Hello everyone! My name is Kristie Dewald. I am a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and I currently teach accounting and tax at the post-secondary level. Life is in a bit of turmoil right now. I sold my house in St. Albert (Alberta) a week ago and resigned from my full-time teaching position at the University of Alberta. I am currently living in Abbotsford (B.C.) but will be moving to Vancouver Island this summer to start a full-time teaching position out that way. Throw in five weeks of teaching in a Masters program in Saskatoon this summer, and life is, well, “interesting”. I am thankful that my dog is a good car traveler!
This is my second course in the program, so clearly I have not completed all the core courses before moving into this elective, but the course description piqued my interest. My partner is a marketing professor and one activity that he does in class is to distribute a recipe for hamburger soup. He varies the font size, font format and line spacing. Then he asks the students to rate the difficulty of the recipe. There is consistently a variation in the perceived difficulty based on the layout and font used. I find it interesting that a message will be perceived differently not just based on the actual words used, but also the format of the text. The picture I have posted is his powerpoint slide summarizing the activity and the results. Related to this course, it has me curious to investigate further, or learn, whether the medium the text is presented in – print or electronic – would impact the synthesis and perception of the information presented. I have taught full-time at the U of A for 11 years. I expected that University students would be mostly adopting electronic versions of textbooks by now, however, my experience is that approximately 75% or more of my students continue to buy print versions. I thought my preference for print was due to my age, but it seems not (whew!).
Looking forward to working with, and learning from, you all this term.
Marcia
May 27, 2018 — 12:53 pm
Hi Kristie!
Wow, I got overwhelmed just reading about all of your moving around that I can’t imagine how you are feeling! I am getting anxious about moving early next year and I still have many months to prepare. I grew up in Surrey, BC and moved to San Francisco over 5 years ago. My husband is about to accept a job in either Chicago or Washington DC so we are going to be making a big move with our daughter and baby on the way. I’m already stressed out thinking about it. I’m interested in your hamburger soup recipe image so I’ll need to zoom in and check it out more closely. Best of luck in this course and beyond!
Cathy Miyagi
June 13, 2018 — 9:17 pm
Amazing! Connect with me on LinkedIn!