L’IMAGE PI Journal #6: Participant Recruitment

Alt-Text with long description

 

COMIC

[Page 1, Title Page]

Top of page reads: UofT L’IMAGE Project: Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment

Title over bright red banner: Principal Investigator (PI) Journal

Subtitle under red banner: Journal #6: Participant Recruitment

A highly simplified, comical black and white drawing of the back side of Ai is seen. She is on one knee on the ground, reaching over what looks like a public water fountain. She is reaching over the water fountain with her left hand, and she seems to be putting a flyer of some sort over the water fountain. Unlike the rest of the drawing, the flyer itself is in color and teal in color. Those who have been following the L’IMAGE project will recognize it as the participant recruitment poster that advertised the project.

Bottom right of page: University of Toronto Mississauga logo and University of Toronto logos are visible.

[Long description of text and images in the comic strip:]

The comic strips in the L’IMAGE comic series uses the font Ames, which is the standard font for comics. Ames is an all-caps font. However, Alt-Texts for this project are not written in all-caps so that they will be more accessible for screen readers.

The comic artist for the series is Dr. Ai Taniguchi. Her drawing style can be described as: Japanese manga inspired, cute, large eyes, intentionally sketchy and unpolished line art, simplified, expressive. The comic strips are all digital, but she uses a pen that mimics the line weight of a traditional fountain pen. Her line art is on average 0.5mm in width (relatively thin), but the line weight varies and looks hand-drawn.

The title page of each comic strip is in color. It has a University of Toronto color scheme: navy blue, light blue, and bright red. The background is white with a navy blue frame. The references page and the “About the L’IMAGE project” page also have this University of Toronto color scheme.

The comic strips themselves are black and white, and employ digital screen tones for shading and backgrounds. The narrations are usually contained within rectangular boxes, unless otherwise specified.

 

[Page 2]

Top panel:  A highlight simplified, comical depiction of Ai  and Haili, her RA, are glaring at the readers. Neither of them have mouths. An arrow pointing to Haili clarifies in a hand-written text that the character on the left with slightly wavy, bob-length black hair is Haili, Ai’s RA.

Ai’s narration: After I received the grant to work on the L’IMAGE project, I had to think more about how we were going to recruit student participants.

 

Bottom panel: A simplified illustration of the lingcomics website is seen, with a computer mouse next to it.

Ai’s narration: First, my RA helped me set up a project website with information about participating in the project: https://www.lingcomics.com/call-for-student-stories. It had information like what kinds of stories we were looking for.

 

[Page 3]

Top panel: To the upper right, we see the logo of the company Jotform, with the word “Jotform” written under it. The logo kind of looks like a pencil. In the logo, there is a right triangle that looks like the tip of a pencil at the bottom left, and there are three ovals pointing diagonally, coming out from but detached from the hypotenuse of the triangle.

To the bottom left of the panel, we see what looks like a flow chart consisting of boxes and circles and arrows.

Ai’s narration: Then, my RA put together a form that project applicants would fill out. We went with Jotform even though it wasn’t free, because it had more options that were useful for us, like conditional branching and an easy audio answer upload option.

 

Bottom panel: A highly simplified depiction of Ai is gesturing towards the text that is next to her, with her right hand.

Ai’s narration: We asked basic info like the applicant’s information…

Below the narration box, there is an enumerated list:

1. Name

2. Undergrad or grad

3. Year of study

4. U of T campus

5. Email

6. Languages they know comfortably

7. Other languages they know

[Page 4]

Top panel: A highly simplified depiction of Haili is gesturing towards the text that is above them, with their left hand.

Ai’s narration: … an information about their story.

Under the narration box, there is an enumerated list.

1. A short written summary of their story

2. The languages that their story is about

3. Selection of story theme from a given list

Bottom panel: This panel is just text.

Ai’s narration: I had consulted with my collaborator Filbert what kinds of comics would be helpful for the IEC, for example, for their international student orientations. I had some ideas about what kinds of stories we were anticipating as well. So my RA and I came up with a list of themes that applicants could choose from when submitting their story. This made it easier for us to sort the stories when we were selecting participants.

To the right of the narration boxes, we see a text with a bulleted list.

Choose all the topic tags that apply to your story:

• Cultural differences/shoc

• Fall

• Winter

• International student experience

• Dialects and accents

• Immigration

• Homesickness

• Learning English

• Language revitalization

• Funny

• Sad

• Friends and family

• Toronto English

• Etc.

 

[Page 5]

Top panel: To the left, there is an icon that looks like a piece of paper with the bottom right corner folded into a triangle, with four lines on it. To the  right, there is an icon depicting a speaker with sound coming out. The sound emission is depicted as three curved lines.

Ai’s narration: For the longer description of their story, we included options for a text submission and an audio submission for accessibility reasons. Some people used the audio option!!

Bottom panel: A very confident looking Haili is giving a thumbs up. Their radiance is depicted with a single sparkle above their head.  

Ai’s narration: My RA also came up with an optional language attitude and demographic survey that participatns could fill out. It asked things like how long they have been using their languages, what their thoughts are about their languages, and whether they have a positive or negative experience with their multilingualism at U of T and in Canada more broadly.

 

[Page 6]

Top panel: We see the teal flyer (in color) from the cover page. It’s bigger and we can definitely see that it’s the L’IMAGE recruitment poster. It says “Get your story turned into a comic strip!”, and a cartoon depiction of Ai can be seen on the flyer, as well as a QR code.

Ai’s narration: Once the form was ready, my RA designed a catchy flyer for me…

Bottom panel: 9 L’IMAGE recruitment flyers are scattered in the background.

Ai’s narration: And we advertised the project. A lot. Lol. Oh for physical flyers, don’t forget to get permission from the appropriate people (e.g., UTMSU) for posting them on campus!! It might cost a little bit of money as well.

 

[Page 7]

Top panel: A comical depiction of Ai has her hands in a prayer position, and she’s crying. She kind of looks like the “T T” crying emoji. Handwritten text next to her reads, “Thank u”.  

Ai’s narration: We were hoping for at least 10 stories for this phase of the project. We got 36 submissions!

 

Bottom panel: Ai is gesturing towards the text that is next to her.

Ai’s narration: The story selection was mostly base don the diversity of topics and languages. We’re sorry if you weren’t selected this time; there will be more phases of this project, so you can apply again!

Handwritten text below the narration box reads: “Follow me @LinguistAiT for future calls!

 

[Page 8]

Top panel: A light-skinned person with short dark hair and a light-skinned person with long light hair are each holding a L’IMAGE recruitment poster. They’re waving it in the air.

Ai’s narration: I am grateful for all of my colleagues and students that helped me spread the word about this project.

Bottom panel: There are four speech bubbles with hand-written text in them. Bubble one says “IEC”. Bubble 2 says “LIN class”. Bubble 3 says “First Nations House.” Bubble 4 says “Flyer at water fountain lol”.

One very beautiful thing that I found out later was that almost all of my participants found out about the project in different ways!!!

 

[Page 9]

Top panel: Haili is smiling with their mouth open, and there is a tiny heart above their head to the left. Their shirt say “MVP”.

Ai’s narration: Another thing I noted was that for a project like this, it is very good to hire an RA that knows a thing or two about sociolinguistics, because they are knowledgeable about things like language attitude surveys and sociolinguistic interviews.

 

Bottom panel: Ai is smiling with her mouth open.

Ai’s narration: Speaking of which… my RA was super helpful when it came to preparing for project participant interviews too! I’ll tell you more about that next time!  

Text at the bottom: See you next time!

 

[Page 10]

Page title: About the L’IMAGE project

Project PI and comic artist: Ai Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, UTM Department of Language Studies

Research Assistant: Haili Su, MA Student, UTSG Department of Linguistics

Special thanks to: Gilbert Lin, Assistant Director, Intercultural & Global Initiatives, UTM International Education Centre

With the generous support of: UofT International Student Experience Fund, UTM Department of Language Studies, UTM International Education Centre

Learn more: http://www.lingcomics.com

                                                                                      

Bottom right of page shows the University of Toronto Mississauga logo and the University of Toronto logo.