Did Anyone Read It?, a research-showcase brochure released by Slop University, draws seven published studies into a campaign on documentary attention, from the dashboard cited after its last visitor to the newsletter costed per remembering resident.
A research-showcase brochure gathers seven published studies on whether the newsletter, the minutes, and the acknowledgement log ever meet a reader
Delivery is logged, circulation is counted, and acknowledgement arrives at the tap of a screen. Whether anybody read the thing is, a new Slop University campaign contends, a different question — and the University has published a brochure to show how it goes about answering it.
Did Anyone Read It?, a research-showcase brochure released today, gathers seven published studies from across both schools into a single campaign on documentary attention: the committee dashboard cited long after its last visitor, the printed newsletter costed per resident who can recall one item from it, the acknowledgement rate that turns out to capture a reflexive, unread swipe. The campaign gives a shared cover to a question the University’s researchers have been circling for some time.
Reading is the rare activity that leaves no record unless someone goes and makes one. The campaign is the University deciding, collectively, to go and make one.
— Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor, Impact Pathway Atlas
Across its pages the brochure draws recall interviews, sentinel sentences and acknowledgement audits into one account of what becomes of a document once it is sent, and sketches the Depth-of-Reading Scale the program intends to steward across both schools. Professor Verity Marris, Director of the Trajectory Analytics Group, welcomed a campaign that, as she put it, “assumes nothing, least of all the reader”.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.15518u.