publicity team.

 

Jeff: I’d say the whole class is the experience I focused on. The Publicity team was secondary to my experience as a student of our issue’s topic, “Slavery Now.” When we started concerning ourselves with issues of the representation of slavery, I really saw a change in myself, and that really just clicked for me. I know I’ll never be able to look at representation the same.

  

Share some of the challenges you faced as a Publicity member

 

Morgan: Just really making sure we chose the best ways to reach the most people was tough. We had to make sure we considered the audience and what was important to them so that we could be effective in our goals.

 

Jeff: In a setting like this, other people really depend on you, and that can be a lot of pressure. That kind of responsibility really makes you aware that if you aren’t doing your part, then other people are going to have a tougher time and will have to compensate for your fault. That really gives a real world feel to the DLR.

 

Niki: The hardest part of this class is that its structure is really not typical. I like all the structure of normal classes, so it was pretty tough to learn to be flexible and roll with the changing due dates. But I still think that this is a useful skill to have practiced.

 

 

What skills do you think you’ve developed with your team?

 

Jeff: Being able to know how to interact and communicate effectively with people in certain settings is so important. I’d say that in this class I learned how to interact in a professional manner even with people that I might know personally. I think that skill is really going to translate well to a career setting.

 

Niki: It was really interesting to learn all the different ways you can approach people about things. We were able to really get all the different social media platforms going, and make a lot of different people excited about the DLR and its projects.

 

Morgan: I think my communication skills really grew with this experience. Through social media and other public forms of communication, we were able to create and maintain a professional image. That’s going to be really important when I’m looking at careers.

 

If you’ve missed a prior installment of The Making of the DLR, check them out here and here.

If you’re interested in joining the DLR team for the upcoming issue, contact Dr. Joyce Huff.

Also, don’t forget to check out our webfsite, Facebook, and Twitter for more information and regularly updated posts.