Summary of the exercises

Exercise one:

My resources are quite low for this project I only have myself, the professor, and the internet. The two things I’m sure I’m doing well is the fact that I am quite effect when doing the interviews and that I am good at coming up with great questions. I will continue to make this a reality by drawing back on my previous experiences and analyzing them. I will continue to take in constructive feedback and looking at new and interesting ways to implement the feedback into my project. My untapped strength is optimizing my interviews and making them more efficient for online versus in real life. I will tap into this strength by collaborating with Salma and other members of the team about the organization and what the end goal of the project should look like. I feel like my blind spots are thinking the people would want to participate in an online interview without any incentive. I will address my blind spots by actively following up with the people who I ask to take the survey. I feel like the biggest challenges are to overcome my procrastination and to overcome my natural disorganization. 

I do not have a set plan on overcoming my biggest challenges but I plan on collaborating with similar people to see how they have overcome these challenges.  

Exercise two:

Since I don’t have official group members I can only talk about the people who are working on the project at the same time as me. One of the people I never had a conversation with her so I do not know her at all. The other member helped guide me through the first part project since it was confusing and I felt as if it was too open-ended. Salma because she brought up interesting ways to look/approach the problem. Salma also shared her questions which were a big help since I did not have anything to compare my questions previously. She helped me optimize my questions and clarified the direction of the project thereby making me more efficient by not wasting my time on menial research.

Exercise three:

Start- Organizing my ideas more efficiently and Frequent contact with Professor Brunstein. I will try to accomplish this by contacting him with any questions that I may have instead of putting off the questions for the weekly status report.

Keep- Interviewing people regularly and Keeping track of all my results. I will continue to accomplish this by reaching out to people that are not in my immediate social circle. 

Stop- Procrastinating on small details and Stop over thinking the end goal/big picture of the project. I will make this happen by asking the professor more questions about the end goal of the project and the best way to organize the data.  

 

Plan

Since I do not have an official team I will try to keep the plan more focused on the project as a whole and my individual plan.

Small goals: Learn something new and useful, make new professional connections get a good grade is both classes. I will accomplish this by taking notes, being fully present in all class meetings and asking all the professors/professionals in-depth questions about the material. 

Big goals/Project goals: Learn and understand more about the viewpoint of college from interviews of college students. I will accomplish this by gathering a large number of people with a variety of viewpoints on higher education.

Roles: 

Salma(collaborator and qualitative expert)- She has been doing this project for a year longer than me. So I feel she has more expert in the organization of the data and how to go about doing a professional interview/survey.

Professor Brunstien (Coordinator)- The main expert with all the knowledge and experience. He should be able to answer all my lingering questions about the research. Although, he tends to leave the project very open-ended allowing me to “use my best judgment”.

Me (interviewer and project worker)- The main person doing the bulk of the interviews and groundwork allowing for further analysis from people with more skills/knowledge than I.

 

Processes: create and optimize questions, do the interviews, organize the data, analyze the data, lastly create the opinion-based paper.