Category: 320 Reflections

Meetings with both my research team and my community partner will determine the way my research project is presented in the future. With my research team specifically, my individual research project will have to line up with the overall group project. We all have the same goal of finding ways to involve young adults in water conservation efforts, but we are going about it in different ways. Some of us are organizing events, some are creating podcasts, and some are even interacting directly with students at SIUE. The idea is that all our individual projects can be brought together to support one main initiative, but doing so is going to take compromise. We must develop a few core themes to center around in order to make sure that our ideas do not contradict one another. In the end, our projects may not look like how we imagined them to be a year ago, but they will be able to come together to form an even greater group project. 

Interactions with my community partner are also going to have a huge impact on my project. Last semester, I drafted my product, which consisted of two separate pieces. Now, I want to ensure that my product lines up with the right information that Heartlands Conservancy wants to obtain and/or needs to portray. I plan to send my early drafts to Anna in order to get feedback on my overall product. Afterwards, I will implement any change that she believes is necessary. Right now, I have no idea what she might ask me to change about my products. These changes could be as simple as rewording a few sentences, or they could involve me adding or removing entire pieces of data from the product itself. So, my entire project could potentially be altered by the feedback given by my community partner. 

So far this semester, feedback has not exactly been consistent within my group. Unless a particular assignment of mine veers away from the group’s “vision”, feedback is not given much. I know personally that I do not give feedback to my group members because of two main reasons. The first reason is that all my group members seem to understand the point of this project and what their individual role is within that project. Even if I do not fully agree with how they responded to a question, I realize that my group members do have a good grasp on what they are trying to accomplish with their words. Second of all, I feel like I do not have enough time to focus on other people’s work while I still have my own work to finish. I believe that my group members feel the same way when it comes to feedback. We all have a good understanding of the project as a whole, but we also do not have enough time to give feedback to each other individually.  

When it comes to giving feedback, I recognize that I could pay more attention to what my group members are doing in their individual projects, because it will end up affecting the group project. Giving feedback could also be as easy as telling a group member to rephrase a sentence or add a better conclusion to their writing assignments. In regard to receiving feedback, I understand that it is important for me to not take my group members’ suggestions too seriously. Some suggestions may come off as negative, but I must remember that my group members are just trying to ensure that the group project fits together perfectly. Along with that, the same way that I will have to learn not to take comments seriously, I will have to make sure that I phrase my feedback in a way that is not an attack on the other person. 

My individual project for this semester is going to be complicated when it comes to ensuring that it benefits both groups that I am attempting to reach. As stated in the first reflection, my product is going to consist of two smaller products, one for Heartlands and one for professors at SIUE. The way that I see it, each of my products is going to be a reflection of the other one. For the first product, the focus will be professors at SIUE, while the audience that I will be attempting to reach out to is Heartlands, and the second product will focus on Heartlands in an attempt to reach out to professors at SIUE. With that being the case, both Heartlands and the professors at SIUE will be the primary stakeholders in my project. I will need to ensure that my work can best communicate the benefits of one stakeholder to the other. 

Heartlands will play the most important role in this project. Since information on Heartlands and their projects is not as easily accessible as the work that professors do at SIUE, I will need to go to Heartlands directly to get the most accurate information. On top of that, I will need to know what information Heartlands needs from the professors in order to initiate a collaboration with them in the future. In my initial draft of my product to Heartlands, I included information like the specific courses they are teaching this semester and a description of these courses. However, Heartlands might also want to know things such as the professor’s history at SIUE or their specific contact information. On the other hand, working with professors at SIUE should be relatively simple. If I need specific information, I could always create another survey for the same professors or even reach out to the Department Chairs to avoid sending out over 30 emails. 

Finally, after three semesters of building towards the implementation of a product for our community partners, this semester is the one we have all been waiting for. Just last year, I finalized my “product” in the Research Teams class, which consisted of two smaller products, one for professors at SIUE and one for Heartlands Conservancy. For the professors, I created a document that showcased what exactly Heartlands is and what they do for their community. The information I provided was solely based on what I knew from my experience with them or what I could find online. However, this may not be the way that Heartlands wishes to portray itself to professors at SIUE. In order to ensure that I display Heartlands to my list of professors in the best light, I believe that it is crucial for me to speak with people from Heartlands on how they would like to be portrayed to students and professors on campus. 

For the second part of my product, I created a list of professors at SIUE who teach science, ecology, or environmental science courses. I also included the individual courses that they are teaching this semester, a description of those courses, and the chairs of each professor’s department. Unfortunately, I feel like there is some more information that I could include in this portion of the product in order to give Heartlands an idea of which professors would most benefit from a collaboration. All in all, my work throughout this semester is going to involve going back in forth between two groups, SIUE professors and Heartlands, in order to determine what would be best for forming a connection between both of them. I have a long way to go, but I already have an outline for what I want to accomplish, so I know this last part will not be too difficult.