Your Goal Grade
| A Work | B Work | C Work |
-Misses one class or less, or completes make-up work for excused absences -Annotates all readings thoroughly -Makes substantive comments in discussions -Completes all assignments on time (or has an approved extension request) -Work demonstrates intellectual engagement, care, effort, and growth in response to feedback -Collaborates substantially, contributes to vision, works equally with peers | -Misses two classes or less, or completes make-up work for excused absences -Annotates readings -Often participates in discussion -Completes all major assignments on time (or has an approved extension request) -Completes most SAs on time -Work demonstrates care, effort and growth in response to feedback -Collaborates equally, completes required work | -Misses three classes or less, or completes make-up work for excused absences -Completes most readings -Sometimes adds to discussion -Completes all major assignments on time (or has an approved extension request) -Completes at least four SAs -Meets minimal expectations on assignments; shows limited growth in response to feedback -Completes required collaborative work |
First-Week Introduction
I chose my five goals for this semester because they are all things that I want to improve upon this semester throughout my research both inside and outside of class time. I’m especially excited for this semester because we are going to be able to be in the ‘field’ and get to make more of a physical impact in the community along with the written/presentations that we have been doing. Something that may be challenging throughout the semester is staying on track and really finding something to do within my individual portion of the project when there’s less for me to collaborate and directly share ideas about within my group. The major strategies that I want to use in this semester are staying organized and not letting myself get overwhelmed by making some things bigger than they are. While some things are important/more crucial than others, there isn’t necessarily a reason to overly stress when it’s not needed.
Midterm Introduction
During the first half of the semester, I’ve learned a lot about helping the surrounding communities of JJKFAN become more connected with their local ecosystems and natural environment. Through the site visits and talking with the JJKFAN representatives, I’ve been given the opportunity to learn about different ways to give back to the environment and educate others about how to do it for themselves. I feel that I have excelled at the organizational parts of my goals for the semester as well as finding multiple ways for problems to be solved. I want to work more when it comes to making sure that the solutions that I’m coming up with are accessible and understandable by different audiences throughout the rest of the semester.
Final Introduction
Throughout this semester, I’ve been able to learn a lot more about our project and what all I can do and have been doing to contribute to it. At the beginning, I was worried about if I would be able to find something for me to individually contribute since there wasn’t as much of a ‘group goal’ as there had been in previous classes. However, I was able to find something that I both enjoyed and was able to find a lot of information that is useful to JJKFAN and what they hope to achieve with the northern campus. In future courses, I would like to continue focusing on my goal surrounding coming up with diverse solutions to problems. My strategies to continue developing this goal are to keep researching on how people in the past have solved similar problems and observing how they worked (or didn’t work) and try to implement that into my project as well.
Course Goals
Goal 1 (20%)
Based on 8a: I will use clear organizational patterns and will be skillful at presenting content cohesively.
Choose five goals from the CODES Student Learning Outcomes that you’d like to work toward. Choose goals that are relevant to the scope of this course, select artifacts/examples based on activities assigned for this course, and explain characteristics in a way that illustrates how your artifacts/examples demonstrate your progress toward the goal.
| What will you do to learn the content/ develop the skill? | What examples will you add to the portfolio to demonstrate your learning? | What characteristics of the chosen examples demonstrate you have met your goal? |
| I will work on the organization of my thoughts and ideas. Throughout the semester, I will be more concise about what I am presenting and how I am presenting it. | Presentation Notes Reflections Final research project | – My notes will be organized and concise for my presentations so that I am able to communicate properly about what I’m presenting – My reflections will show what I have been working on and will show how I’ve been working with the community partners/project – In the final research project, I will arrange it so that the group will benefit from my portion being organized |
This is an excerpt from my Reflection #1 where I am talking about my work with JJKFAN and Heartlands and how, at the beginning of the semester, I hoped to work with them to study what could be done with the soil and tree relationship in the area that they were hoping to create in the outdoor campus.
This is an excerpt from my Reflection #2 where I reflect on the visit to JJKFAN and what I hope to continue to do as we solidified the group project. I categorized what I hoped to do and expanded on what we had already done/talked about into how my group and I can further help them.
This is one of my slides from my group’s final presentation which explains the soil research I performed this semester. This summarizes each part and is organized in a way that is both presentable to the audience as well as understandable for myself and my team to present off of.
These are my presentation notes from the final presentation. It’s organized into each slide with reminders of what to say for each and how to explain certain things. I did this so that not every word would be on the presentation, making it a lot for the audience to read.
Goal 2 (20%)
Based on 9b: I will identify and evaluate multiple approaches for solving problems.b
| What will you do to learn the content/ develop the skill? | What examples will you add to the portfolio to demonstrate your learning? | What characteristics of the chosen examples demonstrate you have met your goal? |
| I will try and create multiple avenues to solving problems when it comes to our community projects | Reflections Miscellaneous research notes Final research project | – My reflections will show how I have gotten to resolutions of problems and the different way I experimented with to get there – Notes from my research will show how I have solved the problems in relation to the community project – The final research project will show how I, as well as the group, have tested with different avenues of getting to a solution and the ways that we may have succeeded or failed |
These are some of my research notes from the beginning of my project with JJKFAN and working to break down the lead poisoning within the soil. This shows my thought process when it comes to finding solutions to the bigger problem at hand considering a lot of the project depends on planting new trees/plants and encouraging the ecosystem to thrive.
This is an excerpt from my Reflection #4 explaining one of the problems I was running into when trying to nail down specifcs for what to recommend for JJKFAN to do about the lead contamination in their soil. Even through this, I was able to give multiple solutions and avenues that would allow myself or another person working on the project to gain more information on the topic.
This is an excerpt from my data collection. Since I wasn’t fully aware of the type of soil that was going to be on the northern campus, I focused on the plants that are native to the area so that I could give JJKFAN options. In addition, I also added in the benefits of each plant that were capable of phytoremediation.
This is part of one of my slides from the final presentation. This represent the different solutions for maintaining the healthy soil at JJKFAN: neutralizing the pH of the soil and using compost to add additonal Iron and Phosphorus to the soil.
Goal 3 (20%)
Based on 4c: I will apply knowledge and skills to implement sophisticated, workable solutions to address complex global problems using interdisciplinary perspectives.
| What will you do to learn the content/ develop the skill? | What examples will you add to the portfolio to demonstrate your learning? | What characteristics of the chosen examples demonstrate you have met your goal? |
I will ensure that my solutions to problems both within the community projects and outside of them are targetted correctly to be understood by diffferent audiences | Implementation Plan Final research project | – My implementation plan will include how I plan on formatting parts of the community project to fit the targetted audience – The final research project will include the things thtat I set out to do within the implementation plan and explain the successes and failures |
This is part of my contribution to the Implementation Plan and I speak about how I plan to cater to both the student/younger audiences as well as the older students and visitors to JJKFAN. While the original idea that I spoke about in the Implementation plan may not come into fruition as we can no longer work directly with the children, I am still using the same methods to appeal to all audiences.
This is one of my slides from the final research presentation. I made it simple and easy to understand so that all audiences could look at it and comprehend it. Additionally, when presenting, I go more in depth to each topic so that all the information is given to those who are curious.
This is the words for one of the educational slats that I helped create. Since the northern campus is going to be open to both grade-school aged children as well as adults, I wanted to make sure that the slats would be understandable for all age groups as well as educational so everyone can take something away from their visit.
This is an excerpt from Reflection #5 surrounding the final research project. This further explains how I tried to make the reserach comprehendable and engaging for all age groups. I emphasize how I believe that the northern campus will be useful in a variety of ways so it therefore needs to be accessible for all as well.
Goal 4 (20%)
Based on 12c: I will work independently toward goals by contributing and meeting deadlines.
| What will you do to learn the content/ develop the skill? | What examples will you add to the portfolio to demonstrate your learning? | What characteristics of the chosen examples demonstrate you have met your goal? |
| I will make sure all of my assignments are done before class to make sure that my part of the projects are done in time for the group to put them all together | Reflections Implementation plan Group Contract/Groupchat | – For all the examples, there will be evidence of me completing them in a timely manner and the quality of the work being up to par |
These are both examples from my Implementation Plan that show the quality of my work and contributions to the group assignments so that everyone can build off of my evidence and the group can continue on with the rest of the assignment.
This is an excerpt from my Reflection #3 which was done after the site visit to JJKFAN. This was an important reflection because it was based on my current feelings and emotions surrounding how I felt I was doing during the site visits. It’s because of this that I amde sure I did the assignment as soon as possible.
This is an image of a message from the groupchat we share as a team. I sent out this message so that everyone knew which part of the final project they were to complete so that it would all get done on time for the presentation. I also did this for myself so that I knew which of the part I was to focus on.
Goal 5 (20%)
Based on 13c: I will use language to skillfully communicate with clarity and fluency.
| What will you do to learn the content/ develop the skill? | What examples will you add to the portfolio to demonstrate your learning? | What characteristics of the chosen examples demonstrate you have met your goal? |
| I will present my data and projects in a cohesive manner that makes sense to my intended audience | Reflections Presentation Notes | – My reflections will showcase each thing I did and the thought processes behind them in relation to the questions. – My presentation notes will be written out clearly and help me to cohesively explain my portions of the community project |
This is an excerpt from my Reflection #2 where I talk about what I’ve done in relation to JJKFAN and what I hope to work with them on in the coming semester. My thought processes shows through my reflections as I talk through the things I hope to work on and the possible solutions that could come up.
These are mroe of my notes for the final presentation. These are to guide me on what to say and which points to hit as I speak during the presentation. Because of these, I will be able to concisely explain what I’m speaking about.
This is an excerpt from my Reflection #5 where I reflected on all the work I had done throughout the semester. This part is explaining the off-site work and how it will help me in my future. By explaining this, it will help people who are trying to understand why I specifically picked the part of the project that I did.
This is a excerpt from my Reflection #3 where I talk more about expanding my parts of the final project. This is important for my wording to be concise so that it’s clear what I want to do in the future both within the project and after it.