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
The goals I have for this semester mostly revolve around the main assignments that will be given the next few months. The reflections will give me the opportunity to look back on readings from the textbook and apply the lessons learned to actual research. Also, they can track my writing skills as they improve over time. The annotations will have a similar purpose, however, they will mainly challenge my understanding of the textbook. This is why I am mostly looking forward to the reflections. While I believe they may become increasingly more difficult over time, these challenges are what I will need to go through to display my growth throughout this semester.
Midterm Introduction
The first half of the semester has taught me a lot already. I’ve learned about different research practices and the psychology behind them. The psychology aspect has been one of my favorite parts of this semester so far, mostly because I am currently pursuing a psychology minor. Many of these concepts have been fairly easy to understand. The one thing I was struggling with was turning assignments in on time. I want to work on completing all my assignments on time for the rest of the semester. I know that will not be a difficult goal for me to achieve. I just need to remember to check Blackboard every day and keep up with the due dates.
Final Introduction
This semester has proven to be a lot more difficult than I first expected. The same issues that I had been struggling with since first semester, like tardiness or late assignments, finally caught up to me. For a moment, I did not know how I would bounce back from my bad study habits, then I realized that it could work as long as I learned to change and become a better student.
Throughout high school, I had become used to not treating school as anything important simply because it was never difficult for me. I never had to put much effort in my classes, I rarely had to study, and I still got mostly A’s and some B’s. I took these bad habits with me to college, thinking that it would work out in the end. Then, my grades started to slip, and I was on the verge of failing most my classes. Thankfully, my teachers decided to give me one more chance to prove myself.
Trying to end the semester on a good note has been a challenge, but it has taught me a very important lesson: If I want to graduate, I need to put all of my effort into college. Whether that means doing homework for 3-4 hours a day or going to group study sessions, I will do what it takes to improve. This experience also showed me something that I should have known years ago: what it feels like to fail. I have seen what it’s like to almost fail and now I know I never want to get in that place again.
Course Goals
Goal 1 (20%)
Based on (4A): Applies different experiences to solving worldwide problems
| 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? |
| Throughout this semester, I hope to learn how to connect multiple points of view to singular issues. Especially since my goals for next semester are to conduct interviews and surveys | I will use my reflections to support this | The reflections will allow me to relate learned knowledge to actual research |
Henrietta Lacks Top 5 Assignment – “For example, racial prejudice from the police is still a massive problem in this country. Is it as bad as it was in the 1950’s? No, but it is still seen often. From George Floyd to Sonia Massey, the public is constantly being reminded of racism in the police force. The question is how can we stop this?”
I think many people often like to ignore problems in society and act as if they do not exist. Racial prejudice in the police force is a good example of this. Yet, there are so many different cases where police officers wrongly kill civilians, such as George Floyd or Sonia Massey. All in all, these experiences show that racism in the police force is an issue that needs to be discussed instead of ignored.
Chapter 11 Top 5 Assignment – “It is interesting how people from different fields of study view the world in different ways. Biologists might look at certain scientific concepts differently than chemists, and chemists might have different views from physicists or mathematicians. But at the end of the way, each of their points of view is considered equally right”
In science and mathematics, there are often different methods used to find the same solution. Even though the answers are found using different methods, they still work to solve the same problem.
Reflection #3 – “Social facilitation played a major role in this as well”
Social facilitation is when the presence of others causes a person to perform better. While social facilitation occurred in the Challenger incident, notably, it also occurs a lot in the real world as well, making this case a good example for future situations.
Article Annotation #3 – “For the most part, however, cities where people have a strong sense of connection with their family or neighbors are the ones that end up making efforts to fix the problems that exist in their community. Flint, Michigan, would be a great example of this”
Moore’s article on the Gullah/Geechee families in South Carolina ultimately showed that people with strong community ties will often be the first to stand up against unfair actions from the government. However, this trend is evident in places outside of South Carolina as well, like Flint, Michigan.
Goal 2 (10%)
Based on (6C): Interacts with other cultures without bias
| 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? |
| In the process of learning about people in other communities who deal with water inequity, I will have to be able to understand their situations without trying to think of it from my perspective. This will be a crucial skill for next semester | I will use my reflections to support this | The reflections will help me show what I have learned about different communities that struggle with wicked problems |
Dataset Review Worksheet – “The outlook on life of a white person in their 20’s is going to differ from an African American in their 50’s…”
I may not be a white man in their 20’s or a black man in their 50’s, but I can see the different life experiences that most of them go through. This outside view of different racial groups can help one to realize that people from these groups are not exactly going to look at life the same way.
CODES Final Project
My final project, which I worked on with Sonia, revolved around cultural pressures enforced my post-immigrant parents on first-generation Americans. Despite me not coming from a post-immigrant household, I was still able to take an outside perspective on the issue and look at it as if I was going through those same experiences.
Goal 3 (25%)
Based on (9B): Finds different approaches to solve issues
| 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 want to learn how to use different methods to conduct research. This ability will be important for the semester since we are learning about multiple different research methods | I will use the annotations to support this | Making annotations for what I read in the textbook will show what I have learned about different research methods |
Article Annotation #2 – “In the end, the authors propose a new approach to understanding complex data. This would consist of building systems that can explore the “strange” results instead of eliminating them completely”
In the debate against data cleaning, the author of the article I read discussed an alternative to “eliminating” data cleaning. Instead, they proposed changing the way data cleaning was done, which made me think of altering data cleaning as a whole in a way that favors “odd” data.
Chapters 1 & 2 Top 5 Assignment – “I wonder whether it is better to conduct a structured interview or an unstructured interview”
Different interview structures was the main topic in Chapters 1 and 2 of the textbook. I found out that no one structure was better than the other, both had their ups and downs at the end of the day.
Reflection #4 – “When talking about common survey methods, the two that first come to mind with researchers would be interviews and focus groups”
In Chapters 1 and 2 of the textbook, I learned about interviews and focus groups. At first, I thought they served the same purpose, until I began to learn more about them. I realized that interviews have their benefits in surveys on personal experiences or opinions, and focus groups have their benefits in surveys revolving around groups or social psychology.
Article Annotation #3 – “The researchers implemented ethnography and archival research to examine past and current land ownership situations between the Gullah/Geechee families”
In this article, multiple different research methods were used to solve the same issue. Ethnography, being the process of immersing yourself in a community to better understand the culture, and archival research, being the process of looking into historical texts to see the change in a community over time, were the primary methods.
Reflection #7 – “Not all research studies can collect their evidence from modern sources. Many of them require evidence from historical sources, or archives”
In Payton’s article about Port-au-Prince, Haiti in the 1970’s, she uses both environmental and political archives to look at the relationship between water access and social status. These different types of research may not seem like they belong together, but they both serve the same purpose in the end.
Goal 4 (30%)
Based on (11A): Applies read information to solving problems
| 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? |
| The information I learn from the textbook is going to be crucial to completing my assignments this semester, so I want to make sure that I am understanding what I am reading. The best way to make sure the information sticks is to apply it to real world issues | I will use the annotations to support this | I can use the annotations to demonstrate how I will put this knowledge into practice when I start conducting research |
Introduction Top 5 Assignment – “One thing that stands out to me about understanding methods of research is that most of the time, you must acknowledge that there are a lot of questions that you do not have the answer to”
Throughout the research process this semester, I have had to make the realization that study results can often raise as many questions as answers. Maybe there was a factor in our research topic that we had not taken into consideration. The results that my research group had from our interviews gave us some insight into public opinion, but also gave us more questions that need to be answered.
Reflection #1 – “For the Mechanics part of the EMRN criteria, a researcher must make sure their plan is understandable and without fault. However, these ‘faults’ can be from many different causes”
The process of refining our survey in our research groups took a lot longer than I expected. Now I understand that this was because it was crucial to ensure that our survey did not have any nonsensical or redundant questions.
Reflection #2 – “A possible solution for this would be to highlight the unique sets of data, instead of hiding them”
After learning about data cleaning, and its ups and downs, I was able to look into possible solutions for the current criticisms of the research method. I found that using data cleaning to highlight the differences, as well as the trends, would best fix this issue.
Psychology of Groups Top 5 Assignment – “Fully discussing the pros and cons of certain opinions can help prevent issues such as group think and polarization”
Reading about terms such as group think and group polarization gave me some insight on what trends most groups follow. From that, I came up with the idea that setting boundaries, such as group discussions, in place ahead of time was the best way to prevent these occurrences.
Reflection #4 – “Many researchers may not realize it, but the way they ask a question can cause their responses to be less accurate”
As I began to learn more about interviews and focus groups, I discovered a few flaws that many researchers often make when conducting these types of studies. One example of these flaws is introducing a question with bias, which can easily be fixed by the way the researcher phrases their questions.
Article Annotation #4 – “All it takes is a corrupt politician to take control and people could completely lose access to one of their most basic needs”
The situation that occurred with the people of Port-au-Prince, Haiti in the 1970’s was not an uncommon occurrence. This proves that efforts need to be made to ensure that more dictators do not rise to power in the future.
Goal 5 (15%)
Based on (13A): Displays an understanding of good writing skills
| 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 hope to show how my writing improves even further throughout this semester. The writing assignments in this class will help me display this progression | I will use the reflections to support this | The reflections will allow me to display my writing skills, and their progression, throughout the semester |
Article Annotation #1
I structured this assignment with an introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The first body paragraph showed the results of the study I read, and the second paragraph displayed my thoughts on those results.
Article Annotation #2
My second article annotation, while shorter than the first one, gave me the chance to look at a method in research from an unbiased opinion. I explored how data cleaning has been a topic of debate since many argue that it takes away key pieces of information.
Reflection #2
This reflection was based off of the same article as the one in my second article annotation, but the assignment was a lot different. This time I was able to go in depth about what I thought of data-cleaning and how it could be changed in the future.