Month: August 2020

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Week of 6/8 Discussion

  1. In Margaret Herffernan’s TedTalk, The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World, she engages the audience by starting with a story. Her story details a problem with the current world in its unpredictability. She describes how in our current setup we have a problem in that it is difficult to plan ahead in these circumstances. Again, she begins her speech detailing a problem. She sets it up so the audience believes this is a real problem in the world, and then follows by explaining how she has the answer to it, and that is what her speech is about. By setting the speech up in this way she not only draws her audience in, but she gains credibility. Now that the audience is aware of this problem, they want to know how to solve it, as knowing about the problem makes it theirs.

She continues through the body to explain her answer to the problem, tying in are evidence. She uses evidence of people successfully using her answer to the problem, to show more credibility to the audience that her solution works. Again, she has the audience roped in from the start, because she convinced them from the get that this was a problem worth caring about in their lives. Now they are glued to the speaker until the end of the speech so they know how to combat it. She ends in the same way she started, by addressing the unpredictability of the world and raising a feeling of hopelessness. She responds again, with a “but,” and summarizes her methods for combating the problem. By the end of the speech, she has convinced the audience there is a problem they should worry about, has them worried, reveals and answer to the problem, how they can use it, and convinces the audience they will be fine as long as they use her solution.

2. In Margaret Herffernan’s TedTalk, The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World, she utilizes evidence throughout her speech to back up her points. Her evidence adds to her credibility as a speaker and appeals to the audience’s logic. She begins using evidence from the very beginning of her speech by starting with a story. She uses an example of a company to explain how it is disastrous when the world is unpredictable and people aren’t prepared. This evidence helps the audience believe in the problem she sets up in order to answer it herself. She then goes into her solution, outlining everything about it. Then, throughout the body she pieces evidence back in to add credibility to her solution. She provides examples of countries, corporations and more who use her solution successfully. This helps add to her claim that the solution is the right one to the problem she introduces at the beginning.

She uses this method of introducing problems with answers to follow throughout her speech, which illustrates to the audience that she is the person with all the answers. It shows she is knowledgable on the topic, and by following each claim with evidence by way of examples, she adds to her credibility and keeps the audience glued to her. She becomes responsible for solving the problem she planted in her audience’ heads, and in turn becomes valuable to listen to.

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Final Reflection, Jackie

Over the past 12 weeks, this class has helped me refine my writing skills, while also learning to think more critically and in depth about social issues.

In Unit 1, I was moved by the articles  we read of those who had experienced discrimination in the workplace based on their arbitrary traits. I found myself drawn to the article about individuals in the workplace who have disabilities. Having worked with children with special needs and my sister who is a severe and profound special education teacher, I connected the most with this article. This inspired my work in Unit 2, as I wanted to dive into this aspect surrounding the workplace as I am approaching the period in my life where I will be entering the workforce.

Instead of focusing on the general discrimination by people, I decided to focus on the built in discrimination against those who have a disability — the design of institutions. This became more difficult to research as the specifics of what I was looking for were harder to word. I had to filter out disability caused by the workplace, and find sources regarding resources that those with special needs require and if the workplace has fulfilled those needs. I layered my research by also bringing to light policies that were in place to help those who need assistance.

When actually conducting my research and beginning to plan out my project, I used what we had already learned in the course to guide me. I was influenced by the power of rhetoric, the importance of writing genre and specificity over generality to guide my writing. What is a topic most people forget about? What is something that would create a call to action? What will make my audience think critically and deeper, like I have?

I learned that writing does not always have to be informative with a formal tone, and something that is tedious. Rather, I came to the conclusion that it could be an expression of how I felt, and read almost like a journal of my internal thoughts. I found myself looking for comments from my peers, excited to see what they thought of my work and what they also learned from what I spoke about. I found myself looking through everyone’s responses and interested by what they found or took from the same piece of work I read. Did we view things the same way? Did they pick up on something I missed? I am normally not good at receiving feedback, however the criticism I received shaped my own writing from an outside perspective.

I found that it was important to listen and read the comments left on my post, as these people were my target audience. If what I was saying was too wordy, or harder for them to follow, I would go back in my writing and create a more concise sentence, or completely reword an entire paragraph. This in turn taught me that an outside perspective is just as important as my own, and representing these two ideas although difficult, creates stronger writing skills.

Most importantly, this assignment pushed me to think about other social issues. In the time period we are living in currently, there is a greater emphasis on viewing an oppressive system and bursting the bubble that I live in, even though I am not aware of it. Just as I have educated myself on racial discrimination in our system, I decided to educate myself on an issue that I have not yet thought twice about. Although I am an ally, I did not realize that I was not doing my part, when I have a voice and the ability to. In doing so, I realized that I enjoy conversational toned writing and I find that that is the style that I can truly express who I am and my unfiltered but filtered thoughts. This course and assignment taught me to truly think about topics that need more coverage, and do the work myself in order to not only critically think about myself, but the society we live in.

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Final Reflection-Michaela

The research in Unit 2 was extensive leading me to a big selection of material to choose from. The way that I narrowed that down and focused on one topic is by focusing on sources and content that was reliable, from credible sources and accredited authors. I also choose to pinpoint the information that I found interesting along with what my classmates seemed to engage with most on the blog. Using tools from this course such as templates from “They Say I Say” and tips from the blog about genre and considering my audience. From those resources, I was able to create a presentation that I think has a clear purpose of educating those entering the workplace about empathy and perspective and a consistent voice that targeted my audience of college juniors and seniors.

As a college senior myself hoping to start a job when I graduate I learned a lot from researching the topic and creating a presentation for an audience that I am apart of. I learned how important it is to have empathy and perspective, especially when attempting to partake in an environment where all different people coexist. Since I am apart of the audience I was writing for I learned a lot about writing for my age group. I tried to keep my language and format short and sweet, with keeping the reader engaged as a big focus. Adding large clear graphics with my text was something I felt strongly about adding because I had read so many scholarly articles and journals during this class. Though I found those articles deeply interested I also know I am more motivated to read something eye-catching that highlights the important information to show the purpose. Summarizing the most important information from all of the great sources I found was a challenge, there were paragraphs of information throughout my research that I felt would add to my presentation, but after I referenced the tips about summaries that we used in this class I had a clearer focus and was able to pinpoint what was the most beneficial.

The blog was very helpful when crafting this project especially when I ran into challenges. If I was stuck on something I could look back on past posts from peers as a reference point. Along with the posts, feedback and comments were critical because without the critique I could not have improved on my draft, it allowed me to see what was working and what wasn’t. Many of my classmates are also apart of the audience of my project because some are college students so their opinion was of great value.

Overall this course taught me how to write with my own voice while keeping the purpose of my work clear. The readings given were valuable in a multitude of ways from the topic to the structure of the actual source. As a design major writing is not usually apart of our course work so the practice that I got from each week’s assignments made me more secure in my work. Before this class, I approached writing as a task that I never knew how to start but I now have the encouragement and resources to know how to start and complete my writing with confidence.

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Final Reflection – Mike

With all of the craziness of the past week, it was oddly calming to have the final presentation to put together. Sure, the specter of a looming due date creates stress in its own right. However, there was something incredibly fun about refining my presentation, shifting slides around, finding some new images and of course, recording the narration. The fact that it was solely my vision and didn’t require any negotiation or compromise did make this task distinctly different than the rest of my week!

If you’ll recall, when first approaching our research assignment, I started out thinking I wanted to explore identity politics, and “cancel culture”. As a big Harry Potter fan (I’m a Ravenclaw, thank you for asking.), I was troubled by the news JK Rowling was making earlier this summer for making insensitive comments about transgender people. I was caught up with the idea of whether it was still okay for me to love the Potter books and movies, but be angry with Rowling for her actions. I thought a lot about whether my anger even mattered.

I took that thought and moved it a bit closer to home. I shared with you all my story about “Crossbar”. Would the owner, who made racist comments on Twitter, ever really know that I chose never to return to his bar? The conclusion, which was pretty easy to surmise, was no. That is, it wouldn’t make much of an impact if I’m the only one who decided to stop going.  However, what would happen if I convinced others not to go as well? That sounded a lot to me like a boycott. Another term for boycott is consumer activism. Now, that was a topic worth exploring.

The research led me down a number of paths, and I quickly had to narrow my focus. I found the exercises we used to track and summarize our sources to be incredibly helpful in identifying which of my sources would be the most useful. Thanks to having done that work, it made my job of picking which sources to cite for my final project much easier. That work helped to shape how I wanted my presentation to go. The essay about Walmart and Target and the chapter about the shift from political engagement to voting with wallets were the keystones of my argument. I was able to search for items which helped round out that argument. Adding in some cool images to catch the eye of my audience was fun. Recording my narration was the final piece of the puzzle.

Apart from the obvious, like the mechanics of recording narrations for PowerPoint, I learned quite a bit while preparing this presentation. For example, I had personally observed that Wal-Mart and Target were very different shopping experiences. However, before this summer, I had no idea that there are real reasons for those differences. Also, I vaguely knew that the Quakers had been abolitionists, but had never known about the “Free Produce Society”.

Taking a writing course this summer has definitely had some “real world” impact, but perhaps not in the way I would have expected. Part of my job involves conducting investigations and putting together summaries of my findings. Well, it seems that a few of the narratives I wrote in July were deemed “too flowery” and “read too much like a college essay.” HA!!!

I thought they were really great pieces of writing, but have learned when collaborating, it’s important to not get too hung up on things like that. It’s a good thing this class has forced me to exercise my self-editing muscle. (he types un-ironically as the word count keeps creeping ever-higher.)

I truly appreciate the lessons I learned this summer. I feel as though my writing has gotten better over these past several weeks. With plenty of classes left to take before graduating, and plenty of narratives left to write, that can only be a good thing.

 

 

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Reflection, Isaac Haseltine

The topic of discussing diversity and inclusion in organizational cultures was an entirely new subject of research for me. As a design student, the only papers I have written are about art movements and design history. These topics included much easier research, especially since it is something I was already highly interested in. While gathering sources for this project I noticed how much of a difference there is when researching a serious worldwide problem versus a subject you are already involved in. I pulled the most information from the sources that I could fully comprehend. Some of the articles I found were over 30 pages long, this made it difficult to get a full understanding of what they are talking about because of the large quantity of information. Many of my sources supplied me with great research and analysis that fit under my topic, although the level of detail that went into them would sometimes be too much, and if I were to try and use the information I would have to add an entirely new section to my final project. The sources I mainly used were the ones that included firsthand experiences from students and teachers, these supplied me with the personal connections shared by the type of person I wrote the policy framework for, as well as great analytical research filled with realizations of the firsthand accounts that I wouldn’t have been able to notice. These experiences were crucial for my paper because I wanted to highlight what the average teacher’s mindset is, and what it can become(open-minded or close-minded). 

 

This project meant a lot to me and my academic writing skills because it opened the door to an entirely different field of study I had yet to interact with. I learned a lot about in-depth research since I had not really ever done it before. I also improved my skills of writing for a particular audience in a specific genre. I haven’t had to apply a strong focus on my audience or genre ever before, but this project really forced me to put me in the mindset of a teacher while I wrote. This is especially important because I have been told numerous times in the past that my writing comes across like I’m writing a speech, and I obviously didn’t want to do that here. I tried my best to write the framework as if I was a professor who had done their own study and analytical research. This meant I had to watch my grammar and wording carefully to make sure I sounded as professional as possible.

 

The discussion portion of our class was good practice for the final project. Coming into this class I felt slightly anxious that my writing would be sub-par compared to a lot of my classmates, although reading the blog posts I noticed how important it is to read a variety of writing styles. I was able to pick up on good and bad examples of academic writing that I wouldn’t have realized in my own writing. Overall, this project was a huge step for my writing and research skills. Instead of growing from preexisting skills, I basically started from scratch which helped me realize the level of which I was at before and after the class. 

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Final Reflection – Samantha Danylchuk

Within the larger body of material, I found in my research from Unit 2, I decided to focus on the generational gap in the workplace because I felt as though this was the most relatable topic for me. After hearing about the different topics brought up by my classmates, this one definitely intrigued me the most because I never considered associating diversity with age until this assignment. To determine what would actually make it into the project, I examined my sources and eliminated the ones that were too difficult to easily work with or held the wrong kind of information for my topic. If the author wasn’t credible or the content was too specific in certain ways where it didn’t focus on my assignment topic how I wanted, I chose not to use those sources. The lessons/skills from the course that I applied in doing this were definitely the TSIS templates. I really enjoyed using the templates to form my own statements and putting my thoughts together in a cohesive, organized way. For example, agreeing with an author on an opinion helped me recognize my own beliefs while finding a work where I countered an idea helped me challenge myself.

I learned that I really do enjoy writing. I absolutely loved the blog format of this class. I have never had experience with this before, and I loved the interactions between classmates because that definitely helped me grow as a student. I will admit that on some posts I was intimidated to share how I felt or bit uncomfortable when we dove into posts that touched upon racial or gender issues because I’m not used to openly discussing these topics. But I’m so thankful I was pushed out of my comfort zone because I definitely think those kinds of discussions will help me with my future classes. I enjoyed commenting on other people’s posts and receiving feedback. I’ve always been a fan of feedback because I’ve always loved hearing other people’s opinions on my work and how I can enhance my own work to make it better. It was difficult for me to acknowledge what I should prioritize and what I should give less of my attention too. I always feel the need to include absolutely every single detail in anything I do, so understanding the bigger picture and summarizing an article for example, are things I could definitely improve on. Talking right to my audience about my research was so unique in itself. It was pleasing to know that not only my teacher is receiving my work, but also other students. I feel like I am taking away so much just from what I’ve learned through my other classmates’ posts and comments, especially because new ideas were brought to me that I would have never thought of before.

This assignment taught me that generalizing information isn’t always the answer. In Unit 1 when this class first began, I definitely think my submissions held less value because generalization became my best friend. As the weeks went on and I got deeper into this class, I think I learned how to directly answer questions with responses that were articulate and detailed. For example, I couldn’t just say “I want to work with this source because it talks about my topic.” I had to explain I wanted to work with it because of the data it contained, the industry within the working generations that it focused on, etc. Additionally, using the “add media” feature on the blog post exposed me to working with unique features that the class layout entailed. I now know more about uploading files, converting pdfs, hyperlinks, etc. which none of my classes required as much last year. I also have never used the SUMMON feature at school last year, so this was extremely helpful in my research and will be sure to remember this going forward in my academic research.

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Final reflection (Dan)

 

After unit 2 ended and we had a list of sources that contained the accumulation of knowledge we would be writing about, I thought that my final project was going to be a breeze. I suppose my thought process was that I have so much information on the topic I chose, that I would have a surplus of things to discuss. Though this was true, I overlooked the fact that having a surplus of sources also complicates your job as a writer because it often forces you to make cuts to your portfolio of sources. Deciding which sources made it into my article and which ones did not was a big struggle for me. In fact, a part of me wishes that I would have put a different article in my final project than the one I did. I am pleased with the way that my project turned out, but in retrospect I feel that the other article would have strengthened my arguments and made my writing flow better.

One thing I learned about writing research papers is that finding article that are of good quality and useful to you is challenging. Sometimes, I would find an article that seems promising only to find out that it is not for me. Another thing I learned was the importance of keeping my intended audience in the back of my mind at all times. When I was looking for articles, I would occasionally come across one that sounded like it is perfect for the topic I was writing about. However, I had found that the audience that the author intended to reach was other peers that are of the same knowledge as them. Reading these papers as a novice was very challenging as I did not have any background knowledge and was not familiar with the nomenclature.

Lastly, this research paper helped me understand the importance of understanding how when you write about a topic you are entering a discussion. It was important that when we wrote papers, we contributed something unique to the overall story. Reading this tip in they say I say was daunting to me. I thought “how am I supposed to come up with a new idea that the people that are experts in the subject?”. Upon further reading, one of the suggestions that I found most helpful was that contributing something unique can be as simple as paraphrasing something someone else wrote and giving your opinion on the matter or the meaning of the matter. One thing I have found really helpful is to come up with a analogy that makes sense to you and share it with your readers.

 

Thank you all for being a great community this semester. I wish you all good luck this upcoming  semester.  Stay healthy and safe

-Dan

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Final Reflection, Aaron

In doing my final research project, I decided to focus on the areas of diversity in education and also the bias that teachers/instructors have towards students who are ethnic minorities. There were many different options for sources to pick for this kind of project, but I wanted to key in on what the concept of implicit bias/complicit theories of intelligence were, and how the students are affected (their academic performance) in the classroom. I learned the critical thinking skills to not just take everything that I see as a useful source- that there are some instances where I have to let some things go, because while they may be useful in one context, they didn’t necessarily fit with what I wanted my narrative to be.

In doing this research I learned quite a bit about the whole process: first and foremost was the different styles of writing and using rhetorical situations depending on who my intended audience is and what I wanted my message to be. Using certain words to grab attention, and adjusting the length of my writing (my audience was high school students/young undergrads) to not turn their attention spans off by writing a twenty page essay. Also, keeping my audience in mind, I wanted to try to make this conversational but also academic, so it wasn’t just like me having a casual talk with someone where i’m just spouting things from my mouth. I wanted to have sources and examples that justified why I was writing what I was. The receiving of feedback from my fellow students was important in two ways: one, was to see what they were choosing to focus on while they were doing their work, and what they thought of mine, and also to get a gauge of what people in that population had to say, so I can get an idea of what changes I should make. The feedback I received from my instructor was also really valuable, as she gave me a good outline on how I should craft my final work and not have it be an unorganized mess, she gave me a more concrete idea of what I needed to focus on to make it the best I was able to.

What I am taking away from this assignment is that there are so many options that a writer has when it comes to saying what they want to say- using rhetoric to tinker your message and make it more digestible to your intended audience. Before this, I didn’t really think about this process much at all, I would just write what comes to mind and basically hope for the best. Now that I have these tools to really make any writing I do in the future much more polished I am feeling confident. Another lesson I will take from this in general comes from the assigned text we read in class, the concept of using templates to get an idea going if you are ever stuck in your writing. I will definitely remember to use this as I think it’s a really valuable tool to have.

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Final Reflection

From the ongoing research I did for Unit 2, it ultimately led me to continue my focus soon the discrimination and inequality currently in our education system. This is a major topic in todays society however a very broad one. I wanted to focus on a specific issue within this big issue. Adding on to the research already done, I looked at articles surrounding the screening process. I did this because I wanted to write about a way that could potentially help solve this inequality that many students face today and a way for more people to be informed on the topic at hand. It was at first difficult to decide what to actually put in the project because it is such a big issue and there can be many sections to it. However, I wanted to focus on a smaller issue regarding inequality in schools. For me, that included the screening aspect of it, in addition to statistics, and an experience from a student and his perspective on being a minority in a school. The exercises we did really helped me get my thoughts out and helped me understand the reading better. For example the note taking exercises prompted me to annotate and take notes which ultimately helped me obtain the main idea from the article and helped me implement my viewpoints.

I learned a lot during this class surrounding my knowledge of diversity and inclusion, but I would say the most important thing I learned was about audience. A post on the blog that really stuck with me was the one that said how location is the most important factor in real estate, and thats the same effect audience has for writing. When I had a targeted audience in mind, I found it easier to write. I am going to continue to do that in my writing. I noticed how different writing styles can be depending on the audience you are trying to appeal to. In addition to that, I learned a lot about research. What to type in the search bar and the filters are so important. I hadn’t done too much research based writings in college so this class was a big help for that and helped me become more prepared for more writing I will have to do in the future like that.

To me the assignment had many values. First and foremost a better understanding of the issues facing racial injustice in the education system. Racial injustice has been a huge talking point recently and the research I have done for this class, increased my knowledge of the subject which is really beneficial. Looking at the statistics and numbers, minorities are heavily underrepresented in some schools. Knowing this information from my research, along with what I already knew, allowed me to expand my writing to strengthen my argument. In addition, inform the reader who might not know too much about the topic. Focusing on what to include and what to leave out of my writing is something I have struggled with in the past. I feel like this class improved that for me by keeping the audience in mind and considering what is most beneficial for them. Ultimately, I believe the tools I learned in this class increased my skills that I will maintain in my writing in the future.

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Taking it public, reflection, Benjamin Fisch

I decided what to focus on in my Unit 2 body of material, by researching something that hit home to me. There are a lot of sub topics one could explore that fall under organizational culture. However, studying neurological diversity in the work place caught my attention more than any other potential sub topic I had. I chose neurological diversity in the work place, because neurological disorders is something I can relate to. My little brother was a slow developer as a baby and a toddler, and at one point we were worried that he may be on the spectrum. Thankfully he was just a slow developer and eventually began to progress into the wonderful young man he is today, but at first we had this scare. This is why I feel closely connected to my sub topic, hence why I chose it. I decided what would make it into the project by selecting research that was straight to the point and closely related to my topic.
I learned a lot and got a lot out of this project, that I put together throughout the course of our class. Primarily, I learned a ton about people with neurological disorders and how they can benefit a company. Before I started collecting my research on this sub topic of organizational culture, I had the opinion that people with neurological disorders were not fit for the workplace. That perspective definitely changed as I gathered research for my project. I learned that people with neurological disorders definitely have their limitations, but they also have unique abilities that outweigh their limitations. They have the ability to hyper focus on a task more than someone who does not have a neurological disorder. I learned a lot about how to take information, digest it, and then write about it. Some of the writing I learned during this course, was writing to help explain my research to my audience or more so, introduce my gathered research to my audience, so it would be easier for them to absorb all the information that I would be throwing at them in my research project. I learned that giving and receiving feedback is a crucial element of developing a research project. The feedback I received on my work definitely benefited what made it into my final portfolio. I learned how to engage a target audience. My targeted audience is professional with the responsibilities of hiring new employees and people with neurological disorders. I learned to engage them, but cutting out the excess writing of the research I gathered, and presenting my audience with the straight forward writing that would bet educate them on my sub topic.
This assignment had a lot of value for me. The most important bit of value I got from the course, is more than just how to conduct research. The value I received is how to conduct research tailored for a specific targeted audience. My targeted audience is professionals in the workplace who are responsible for hiring new employees, and people with neurological disorders. I learned how to present information in an organized way to people that need to see it. That’s the value I gained, gathering research and organizing it in a way that best suits the audience that it is intended for.